First and foremost, between the 2022 elections and the next presidential election in 2024, Republicans will be busy holding hearings, multiple hearings, on the Criminal of the Century, Hunter Biden.

Hunter just happens to be Joe Biden’s errant son. The hearings will not address inflation or jobs, but they will be center stage until the 2024 elections.

Then The Wall will move back to center stage in a “bring back the oldies” reminder that elected Republicans still answer to Donald Trump.

Building more wall will not help reduce Chinese tariffs that raise prices on many consumer goods and it will not actually increase border security, but it will please the ex-president in Mar-a -Lago.

Given that the U.S. Supreme Court appears likely to end Roe v. Wade and its protection, thereby forcing women to give birth against their will, you can expect Republicans in Congress to do nothing.

Having won their long-fought battle to deny freedom to females, there will be little left to do about abortion. The court decision will adversely affect younger women and women in poverty, or more broadly, every woman who will be denied control over her body.

Elected Republican lawmakers will not pass a law to protect the lost civil rights of women.

Republicans would logically move quickly in their plans to care for the new baby boom when abortion ends and even the morning after pill becomes targeted.

But look for the opposite; no additional funding for adoptions, no federal funding for foster care; no expansion of Medicaid in states that have turned that benefit down previously and no educational support for these newborn citizens.

Of course, Republicans will review their opposition to paid family leave, their objection to Medicare gaining competitive pricing over prescriptions and their failure to expand senior care and disability costs.

They will doubtlessly consider all these needs and decide such policies are giveaways to people who will not work. These popular topics with all voters will be termed “socialist” as a way of discarding their merit.

It is reasonable to expect that Republicans will seek more “secure” elections at a federal level to end the rampant Democratic voters who vote by absentee ballot.

While there has never been significant evidence of any voter fraud in federal or state elections, Republicans have worked hard to secure the concept that minority and younger voters are just clogging up the system with their votes.

So expect more restrictions and claims of fraud where Republicans lose elections. None of this will help ensure that wages rise to keep up with inflation, but it makes perfect sense to Republican politics.

Actually, Republicans have no ideas to stem inflation or to raise wages or to reduce the obscene costs of pharmaceutical products. Instead, they tell us we need to worry about Critical Race Theory, about parents who are “grooming” their kids and Democrats who are destroying the nation with their “socialist” popular policies.

Finally, should Republicans win the House and the Senate in 2022, look for the election of 2024 to be the renomination of Donald Trump and the return to the good old MAGA days with the Big Lie declared officially to be the truth in a new world where lies are just an alternative truth.

It will be a world already birthed when a Supreme Court nominee can affirm that Roe is settled law and then, when seated, claim that settled law can be unsettled at any time.

Every vote will count in 2022. After that, good luck to us all.

Jim Crawford is a retired educator and political enthusiast living here in the Tri-State.