I have received emails asking me not to publish my brother Kevin’s annual column last year. And I got emails asking me to publish Kevin’s column. I prefer to let people know what Republicans like Kevin are thinking. So here it is:

I’ll start with a personal note, a quick apology for missing the Thanksgiving column.

I was recovering from a heavyweight fight with Covid. Despite two vaccinations last spring, I fell very ill at the end of October, including the dreaded Covid fog, where you can’t formulate your thoughts – putting me on a par with a lot of politicians in DC

It took a full month, including physical therapy, to recover. Now I am back.

Republicans view the political scene these days with a mixture of glee and trepidation.

President Biden is underwater in the polls but Donald Trump is a potential problem. No one is sure of Trump’s intentions at this point.

There is no doubt that the Trump presidency ended on a bitter note. His allegations of a stolen election and his harassment of state officials to overturn the results likely cost Republicans the Senate.

David Perdue led the first round of Georgia’s Senate elections by about 88,000 votes, but lost the second round in part because of the confusion Trump was causing in the state. The rally at the mall and the subsequent attack on the Capitol are also on Trump’s tab.

That day was horrible to watch because protecting the Capitol was our family affair. My father was in charge of security in the United States Senate. He got summer jobs for me and my four siblings on Capitol Hill when we were teenagers.

I worked for four years in the Senate and the House, folding legislators’ bulletins. One of the perks was access to the dining room, where I ate side by side with members of Congress and Senators.

I hope Trump doesn’t show up. He can do a lot more for the party as a lawyer than as a candidate. Like it or not, some of its policies were working: deals between Arab countries and Israel, Iran on its heels, China muted, the border fence on the rise, low unemployment, a strong economy and most importantly. , low energy prices and higher wages. .

Biden swept the presidency on a wave of hope, a friendly press and a much hated opponent. He had presented himself as a moderate, a creature of the Senate and a unifier, promising a return to normalcy.

Donald Trump’s failed efforts to overthrow the election and the ill-advised rally that ended in an attack on Capitol Hill further increased Biden’s position.

Once you became president, everything changed. As one of the residents of Santa Mira, the fictional town in Don Siegel’s 1956 masterpiece “Invasion of the Body Thieves,” Biden looked the same, but his actions revealed a startling transformation.

Moderate Joe Biden was gone. The sweeping changes he proposed in the first few months were more like Bernie Sanders. Many of them turned on him, severely damaging his initial support.

The White House strategy should have been simple. Leave the policies that work on their own and take the credit for it like yours (an old Bill Clinton thing). Instead, Biden (or his managers) seemed determined to take more drastic action.

In the early hours, he canceled the Keystone XL pipeline and the many jobs it would bring. He quickly re-committed to the Paris climate deal and seemed too eager to try to revive the failed Iran nuclear deal.

Biden has proposed billions of dollars in spending on new social programs promising to surpass the New Deal and the Great Society and move the country further into a great government dependent state. (Kudos to Joe Manchin for putting country ahead of party, and shame on Democrats for not knowing the difference.)

The president may have chosen his alliance with the far left badly. The American people are more and more tired of the role of government in their lives. They are fed up with containments and masks for the Covid. They are fed up with government at all levels interfering in our schools and telling us what our children are being taught. And they are fed up with government programs that have hampered our country and increased our massive debt.

Democrats also have messaging issues. Nancy Pelosi’s unfortunate position that members of Congress should be able to continue to own individual stocks fits the image the party is trying to project and is at odds with the forces that pushed the country to elect Trump. (And many Republicans weren’t better on that question.)

To say that members of Congress should be able to trade or own individual stocks because the United States is a “free market economy” ignores the fact that all kinds of lower-level employees of the federal bureaucracy are giving up their right to buy. individual actions in certain companies when they occupy various jobs due to the emergence of conflicts of interest.

The president says he’s running again. But he would be 86 years old after a second term. Kamala Harris had a horrible first year as Vice President. And Democrats don’t have a bench, unless they include Beto, Bernie, Secretary Pete, Stacey, de Blasio and Gavin.

The day the Capitol was attacked, I longed for the days when things were much more collegial, and the two sides mingled and laughed together. Now we are even further apart.

Maybe if we’re trying to find common ground, collegiality shouldn’t be a relic of the past. It doesn’t hurt to think about it as we ring in a New Year.