As the Republican Party is still trying to determine what exactly went wrong in last week’s off year elections, Alabama’s GOP leader says the party nationally needs to look at the Yellowhammer State for lessons on how to win in the future.
The GOP suffered some major election defeats Nov. 7 in key states such as Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio, causing some concern for the party ahead of next years 2024 Presidential election.
Alabama Republican Party Chairman John Wahl told WVNN’s “The Yaffee Program,” that the election losses shouldn’t have been that unexpected.
“I’m going to honest, they did not surprise me,” Wahl said. “And I’m going to talk generically here because it does not stand for Alabama. If you look at Alabama’s election results in the midterm election, we did very well. We picked up 50 seats across this state.”
Wahl believes the party could do well nationally if they focus on the right issues like Alabama Republicans did during last year’s elections.
“But we also had different messaging than a lot of the national Republicans did,” he said, “very much talking about these issues and talking about the culture wars and protecting children from woke policies, and the southern border, and the disastrous situations that our local communities are, defunding the police, all these things that are good issues for Republicans, and we picked up 50 seats across this state.”
The ALGOP chair said Republicans aren’t learning from their mistakes.
“If you think about the messaging of national Republicans over the last year it has not changed,” he said. “And so if you’re putting out the same basic policy positions and you’re doing the same talking points and the same things, why would you expect different election results? And I think this is something that national Republicans have got to figure out.”
Wahl national Republicans need to look toward states that have been successful for the party in recent years.
“If they’re going to win, they need to look at places that have been winning,” he said. “Places like Alabama. Ron DeSantis in Florida, where he took a swing state that you would normally hope to win by 3 or 4 points and he won it by 20 points. Glenn Younkin in Virginia. Even in Virginia they changed their messaging more to this national standard just talking about the economy or just fiscal policy, and they’re missing out on so many issues that we can drive a wedge in Democrat support.”
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on Twitter @Yaffee
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