Muted Impact
In spite of these revelations, the investigation into documents transferred from the White House at the time of Trump’s departure in January 2021 is still at an early stage, is prone to missteps and possible backfiring, and none of the findings are likely to dissuade voters from supporting Republican candidates or drive them to cross the political aisle and vote for the incumbent party, experts say. In part, this is simply a function of the timing of the investigation and of the November elections.“I think there will be more activity by the Department of Justice, but they will be careful. If they make a misstep, it will benefit Trump. I don’t think raid will affect the midterms much unless there is an indictment of Trump, which I think is very unlikely before November,” Keith Naughton, the principal of Silent Majority Strategies, a political consultancy based in Germantown, Maryland, told The Epoch Times.
Naughton acknowledged that the raid, and recent statements by Trump, such as his call for a redo of the 2020 election, may motivate voters already inclined to support Democrat candidates. But while Democrats may hope that the raid and subsequent revelations prove highly embarrassing to Trump and the GOP, the truth is that most of the electorate will still vote on the basis of the larger economic issues affecting their day-to-day lives, Naughton believes.
“The student loan giveaway by Biden is backfiring badly and the economy is not really improving, even if inflation is moderating a bit. Republicans and independents will turn out to vote against Biden’s flailing policies,” Naughton said.
The fallout from this measure is likely to be severe for Democrat candidates as the public comes to perceive more and more that a purportedly altruistic measure works to the disadvantage of poorer citizens in the long term while pushing government debt to ever more unsustainable levels, some economists believe.
“I suspect this supposed to be a first step to making taxpayers liable for all student loans, and eventually to the federal government making college ‘free.’ College education would then be a transfer from the less well-off to the wealthier, who have much higher rates of college preparation and attendance. It would also put the federal government on an even faster track to a debt crisis,” Charles Steele, Chair of the Department of Economics, Business, and Accounting at Hillsdale College in Michigan, told The Epoch Times.
The question of whether Trump may or may not have violated the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which established a highly specific protocol regarding the handling of documents by outgoing presidents, is a partisan-driven distraction from the issues on people’s minds, Naughton continued.
The Greater Mobilizer?
Some commentators believe that, regardless of public concerns about the raid or what legal consequences the FBI’s actions and the ongoing investigation may have, challenges loom for Republican candidates in an environment where significant backlash against the Supreme Court’s recent divisive ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which reversed Roe v. Wade, is all but inevitable.“Democrats are motivated by the Dobbs decision in a far greater way than the raid motivates Republicans,” David Carlucci, a former New York State senator who now works as a political consultant, told The Epoch Times.
In the past, the issue of legal access to abortions was not quite the dealbreaker that it has become in the months since the Dobbs ruling, Carlucci argued. The decision has changed the game, and Republicans ignore this at their peril.
“Republican politicians have for years been able to be pro-life and still get pro-choice voter support. Pro-choice voters have felt secure [in the belief] that access to a safe abortion would be protected. Moderate Republicans now have to carry water for their most conservative Republican counterparts because strict abortion bans are very much a concern for moderate voters,” Carlucci said.
But other observers reject this analysis and argue that federal law enforcement has already committed such severe missteps in the execution of the raid and attempts to justify it that the fallout will give Trump-endorsed candidates an edge in the midterms.
Rick Wiley, a political consultant who worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign, told The Epoch Times that the raid and its aftermath have “fired up” the GOP base.
“The raid at Mar-a-Lago is one of those moments in history, where you remember where you were when you heard they raised the President’s private residence. And overwhelmingly, people are saying, ‘Was all this necessary?’ That’s a problem for the FBI and DOJ. They left everyone in the dark for days before they gave a half-hearted, at best, explanation for what happened, and most people were left scratching their heads,” Wiley said.
What the public especially objects to is the perceived political motivation on the part of law enforcement agencies that are supposed to do their job objectively and avoid giving the appearance of targeting opposition figures, Wiley argued.
“It seems political and that’s an image problem the FBI and DOJ are going to have to deal with. And it has Republicans fired up,” Wiley said.
Not even the Dobbs ruling will produce the same galvanizing effect on Democrat voters that the Mar-a-Lago raid will have on Republican voters, Wiley stated, adding, “I’ll take a fired-up GOP base over a fired-up Democrat base any day.”
The Epoch Times has reached out to the DOJ for comment.
