There are a lot of theories floating around about what happened during the off-year elections that just took place in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Virginia, and other states. I saw one genius on Twitter who actually blamed Donald Trump for the poor performances of Republicans.

There are lots of fraud accusations being hurled at Pennsylvania, which may or may not be accurate. They probably are accurate. But how do you account for a Republican candidate losing Kentucky of all places, or Ohio voting to enshrine abortion in their state constitution, or Republicans losing control of the entire legislature in Virginia?

Those things are the fault of elected Republicans who are too afraid to do what their own voters are demanding.

Donald Trump is not driving down voter turnout. That’s just one of the usual voodoo word-spells from elections “experts.” Look at how Trump drove voter turnout in 2016 and then in 2020. He draws more people to the polls than any other candidate in history. He kept his promises during his first term, and he was rewarded with an even bigger turnout in 2020. People who never vote at all show up when Trump is on the ballot. In years when Trump is not on the ballot, what happens? Turnout drops by a significant amount. So, what’s happening here?

Elected Republicans and the RNC and the GOP “establishment” are untrustworthy and many of us now feel a visceral hatred toward them (which they earned). Look at the governor’s race in Kentucky, for example.

Daniel Cameron was a fairly popular Republican Attorney General and he ran against incumbent Democrat Governor Andy Beshear. He was endorsed by President Trump. He got lots of favorable coverage from Fox News. Republicans in Kentucky slaughtered down-ballot races at the local level, but the incumbent Democrat Beshear managed to come out with a victory by about 65,000 votes over Cameron.

A lot of people are claiming that voting machines stole the election. Want to hear a better theory?

Daniel Cameron was a terrible candidate. Despite all the fawning coverage on Fox News, the voters in Kentucky know who this guy really is. He’s Mitch McConnell’s protégé. McConnell, obviously, is not only the most unpopular person in national office right now (his approval rating is -41). He might be one of the most unpopular politicians in American history.

Imagine being a Kentucky voter, even a staunch Trump supporter, and Mitch McConnell’s protégé is the option that you have in the governor’s race. “Gee, he has all the same unpopular policies as Mitch McConnell, but he’s 100 years younger? I should vote to entrench that guy in Kentucky politics for the rest of my life!”

Voters said no. They stayed home, or many simply chose not to hold their nose and vote for an establishment RINO. Even President Trump’s endorsement isn’t enough to carry a terrible candidate across the finish line. Remember Dr. Oz in the Pennsylvania Senate race last year? He was such an out-of-touch, soft and wimpy rich guy that all the coal workers in PA decided to stay home and allowed Democrats to elect a literal retard who could only speak in grunts or by pointing at pictures.

If Trump had been on the ballot last year or this year, maybe—just maybe—his popularity would have been enough to help guys like Oz or Cameron win. Without Trump on the ballot, a lot of people stay home.

It’s not like Republicans in Congress or the people at the RNC have learned anything from President Trump. Somewhere around 80% or more among Republican voters believe that the 2020 election was stolen. Personally, I have never spoken to a Republican voter in the past three years who believes that fraud did not determine the outcome of that race. What has the Republican Congress done to remedy that situation in three years?

There hasn’t been one piece of legislation to ban voting machines in federal elections. There hasn’t been one single bill proposed to investigate the 2020 election. There hasn’t been a bill offered to overturn the results of the election due to fraud. Even if those bills would not pass, and they would not be signed into law by Joe Biden if they did pass, it would still tell the voters, “We hear you and we care.”

Most of them are too weak to even say the words out loud: Joe Biden is illegitimate, and the 2020 election was stolen. They’re probably not even going to end up impeaching Biden, despite mountains of evidence that he took bribes in exchange for subverting American foreign policy on behalf of enemy nations.

If the Republican Party wants the voters to turn out for them, they’re going to have to start doing something to earn our trust. More of the same ain’t cutting it.