The first force is the growing lack of voter confidence in our election system. Second, is the looming presence of Donald J. Trump, a one-term, twice-impeached human lightning rod who is still the de facto leader of the Republican Party. No former president in history has ever injected himself into the midterms to this degree, and certainly not in the primary process.

Curious about Matt Schlapp’s take on these two forces, I reached out to the high-profile chairman of the American Conservative Union. An ardent Trump supporter, Schlapp is one of the nation’s most influential non-office-holding Republicans and, as host of CPAC, he leads a mighty MAGA army.

It's clear that he, like the titular head of that army, has not really accepted the 2020 voting results.

“Having a big question mark over a presidential election is bad for democracy,” Schlapp said. “We should know who won. And one of the ways we will know is if we all follow the same rules. We have to get back to voting the way we did in 2016. Will the Democrats try to pull the same shenanigans next year? I do know this: The American people are outraged over the Democratic agenda, and if we vote fairly, they are going to get shellacked.

”There is a history of new presidents getting “shellacked” in their first midterm election, with their party losing control of the House, Senate, or both. In 2010, President Obama used “shellacking” to describe his first, monumental midterm defeat when Republicans won control of the House with a net gain of 63 seats — a number not achieved since 1948. Surely, then-Vice President Joe Biden remembers that repudiation.

Read the full article at RealClearPolitics.com.