More Than 1 Million Votes Have Switched To GOP---Raising Alarm

Associated Press is reporting that " A political shift is beginning to take hold across the U.S. as tens of thousands of suburban swing voters who helped fuel the Democratic Party’s gains in recent years are becoming Republicans."

More than 1 million voters across 43 states have switched to the Republican Party over the last year, according to voter registration data analyzed by The Associated Press. 

This is good news for the Republican Party---if they don't blow it. 

What could this mean to the biblical Christian community? And the culture?

Be informed. not misled.

The great political shift in America.

While most left-leaning news organizations---print and broadcast---are running this story, Associated Press did the research and originated it.

More than 1 million voters across 43 states have switched to the Republican Party over the last year, according to voter registration data analyzed by The Associated Press( link 2 PBS). The previously unreported number reflects a phenomenon that is playing out in virtually every region of the country — Democratic and Republican states along with cities and small towns — in the period since President Joe Biden replaced former President Donald Trump.

But nowhere is the shift more pronounced — and dangerous for Democrats — than in the suburbs, where well-educated swing voters who turned against Trump’s Republican Party in recent years appear to be swinging back. Over the last year, far more people are switching to the GOP across suburban counties from Denver to Atlanta and Pittsburgh, and Cleveland. Republicans also gained ground in counties around medium-size cities such as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Raleigh, North Carolina; Augusta, Georgia; and Des Moines, Iowa.

AP also found that the Republican advantage was larger in suburban “fringe” counties, based on classifications from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, compared to smaller towns and counties. Republicans boosted their share of party changers in 168 of 235 suburban counties AP examined — 72 percent — over the last year, compared with the last years of the Trump era.

These included suburban counties across Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, Virginia, and Washington state.

I think the press is running this story as a wake-up call to their allies in the Democrat Party.

Hollywood, as you know, went all in for Joe Biden in 2020. And now they are paying the price, literally, as the cost of movie and TV production soars to levels that are giving entertainment executives a sticker shock.

Industry leaders told The Hollywood Reporter that inflation has impacted virtually every aspect of physical production, including fuel, electrical equipment, and even small items like gaffer tape.

AP asked the Democratic National Committee about this surge toward the Republican Party. They declined to discuss it.

Is this a good thing for biblical Christian Republicans?

It is good that so many people are changing their minds and changing political parties; Right?

Ben Smith, who lives in suburban Larimer County, Colorado, north of Denver, said he reluctantly registered as a Republican earlier in the year after becoming increasingly concerned about the Democrats’ support in some localities for mandatory COVID-19 vaccines, the party’s inability to quell violent crime and its frequent focus on racial justice.

“It’s more so a rejection of the left than embracing the right,” said Smith, a 37-year-old professional counselor whose transition away from the Democratic Party began five or six years ago when he registered as a libertarian.

Emily Seidel, who leads the Koch Brothers-backed grassroots organization Americans for Prosperity, said "her network is seeing first-hand that suburban voters are distancing themselves from Democrats who represent “extreme policy positions.”

“But that doesn’t mean that they’re ready to vote against those lawmakers either. Frankly, they’re skeptical of both options that they have,” Seidel said. “The lesson here: Candidates have to make their case, they have to give voters something to be for, not just something to be against.”

But some of the Democrat defectors are bringing their vote with them.

In Larimer County, Colorado, 39-year-old homemaker Jessica Kroells says she can no longer vote for Democrats, despite being a reliable Democratic voter up until 2016.

There was not a single “aha moment” that convinced her to switch, but by 2020, she said the Democratic Party had “left me behind.”

“The party itself is no longer Democrat, it’s progressive socialism,” she said, specifically condemning Biden’s plan to eliminate billions of dollars in student debt.

And some of the credit for this political shift goes to RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel.

She told AP, “Biden and Democrats are woefully out of touch with the American people, and that’s why voters are flocking to the Republican Party in droves.” 

In fact, she's predicting that “American suburbs will trend red for cycles to come” because of “Biden’s gas hike, the open border crisis, baby formula shortage, and rising crime.”

Politically, this is, for the most part, a "good thing."

However, biblical Christians must be vigilant. And discerning. And engaged.

Beware the "Big Tent"

Last year Fox News reported, 

"The Republican National Committee announced its first-ever "RNC Pride Coalition" over the weekend, partnering with the Log Cabin Republicans to invest and mobilize LGBTQ communities ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

The announcement came during the Log Cabin Republicans' "Spirit of Lincoln Gala," which took place Saturday night at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, and attracted a high-profile group of attendees, including former President Trump and former first lady Melania Trump, who was the event’s guest of honor, and other prominent Republicans, including former acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell."

Last June McDaniel tweeted: 

Happy #PrideMonth!@GOP is proud to have doubled our LGBTQ support over the last 4 years, and we will continue to grow our big tent by supporting measures that promote fairness and balance protections for LGBTQ Americans and those with deeply held religious beliefs.

— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) June 2, 2021

As you can imagine there was pretty strong pushback from conservatives---particularly biblical conservatives in the Republican Party. There were explanations and assurances that followed, promising that the Republican Party would never revise or abandon the Judeo-Christian values of the Party's Platform.

Yet the Gala happened only a few months later.

Takeaway.

Should the Republican Party misjudge the single largest voting block within the Party---the evangelical Christians--- and make the "tent" so big that Ronna and the powers that be find it necessary to compromise for the greater good? To achieve "fairness and balance" as she has promised, on deeply held biblical values and beliefs? If so, there may well be another "shift" in  American politics. As the million Democrats find their place under the "Big Tent," there could be tens of millions of evangelical Christians  moving out of the "Tent." 

It happened when Mitt Romney, Ronna's uncle, ran for president. Evangelicals generally didn't vote for the Democrat candidate, nor did they vote for Romney---they simply didn't vote.

We don't want this to happen again.

I pray it doesn't, but speaking only for myself, I can assure you there will be at least one man walking out should this occur. And he'll be saying my party left me. He'll be outside the tent as the new revised platform is being dedicated. His party will have left him. And he will be figuring out how to exercise his God-given privilege to vote.

My life in public ministry tells me I won't be alone.

Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Engaged. Be Prayerful. Be Faithful.