Squirrel

There will be lots of policy wonks giving you analysis in the coming days, and they will all have good points. But let me focus on some less policy-driven - but very real - reasons I think Republicans lost so handily last night. 1. People are tired. After working so hard for a seemingly impossible win in 2024, another (perhaps bigger and uglier) fight erupted in 2025 after Charlie was murdered that fractured the right, demoralized the base, and made people want to disentangle themselves from politics altogether. 2. Bad Republican candidates. For example, as much as Talarico makes the normal person’s skin crawl, Paxton, to many people, is worse. They see an uneasy look, an off-putting vibe, a storied past, and what appears to be apathy. Even people who loathe Talarico couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Paxton. 3. Trump doesn’t have his aura right now. Can’t even blame the media for this one. He comes across as dismissive of economic concerns. His Truth Social is pettier than ever. He’s making weird comments about people’s a**es (not kidding), making him come across as unserious when voters are hurting. This can be fine if things are getting done. But when they’re not, it’s just annoying. 4. The loss of Charlie. We may never know the extent of his unifying power and activism, but I think we understand it more now. His connection the White House, his finger on the pulse of conservative/independent concerns, his ability to bolster enthusiasm, his effectiveness in getting out the vote, especially among young men… All of that is now missing and sorely missed. There’s a lot more, of course. The war costing more than anyone wanted. Prices that are crushing the average family. Republican-approved immigration, causing huge demographic and cultural shifts, which are inherently destabilizing and demoralizing. Failure of congress to pass the SAVE Act and other important legislation. Democrats’ demure-but-deadly strategy to keep most of their candidates out of the headlines while doggedly getting out the vote. Republicans have a lot to learn in a short amount of time. Will we? All this to say… there’s reason to be concerned, yes, but not to be discouraged. God’s eternal plan of redemption is always going off without a hitch. He’s never taken aback. He never has anxiety. He’s never wondering what the outcomes will be. He’s in control. We trust in His total sovereignty while also recommitting ourselves in seeking the welfare of the city in which He has providentially placed us (Jeremiah 29:7). We’ve got work to do!

My analysis is basically as follows: 1) The Iran war obviously impacted Trump’s base. Due to opposition to forever wars and also how it raised gas prices. Now, bear with me on this, but I personally find part of this to be frustrating because (while I also oppose forever wars and detest high gas prices) I think a portion of Trump’s base conflated the military operation in Iran with the forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I think that comparison is unfair, based on the reality of what the military operation in Iran is so far, and also based on Trump’s stated goal that I think most people agree with, that Iran shouldn’t have a nuclear weapon because that poses a direct threat to America. And also based on Trump's history of opposing forever wars. But regardless of whether I think that conflation is unfair, the reality is Iran did make a difference in the election. Look at that graph that Mollie Hemingway posted about Trump’s approval rating as it correlates to gas prices. Those two numbers track together. So I don’t know if necessarily the war itself was a mistake, I can’t say that honestly, because you and I don’t have access to the intel that answers the million dollar question, was Iran really imminently about to acquire a nuke? Or, was it the way that Trump communicated that it was going to happen quickly and then when it wasn’t over as quickly as promised, he lost people's trust… Regardless, this is obviously going to be the narrative we hear about most from now until 2028. Worth noting too, that Trump’s base would’ve given Trump more leeway on the Iran war & even the domstic implications if they felt trust… If Trump had pounded justice as soon as he took office. We wanted perp walks and jumpsuits. Fauci, Brennan, all of them. But Pam Bondi didn’t do that, basically zero of the Democrats who weaponized govt under Biden against YOU have been held accountable, and people feel that viscerally, they feel disillusioned because they voted for justice. So they were very quick to feel “oh same old same old” when Trump launched the war in Iran, versus trusting him to execute it differently than the GOP establishment of the past. 2) BUT I think a critical point that has been ignored is the question, not just how did the GOP or Trump disappoint his base but HOW do we have a nation where more than half the people vote for Talarico and El Sayed? Where half the people cheered for the murder of Charlie Kirk? The Democrat party has been overtaken by a very sophisticated and motivated apparatus that is committed to their ideology and knows how to win strategically. I’m talking about the DSA. This is not an RNC v DNC world anymore. And not only does the left have the political apparatus to produce such radical candidates and then run effective targeted campaigns for them, we have ceded control of all the institutions in our country to leftists who use the institutions to indoctrinate young people to vote for those radical candidates. This is a problem nobody on the right wants to address! Because colleges and universities are a status symbol and what would happen to the economy if Trump cut off federal funding to schools that brainwash our youth, etc etc. But this is a HUGE part of the problem. The electoral strategy, the campaign tactics, the DSA takeover of the Dem party wouldn’t be effective if our institutions weren’t producing the voters to support it. So what are we gonna do about that? Conservative MUST confront this if we ever want to win again. 3) Candidate quality also matters, obviously. Like Darline Graham, Paxton, and Vivek? C’mon are we even trying to win. 4) Whitepill: the good news is Democrats are so diabolically crazy that they’ll spend the next two years abusing their power so badly that voters will turn on them in 2028 unless Republicans are idiots again. May God have mercy on our nation.

National GOP operative tells me: "People will try to overcomplicate this, but its really simple: This is 100% because of Iran. It's all in the data and has been since a week after the war started. The economic anxiety is directly correlated with the war. We got our asses kicked because of it."