{"id":2380444,"date":"2024-12-16T08:26:57","date_gmt":"2024-12-16T13:26:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/hegseth-battle-shows-republicans-an-easy-way-to-stop-losing\/"},"modified":"2024-12-16T08:28:59","modified_gmt":"2024-12-16T13:28:59","slug":"hegseth-battle-shows-republicans-an-easy-way-to-stop-losing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/hegseth-battle-shows-republicans-an-easy-way-to-stop-losing\/","title":{"rendered":"Hegseth Battle Shows Republicans An Easy Way To Stop Losing"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fhegseth-battle-shows-republicans-an-easy-way-to-stop-losing%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2380444&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Longtime Democrat activist\u2064 and ABC News host George Stephanopoulos inadvertently provided Republicans with two significant advantages over the weekend.\u2064 First, he settled a\u2063 defamation lawsuit with Donald Trump, agreeing\u2063 to a payment \u200dof $15 million, plus $1 million in legal\u2063 fees, for inaccurately portraying\u2064 aspects of the Democratic party\u2019s strategy\u2064 against\u200d Trump. Second, during his Sunday show, Stephanopoulos highlighted how \u2064the GOP could\u200d effectively counter the media&#8217;s narratives\u200c and the influence of establishment Republicans.<\/p>\n<p>On the show, Stephanopoulos questioned whether Pete Hegseth, Trump&#8217;s nominee for Secretary of Defense, could\u2063 gain support after attending a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/a-football-analogy-to-explain-democrats-election-cheating\/\" title=\"A Football Analogy to Explain Democrats&#039; Election Cheating\">football game<\/a> with Trump. Republican strategist \u200bReince Priebus argued that Trump&#8217;s backing of Hegseth indicated a shift \u200cin support for the nominee, contrasting with the media&#8217;s previous\u2064 opposition. Priebus noted a surge in corporate support for\u2062 Trump&#8217;s inauguration, further signaling\u2063 a change \u200din momentum.\u2064 Washington Post reporter Marianna Sotomayor echoed this sentiment, attributing Hegseth&#8217;s increased viability to grassroots \u2064Republican pressures on hesitant senators, including threats of primary challenges. The discussion underscored a growing \u200dalignment of\u2063 Trump\u2019s base and a shift in political dynamics favoring Hegseth\u2019s nomination.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Longtime Democrat activist and ABC News host George Stephanopoulos gave Republicans two wins this weekend. The first was settling with Donald Trump for $15 million, plus $1 million in lawyer&rsquo;s fees, for <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2024\/12\/15\/trump-hating-abc-settles-defamation-case-with-15-million-payment-to-trump-library\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">lying about the president elect<\/a>. Stephanopoulos had falsely characterized the result of one part of the Democrat Party&rsquo;s lawfare strategy to bankrupt and imprison Trump and otherwise prevent his election.<\/p>\n<p>The second gift to Republicans was the inadvertent showcasing on Stephanopoulos&rsquo; Sunday show of how the GOP can effectively maneuver against the media complex and weak Republicans who carry water for the permanent D.C. bureaucracy.<\/p>\n<p>Stephanopoulos asked a panel of D.C. insiders if Pete Hegseth, who attended the Army-Navy football game this weekend with Trump, had &ldquo;turned the tide&rdquo; in his pursuit of confirmation as the secretary of defense. Hegseth, a decorated veteran and former Fox News host, had been the target of a media campaign to force him out as the nominee.<\/p>\n<p>Republican strategist Reince Priebus said Hegseth had turned the tide because &ldquo;[y]ou&rsquo;re seeing Trump double down&rdquo; on his nomination by reiterating his desire to see him confirmed and publicly showing his expectation that he would be confirmed. He also highlighted how corporations were coming out of the woodwork to support the inauguration, something that was unthinkable eight years ago, as the battle over Hegseth was heating up.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I think Trump is as tough as ever right now. I mean he&rsquo;s on the world stage. People are coming to him. I just think this thing is on &mdash; it&rsquo;s on a big-time cruise control, you know, 85 miles an hour down the middle of the interstate,&rdquo; Priebus said.<\/p>\n<p>Washington Post congressional reporter Marianna Sotomayor agreed with the assessment and said there had been a &ldquo;significant shift&rdquo; on the previously embattled nominee. She credited the grassroots Republican attacks on weak Republicans as particularly helpful to Hegseth&rsquo;s case.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;And I think the reason why is because the moment that Trump came out and said that he is behind his pick,&nbsp;we did see a number of Trump allies kind of green lighting to the MAGA base, all right, start calling senators who are a little bit worried on Hegseth. Start &mdash; start to threaten, actually, a number of senators, including Sen. Joni Ernst, that she could get primaried. This is something that Elon Musk has also said publicly that he will use his super PACs to not just find candidates to go against any senator who may vote against a nominee, but also fund those campaigns.