Fox News contributor Tammy Bruce says the Republican Party should acknowledge several important takeaways from their underperformance in the 2022 midterms and, in the meantime, stop acting like Debbie Downers

“The Democrats are behaving like they won a basket full of puppies; they just have puppies, puppies, puppies everywhere. And the Republicans are running around, with all of this expansion [with several demographic groups] — there’s very good numbers across the board — perhaps [controlling], yes, the House of Representatives, and yet, there’s moping,” she told “The Next Revolution” host Steve Hilton and two other panelists.

(Video: Fox News)

The upbeat pundit said that the GOP should “stand up, be excited,” while noting that the disappointing outcome was “a very good opportunity to learn some lessons to say the least” in the run-up to 2024. “We have enough time to adjust and make things a little bit better.”

She went on to claim that after then-President Obama get shellacked in the midterms, “he didn’t change anything either. He destroyed their backbench. That’s why their stars this time were Stacey Abrams, and Beto, and Charlie Crist…for the Republicans, my goodness, the country’s at stake. And this is a very good lesson, several, that can be adjusted to for the presidential race, There’s a number of different layers about leadership and about having a message about why Republicans should be voted for. That’s why it was a failure of existing Republican leadership.”

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has also castigated the clueless GOP leadership from Mitch McConnell on down.

Bruce also praised the prospect of divided government, rather than single-party rule, if the GOP manages to take control of the House, that would prevent the Democrats in Congress from jamming through their agenda as they have in the past two years.

“The Founders wanted it to be slow. They preferred gridlock. They wanted some reasonable, considered thought process. Nothing fast; nothing reckless,” she contended.

The lifelong Democrat who now describes herself as an independent conservative went on to say that “leadership matters, and that’s why the presidency matters, and that’s why primaries matter, and that’s why debates matter…”

Unfortunately, in states that allow mass ballot harvesting during the early voting period with minimal, if any, chain of custody, debates between the candidates are no longer that significant.

In that context, panelist Rob Smith made a very important point about that on-the-ground strategy that currently gives the Dems a big edge:

“Republicans and conservatives have to get more comfortable with vote by mail, ballot harvesting, all this other stuff. We hate it; I know that Republicans vote on Election Day. But let me tell you something: Democrats have figured out how to turn out the vote in that way, and we have to start doing that or else we’re not gonna be competitive…”

Note that Election Day voters in GOP-leaning precincts throughout Maricopa County, Ariz. in the Phoenix area encountered all kinds of problems with malfunctioning tabulation machines.

Bruce returned at the end of the show to diss a list of potential replacements for Joe Biden on the 2024 Democrat ticket, assuming the incumbent POTUS decides against running again.

Alluding to an earlier theme, Bruce noted that “this is another reminder about the damages Obama did to the party with Obamacare and the 2010 purge in Congress. That was their talent bench. It was deep; there was some very interesting people. And now, there aren’t.”

The Democrats, “in some ways, are misreading what happened in the election,” she claimed. “It was not clearly a mandate for them. It was a warning to Republicans.”

Instead of radical potential candidates, including “Governor Hair Gel” (Gavin Newsom), Bruce touted so-called moderate senators — Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin of Arizona and West Virginia, respectively, “who actually represent, I contend, the average Democrat in the field,” and who, she said, aren’t being considered by the party hierarchy.

Sounding very optimistic about the electorate, Bruce punctuated the conversation as follows about the drunk-with-power, other-worldly Democrat Party:

“It confirms really that the powers that be like what’s happening, that it is this marginal extremist, minimal dynamic, and not the mainstream. So that’s the Democrat fight. They are being diluted. It’s like they’ve had a few drinks, and they really aren’t sure what reality is. And that’s how they’re gonna be for the next two years. And that’s gonna catch up with them because they’re gonna be surprised. Their own base actually loves this country; they’re not on the left….you can’t be this disconnected from the American people….the Democrats are on another planet.”

Whether Bruce is metaphorically whistling past the graveyard, which perhaps might be appropriate given the Dems’ voter-outreach efforts, remains to be seen.

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