Right now I'm looking at right-wing media and I suspect I'm watching a preview of the 2018 Republican midterm campaign. You and I realize that Vice President Pence's walkout at yesterday's Colts-49ers game was a planned publicity stunt, and a costly one at that -- he flew Air Force 2 from Las Vegas to Indianapolis and then flew back to L.A. -- but in right-wing media, Pence's walkout is a big hit, as is Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones's stance against national anthem protests. Here are the front pages of FoxNews.com, Fox News Insider, Breitbart, and Gateway Pundit right now:
And at Fox Nation, there's this:
I've actually been expecting the right to pay more attention than it has to the Christopher Columbus issue. The statue of Columbus is Manhattan's Columbus Circle is now under 24-hour guard, Mayor Bill de Blasio has appointed a commission on this and other controversial monuments, and many locales around America have changed Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples' Day. This seems like the reddest of red meat for angry right-wingers, but it's not a top-tier issue yet. Is that because Italians aren't a big voting bloc in much of red America? Is it because President Trump hasn't noticed the trend (or can't spell "indigenous")? But Fox Nation and the New York Post are on it, and I can't believe the rest of the right won't follow suit eventually.
Republicans will want to make the 2018 midterms about anything other than the performance of the president and the GOP Congress. They're usually very good at hijacking the news cycle in election seasons -- see the "Ground Zero mosque" in 2010 and "Obama will infect America with Ebola" in 2014. Angry non-Republican voters will make it hard for the GOP to set the terms in 2018. But Republicans will try. These are autumn issues. They could be issues a year from now.
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