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>The Federalist&rsquo;s Shawn Fleetwood broke the news that Ernst was <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2024\/12\/04\/trump-world-sources-joni-ernst-is-waging-aggressive-personal-jihad-against-hegseth\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">waging an &ldquo;aggressive&rdquo; campaign<\/a> against Hegseth&rsquo;s nomination in the hope she might be <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/navy-eradicating-extremism-training-black-lives-matter-is-not-politically-partisan-in-nature\/\" title=\"Navy \u2018Eradicating Extremism\u2019 Training: Black Lives Matter Is \u2018Not Politically Partisan In Nature\u2019\">appointed defense secretary<\/a>. Her past support for <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2024\/12\/05\/iowa-sen-joni-ernst-endorsed-transgender-military-service\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">pushing transgender ideology<\/a> on the military was also highlighted. The Federalist&rsquo;s John Daniel Davidson explained the stakes of the nomination battle in his piece, &ldquo;<a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2024\/12\/09\/pete-hegseths-nomination-is-a-hill-trump-should-die-on\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Pete Hegseth&rsquo;s Nomination Is A Hill Trump Should Die On<\/a>.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Associated Press executive editor Julie Pace also agreed that Republican voters had apparently figured out how to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/republicans-amplify-calls-for-senate-to-convict-mayorkas-in-impeachment-trial\/\" title=\"Republicans intensify push to convict Mayorkas in Senate impeachment trial\">remind senators<\/a> that they mattered at least as much as their beltway friends.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I think Marianna has it right, there was this sort of pivot point where you could see, particularly, I think, when the pressure campaign against Ernst really started to mount, that I think that took over and became the dominant focus of a lot of these senators as opposed to some of the allegations and some of the questions around Hegseth,&rdquo; Pace said.<\/p>\n<p>Democrat strategist Donna Brazile said controllers had unleashed &ldquo;MAGA&rdquo; on senators who were &ldquo;waffling&rdquo; on the nominees.<\/p>\n<p>Priebus pushed back on the claim. &ldquo;[T]hey didn&rsquo;t unleash MAGA. America unleashed MAGA. I mean the point &mdash; the whole point of Trump&rsquo;s victory is, how did the traditional picks that we used to always put in place, how did that work for us? The American people rejected it. And they accepted what Donald Trump&rsquo;s been selling in this country for the last couple years. So, I mean, he won with Muslim voters in Dearborn. He won with Puerto Ricans in Florida. He won a majority of male Hispanic voters. He won every state across the country better except for I think Washington and Oregon,&rdquo; Priebus said. &ldquo;MAGA is here because MAGA has been accepted by the American people, and so that&rsquo;s why we&rsquo;re here. We&rsquo;ve got to be reminded of this all the time.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>The four panelists more or less helped explain how to fight the constant information operations deployed by the media and other Democrats in order to get weak Republicans to assist in the sabotage of Republican policy goals. Republicans should show strength and conviction in the face of obvious media campaigns against their nominees or policy ideas. And Republicans need to <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\">remind weak elected officials<\/a> that they should fear their voters fare more.<\/p>\n<p>These simple steps enable Republicans to neuter, blow up, and render impotent the awful playbook that the media, Democrats, and the permanent D.C. class use to get their way.<\/p>\n<p>A bit of fortitude and a reminder that there are consequences to assisting the opposing party with its goals helps the GOP start rolling down the highway at 85 MPH on cruise control, as Priebus put it. And the strategy can be repeated over and over because Trump&rsquo;s Republican agenda is supported by a majority of the American people.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<div>\n<p>      Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is the Editor-in-Chief of The Federalist. She is Senior Journalism Fellow at Hillsdale College and a Fox News contributor. She is the co-author of <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Justice-Trial-Kavanaugh-Confirmation-Supreme\/dp\/1621579832\">Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court<\/a><\/em>. She is the author of &#8220;<em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Rigged-Media-Democrats-Seized-Elections\/dp\/168451259X\/\">Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections.<\/a><\/em>&#8221; Reach her at <b><a href=\"http:\/\/thefederalist.com\/mailto:mzhemingway@thefederalist.com\">mzhemingway@thefederalist.com<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>George Stephanopoulos gave Republicans two wins this weekend<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":605,"featured_media":2380445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Screenshot-74.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[45173,32504,3756,46879],"class_list":["post-2380444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-hegseth","tag-political-strategy","tag-republicans","tag-winning-tactics"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Screenshot-74.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2380444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/605"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2380444"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2380444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2380448,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2380444\/revisions\/2380448"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2380445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2380444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2380444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2380444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}