If you’d asked me even six months ago, I would have told you that the Republicans were the party of shooting themselves in the foot.

That, even when given great advantages by the American voting public — simultaneous majority control of the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as the presidency — their leaders managed to squander those and disappoint their most ardent supporters.

That, when given the power to deliver on key promises made to their constituents such as balancing the budget or reducing waste of taxpayer money, the GOP too often devolves into power struggles, indecision, conflicts of interest and, sometimes, corruption.

But as we move into the final days before the 2018 midterm elections, the Democrat Party is giving Republican tone-deafness and incompetence a very public run for the money — and then some.

Here are 10 big-ticket causes that have put Democrats largely on the wrong side of most Americans ahead of the midterm elections:

Jamal Khashoggi and his hero Osama bin Laden

In 2014, Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post’s Tehran Bureau Chief, was arrested and spent two years in prison.

Iran kept him in one of its worst prisons, he slept on a damp concrete floor, was denied medical treatment, experienced hallucinations due to sleep deprivation and was abused by his captors. His wife was told that her legs would be cut off and her husband would be thrown off a cliff if she didn’t confess.

While Jamal Khashoggi has often been misidentified as a Washington Post journalist, all he did for the radical leftist paper owned by Amazon’s CEO is write editorials promoting the Muslim Brotherhood agenda.

The Muslim Brotherhood leader and former Bin Laden pal was never a journalist. The closest he came to it was acting as a terrorist propagandist in Afghanistan, glamorizing Osama bin Laden.

Why then is the WaPo stoking a frenzy of Khashoggimania?  Because it and all the liberal media are on the side of Islamists and not America.

Italy’s hero – Vice-Premier Matteo Salvini

Do not assume that Italy’s insurgent coalition will capitulate to EU demands if risk spreads on Italian debt blow through the fatal line of 400 basis points.

The European Commission’s strategy of ‘controlled escalation’ relies on tacit collusion with bond vigilantes and hedge funds to ratchet up the pressure. The method is to squeeze the capital buffers of Italian banks and ultimately to set off a deposit run, hoping that such financial vandalism does not set off contagion to Portugal, Spain, and Greece.

This is a dangerous game to play unless you can be sure that the Lega-Five Star alliance will back down rather than resort to radical measures in self-defence. The obvious risk is that Italy’s budget fight with Brussels will cause a pan-European financial crisis before either side blinks.

“Brussels can keep sending its silly letters until Christmas. Our budget is not going to change. The gentlemen speculators will just have to get used to it, because we will not retreat,” says Lega strongman, Matteo Salvini, relishing a political knife-fight with the EU all the way to the European elections next May.

It’s a fight we should want Salvini to win.

Bolton with Putin in the Kremlin

With yesterday’s announcement (10/23) by U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton that the United States is terminating Ronald Reagan’s landmark 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, much analysis has focused on the impact of that decision on U.S.-Russia and U.S.-China relations.

Relatively little, however, has been said about how the INF treaty termination could impact Russia-China relations, especially in the military sphere.

Indeed, there is reason to assume that one of John Bolton’s strategic calculi in his push for a unilateral U.S. treaty withdrawal is its detrimental impact on burgeoning China-Russia military relations.

Bolton’s Snooker is a geopolitical tour de force two-fer.  Here’s how it works.

He’s winning and the Dems better get used to it

The media hates him, Hollywood hates him but every hysterical piece of abuse they throw at him just makes Trump stronger and now the Democrats are heading for a midterms disaster. It all boils down to one thing:

President Trump is winning.

There is simply no other way to fairly interpret the fact that he’s just hit a new high in his approval rating.

Even better for Trump, he’s officially more popular than his predecessor Barack Obama was at the exact same stage of his first tenure as President.

According to the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, Trump is now at 47% approval, compared to Obama’s 45% two weeks before the midterm elections in 2010.

Given all the fire, brimstone and perpetual outrage about Trump since he won the White House, this is a truly remarkable state of affairs.

Of course, America’s liberals will respond to the shock poll in the way they respond to all things Trump - with fury, incredulity and by sticking their collective heads in the sand.

Which is why, in two weeks time, he may deliver the biggest knockout punch of his presidency.

No more disguises – Democrats show what they truly are

If the New Democrat Party was smart, it would do what the old Democrat Party did long ago:

Always sound centrist if not conservative in the last weeks of a campaign, get elected, then revert to form and pursue a left-wing agenda for a year or two—and then repeat the chameleon cycle every two to four years.

But although many Democrats in Trump states still dance the old bipartisan two-step, lots of blinkered progressive wolves don’t even bother to put on the sheep’s clothing.

Evidently, the new progressive and radical Democrat Party is far more honest—or perhaps far more hubristic—than in the past. So what now looks and sounds like a wolf is a wolf.

Democrats have learned nothing and forgotten nothing from 2016. Or rather, they still believe it is 2008 all over again, with a host of wannabe Obamas on the 2020 horizon, all appealing to identity politics, Maenad feminism, and neo-socialism.

Thanks to four wolf-made disasters, they are in for a rude shock two weeks from today (10/23).