I don't know who was the first person to say "Don't get high on your own supply". Younger people may recall a version of this maxim from rapper Biggie Smalls 1997 song "Ten Crack Commandments". I'm not young so my reference point for the line is from the 1983 movie Scarface.
There are older sayings with similar meanings. H.P. Lovecraft in his 1927 horror novel The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward wrote the warning "Do not call up that which you cannot put down". Shakespeare's "Hamlet, written between 1599 and 1601, has the line "hoist by one's own petard" which warns of destruction by forces that the person has invoked.
Republicans should have remembered these warnings before the recent midterms. At this time there are a few races yet to be called. But there was no red wave. Democrats will keep control of the Senate. Republicans will likely take control of the House by a small margin.
With a few exceptions high profile Trump supported election denier Republicans lost. In Michigan, Republicans were shut out entirely. Michigan Democrats retained the offices of Governor, Secretary of State, and Attorney General, while taking the State House and State Senate.
It's historically the case that the party which holds the Presidency usually loses Congressional seats and the House or Senate during the midterm election. It SHOULD have been the case this year with record high inflation. Republicans certainly thought there was going to be a red wave. Typically, after the red wave didn't appear, Republican apparatchik Sean Hannity tried to claim that he didn't know of any conservatives who had predicted a red wave. New @PostVideo mashup:
How Fox News hyped a "red wave" for weeks leading up to the midterms pic.twitter.com/5DG4TPXp7j
Republicans have created a bubble in which they are the only "Real Americans" and they are the only voters who count. This bubble is built and maintained by Fox News.
Fox News assiduously works to feed the fears, obsessions, and hopes of its largely white conservative viewership. Trump feeds off of this and injects his own lies and resentments into the environment.
Trump, Fox News, Breitbart, talk radio, and other loony conservative pundits paint a false picture of reality. They talked about high gas prices and inflation as if that alone would be enough to turn voters against Democrats. And in a normal election cycle if the Republican party were less deranged perhaps it would be.
But the Republican Party ran candidates who supported or least didn't condemn the January 6 attempted coup. The Republican Party ran candidates who said the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
So when Republicans lose many of them don't look at their positions or their campaign tactics. No. They go straight to conspiracy theories that contend that there were too many Black people voting, too many poor people voting, too many of THEM voting. You know, people who aren't "Real Americans".
Looking at the other side Beto O'Rourke and Stacey Abrams each lost their respective races. Again. Whatever political talents they may have do not translate into winning statewide elections in Texas or Georgia. Time for them to do something else.
Sometimes voters just aren't that into you. The candidate can't get too far out in front of his or her voters, at least not until the candidate has been elected. I think that both of them suffered from high national media profiles that did not reflect their relative lack of accomplishments in their states.
They also made some silly unforced errors. O'Rourke's previous statement telling people in Texas that of course he intended to take away their guns and Abrams' announcement that Georgia was the worst state to live in were declarations that did not resonate with many likely voters in those states.
