(American Greatness) — A few things were lost in the shuffle in the madness following the highly suspect November 2020 elections, one of which should have been a much bigger story. On Election Night, Fox News predicted that House Republicans were going to lose up to 10 seats in the House. What in fact happened was that House Republicans gained 13 seats with Fox missing their prediction by more than 20 seats, which meant that Nancy Pelosi’s majority in the House was a far slimmer nine votes. But now, because of deaths and resignations, Democrats only have a 218 to 212 majority in the House.
Think about that: if four races had gone the other way, Pelosi wouldn’t be speaker right now. People forget how close the 2020 elections actually were. With all their rigging and manipulating of the electoral process, defiance of the Constitution, state constitutions, and state laws, Democrats were only able to defeat Trump by roughly 42,000 votes when you add up the vote differences in Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona. You take those 37 electoral votes out of Biden’s column and put them into Trump’s, it’s a 269-269 tie with Trump likely winning the House tie breaker process.
But take it to another level: the cumulative vote total difference in the House races wasn’t that much different from the presidential elections totals. Imagine for a moment those handful of races had gone the other way and Pelosi wasn’t Speaker. The Equality Act never would have passed the House, nor would the abomination For the People Act. We wouldn’t have to waste taxpayer money debating and then passing gargantuan stimulus bills that have barely anything to do with COVID-19 relief. None of the crazy leftist ideas coming out of the House would have seen the light of day because the Republicans would not have allowed them to pass.
Why don’t we have this firewall in the House? One of the real reasons is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber did its part to help Pelosi keep the speakership. In fact, the Chamber, the supposed defender of free markets and businesses, went out of its way to help ensure that Democrats kept the House majority. In 2020, the Chamber decided to play in 30 House swing districts, endorsing 23 Democrats in those races. In many ways, we’re getting crushed by un-American ideas meant to reengineer America into a regressive socialist country because the Chamber decided it liked the Democrats’ view of the world more than the Republicans’. Let that sink in.
Now if you’ve been in D.C. for long, you know that the Chamber was never a bastion of conservatism. It has always been very establishment and swampy — certainly not America First. But it could be counted on at least to toe the line on business issues and some semblance of free-market capitalism.
Not anymore, sunshine.
The Chamber has shown through its actions, between its role in the House races and its “fortifying” of the 2020 elections as a whole while colluding with woke corporations, Big Tech, and big unions to take down Trump, that it has cut loose any moorings with anything that might be interpreted as Main Street or conservative.
Selling out Americans on trade with China? Absolutely. The carbon tax? Minimum wage? Illegal immigration and open borders? Crushing small businesses in favor of major corporations? The destruction of the American dream? You betcha. The list could go on, and the Chamber of Swamp is on the wrong side of almost every one of those issues.
The good news is that more and more people are waking up to the fact that not only is the Chamber not a friend to conservatism or Republicans, it’s not even really a friend to small businesses, the backbone of the American free enterprise system. Many of the small business members are in fact fleeing the Chamber in recent times and some D.C. Republicans are finally realizing who their real friends are.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., described the Chamber recently as “a front service for woke corporations who are trying to peddle anti-American theories and demanding that their employees get reeducated and indoctrinated on anti-American ideas.” Maybe, just maybe, more Republicans in office will also get righteous on this issue and stop making the fatal mistake of conflating Chamber of Commerce corporatism with real free-market capitalism. But then again, we just watched a supposed conservative Republican on national prime time TV defending chemical castration of kids, so don’t hold your breath.
But as in all things, we must look at the silver lining in this situation. While it’s troubling what the Chamber has become, we can at least focus on the positive of it all: the shams are being weighed in the balance and found wanting. At least we now know who the frauds are moving forward, whether it’s Kristi Noem or Asa Hutchinson or the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Ned Ryun
Ned Ryun is a grassroots and conservative activism expert. He is the founder and CEO of American Majority, a non-partisan political training institute whose mission is to identify and mold the next wave of liberty-minded candidates, grassroots activists and community leaders. Since its founding in January of 2008, while under Ryun’s leadership, American Majority has trained nearly 48,000 candidates and activists.
A former writer for President George W. Bush and the son of former Olympic medalist and U.S. Rep. Jim Ryun (R-KS), Ned Ryun is highly sought after for his commentary on the national political scene, grassroots engagement and the conservative movement in general.
