"Experts" are now claiming that the red tsunami predicted late last year will amount to a mere ripple — if anything at all.
Last November the poll tracking website FiveThirtyEight predicted a huge red wave in the midterms.
Its prediction was based on Republican Glenn Youngkin winning Virginia's gubernatorial race, and Republican Jack Ciattarelli coming within a whisker of defeating Gov. Phil Murphy in deep blue New Jersey.
This week that same website reassessed those predictions, and stated that the GOP is only "favored" to flip the House, and Democrats are "slightly favored" to maintain control of the Senate.
But that's not set in stone, according to publicist A.J. Rice, who's president of the Washington, D.C.-based Publius PR. He's spent a lifetime soaking up the knowledge and advice of conservative mentors and later dispensing those lessons learned to promote the careers of today's makers and shakers.
Rice told Newsmax that for Republicans to win future elections, they have to "do what Youngkin did [in Virginia]. He was able to retain Trump's people and energy and bring along the suburban moms.
"He merely put a spotlight on 'The Woking Dead' — the people who are in the textbooks of the government schools, the garbage about American history, letting 'Gary' and 'Steve' go into the women's locker room, the changing of the language, the corruption of children, the lockdowns."
Rice's use of the term "The Woking Dead" refers to his recently released book, "The Woking Dead: How Society's Vogue Virus Destroys Our Culture," which received high praise from a Newsmax favorite.
"The culture war is on, and the other side is playing for keeps," said Chris Salcedo, host of Newsmax's "The Chris Salcedo Show." "Stale and clueless politicians are ill-equipped to fight this war. In 'The Woking Dead,' my friend A.J. Rice proves himself to be the answer to the left's attack on America's culture."
One recent instance where Rice put his advice into action was when he promoted a relatively unknown client who was preparing to challenge a five-term Republican in a primary battle.
"There was this woman who owned a restaurant in western Colorado, who made the news because you could open carry in the restaurant, and she had confronted [Robert Francis] 'Beto' O'Rourke, who was going around talking about grabbing guns. And she went viral, and she went on 'Fox & Friends.' And somewhere after that she decided she was going to run for Congress."
That was when Rice's phone rang: "He said, 'We need media. We're going to take on a sitting Republican.' I said, 'OK, we'll give you media.' Lo and behold her name was Lauren Boebert. She beat the Republican, and then she won the general election, and the rest is history."
Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., is now one of the GOP's brightest rising stars.
Above all, for the GOP to grow and consistently win elections, it's going to have to drop the establishment "nice guy" image.
"We were always really good at losing honorably," Rice said. "That's the Republican Party they want — a compliant people with their mouths sewn shut."
The GOP has to instead start pushing back like former President Donald Trump.
"Trump is the ultimate counter-puncher," Rice said. "He broke these people."
And finally, the GOP's competition is helping push Republicans over the finish line.
New York GOP gubernatorial nominee Lee Zeldin is now moving up on Democratic incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul, and his support is coming from an unusual voting bloc for Republicans — the Democratic Party.
"We have a Democratic machine that has gone far too left — too extreme for even those moderate Democrats," said John Orlando, president of the New Era Democrats, at a Monday press conference.
The Rev. Rubén Díaz Sr., a former city councilman, seconded Orlando.
"Lee is my candidate. He's against crime. Hochul's for crime. She refused to make any major changes to the bail law," he said.
And we have Democrats doing the same thing at the national level — beginning with President Joe Biden. Rice likened the 87,000 new IRS agents being added through the Inflation Reduction Act to the same authoritarianism that sparked the American Revolution.
"It's a private army — they're going to be armed. Put 'em in red coats and you've got 'taxation without representation,' right?"
Add to it the president's executive order that will have waitresses and plumbers paying the debts of doctors and lawyers.
Finally, there are the polls themselves.
In 2010 Politico predicted "peril for Republicans." That was the year that President Barack Obama got his shellacking at his own administration's first midterm election. Republicans flipped 63 House seats that year.
Let the shellacking begin.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to Newsmax. He is also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and an enthusiastic Second Amendment supporter. Read Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.