Politics are stressful right now, and there are much better ways for conservatives to spend

their days than to see what mood Joe Manchin might be in.

I'm Greg Carumbus, join Jim Garrity of National Review and me each weekday for the 3-Martini

Lunch Podcast, and you'll get the day's good, bad, and crazy news with some laughs on the side.

Subscribe at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hello and welcome to the Byron York Show, the No Chip Chat Podcast.

We'd like to get right into it, and what we're going to get into today is

something that you've probably been thinking of all week, which is assessing blame.

That's what you do after the Republican Party's close call. A lot of Republicans,

a lot of conservatives are pointing fingers at each other. That's to be expected.

Party had a lackluster performance in the midterms, and given all the advantages

the Republican Party had, widespread economic anxiety, a huge majority of Americans

believing that the country is on the wrong track and a deeply unpopular Democratic president.

But all those together, Republicans should have done better.

That's true, but it's also true before we get into this. It's also true that even with all the

complaining, the Republican Party might still take over both houses of Congress. As we speak,

most projections say Republicans have won 211 seats in the House, to the Democrats 194.

That means the Republican Party needs just seven more seats to win control of the House,

while Democrats need 24. Okay, we'll see what happens, but the fact is,

Republicans seem headed toward control of the House. Now, it's a lot smaller margin than many

had projected. But it will mean that President Joe Biden's legislative agenda, we've talked about

this before, for the second half of his term is dead dead dead. That is a significant change,

...