From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Free Expression with Jerry Baker.

Hello and welcome to Free Expression with me, Jerry Baker from the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

Thanks for joining us. If you're not already a subscriber, please be sure to subscribe at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And please leave us a nice review. This week,

what happened to my red wave? We are still at this point, Wednesday lunchtime, digesting the

results of the midterm elections in which voting concluded on Tuesday. Now, since it's routine in America

that it takes weeks to determine the outcome of elections, we can't say anything definitive, but it certainly looks so far like that much anticipated Republican victory didn't

materialize. The party looks on course at this point for a very small majority in the House of

Representatives, but much less than was generally forecast by pollsters and pundits. And the Senate is

still unpredictable.

The GOP could yet seize control of the upper chamber. That depends on the outcome of a few races

and now what we know is will be a runoff election in Georgia. But so far, at least, we know

it's lost the only race to have flipped that was in Pennsylvania. There was one bright red

shining beacon for Republicans in the shape of

Ronda Santos, who smashed all records in Florida, winning re-election as governor by the widest margin

in the state's history, almost 20 points. So what does it all mean for our politics, for the

Republican Party in particular, for Donald Trump, Ronda Santis, and indeed, of course, for the future

of conservatism.

Well, I'm delighted to say my guest this week is Matthew Contenetti, who's as well-placed as anyone to answer those questions. Matt's a conservative journalist, author and commentator, a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute. He previously edited the Washington Free Beacon, and before that, wrote for the weekly standard and has written for many other publications, too. the author of several books including most recently the rights a hundred year war for american

conservatism matt contonetti joins me now matt thanks very much indeed for being here well thank you

for having me jerry it's a pleasure so matt funny thing happened on the way to the red tsunami

as i say we're still digesting results,

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