by Tiana Lowe, Washington Examiner
Russia is without question our No. 1 geopolitical foe. They fight for every cause for the world’s worst actors. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney warned us of this six years ago, only to be met with the mocking and derision from the Democratic Party and the media commentariat.
Of course, they flipped rapidly following the upset of the 2016 election, failing to fathom how Queen Hillary could lose to a brash billionaire who embraced nationalism and lambasted globalism. In the rush to find a rationale to absolve Clinton and their own ideas of responsibility for this debacle, the left-wing mental gymnastic exercise landed on Russia. Blame Russia for attempting to interfere with the elections.
And attempt they did, but they ultimately failed to achieve anything beyond a troll army. And more than a year into the special counsel investigation, there is still no evidence that President Trump colluded with the Russian government before or after the election.
Rather than leave the investigation to Robert Mueller, a Purple Heart recipient and former FBI director, and simply report on the unsavory cabal of a handful of Trump associates exposed as the incompetent frauds we always suspected they were, the media went into overdrive, platforming evidence-free conspiracy theories charging Trump with treason or … something.
On Russia, the Democrats simply overpromised. They overstepped, and the final public opinion polling shows it. According to one of Gallup‘s final polls going into the midterm elections, the Russia investigation placed last, at 45 percent, right after climate change, in the list of issues voters care about. At the top of the list, 78 percent of registered voters said they care about immigration and 64 percent said that the disgraceful confirmation proceedings of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh were an extremely important factor as they headed to the polls today.
In a normal environment, the inevitable exposure of a crook like former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort would be damning enough by association alone. But the Democrats reached too far and promised that Trump himself conspired with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Who knows, maybe Mueller will drop new, damning information condemning Trump shortly. But for right now, the American electorate does not find this a compelling issue at all.
