By Jeffrey A. Rendall
Shaping the way Americans think about political issues will turn the tide for Republicans
How can Republicans move the needle in this year’s pre-2026 fall election campaign?
They can start with uniting and getting into the heads of voters and steering thoughts on how “ordinary” folks think about issues. In doing so, Republicans shouldn’t worry about trying to influence or convince the reactionary leftist Facebook liberal/leftist crowd. They’re beyond hope. I haven’t logged-on to my Facebook page in years, but I do “lurk” to see what my “friends” say about current events – and it’s astonishing to witness how unbalanced some of them have become.
Conservatives, on the other hand, generally hold their views closer to the vest. The conservatives who do contribute usually post insightful – or funny – things that add to the narrative. It’s much preferred to the typical liberal’s posts, which almost always come along with deceptive imagery, condescending invectives and a one-way lecture about what Jesus and the Bible teaches/taught. “It’s a moral issue” one woman recently wrote.
I’ve never thought of myself as not moral. Not perfect, certainly, but moral?
In this sense, it’s good to realize, with everything that’s gone on in recent years, Democrats aren’t making headway in persuading the American populace that their answers are better. The Democrat clown show we view on the national scene is looked upon with the same contempt liberty-lovers give it.
How so? In a newsletter post titled, “Voters Don’t Like Democrats Either”, the Committee to Unleash Prosperity recently pointed out:
“[W]e reported on how unpopular Republicans are today. But Democrats are in the doghouse too. The New York Times just published a roundup of surveys and elite opinions about the state of the Democratic Party.
“The conclusion from their 21-state research project: ‘Working-class voters see Democrats as ‘woke, weak and out of touch’ and six in 10 have a negative view of the party,’ reported Politico on the project.
“Meanwhile, the centrist Democratic WelcomePAC has tabulated the words contained in Democratic Party platforms from 2012 through 2024. The frequency of the word ‘hate’ increased by 1,323 percent; ‘white/Black/Latino/Latina’ increased by 1,137 percent; ‘L.G.B.T./L.G.B.T.Q.I.+’ increased by 1,044 percent; and ‘equity’ increased by 766 percent. During the same period, usage of ‘father/fathers’ fell 100 percent; ‘crime/criminal’ fell by 30 percent; ‘responsibility’ fell by 83 percent; ‘middle class’ fell by 79 percent; and ‘veteran’ fell by 31 percent.”
It turns out that Americans aren’t the only ones who think Democrats are soft and woke. Surprisingly, so do some Europeans:
If you’ve sometimes wondered whether you’re the only one who’d noticed the gradual decline in Democrat common sense language usage, thankfully, you’re not alone. It’s not reflected in the cited statistics, but how many times have Democrats whined about “insurrection” in their day-to-day vernacular?
Not simply about the January 6, 2021 protest, either. How about the disgusting behavior of the anti-ICE miscreant army in Minneapolis and other places recently? One person’s insurrection is another’s defenders of human liberty.
But the absence or prevalence of certain words in Democrats’ vocabularies demonstrates the urgent need for Republicans to learn to control the narrative and “win” the discussions taking place between persuadable citizens in the states and districts that are up for grabs in 2026 and beyond. President Donald J. Trump believes, to his core, that he’d “win everywhere”, but experience taught us that this just wasn’t true.
How so? New York City elected an avowed socialist in last year’s mayoral balloting. It demonstrated that there just aren’t enough folks there that care about reality rather than pipedream-type blabbering about “affordability” and collectivism. The GOP powers-that-be shouldn’t waste time and resources cutting vote margins in hopeless environs.
They know it. But there is still something that can be done to perform in more get-able places.
The main political battle essentially now revolves around maneuvering the issue narratives. Republicans lost control of the ICE narrative in Minnesota when officers, no matter how justified, killed two protesters. Leftists and the always sympathetic (to “activist” kooks) establishment media took the entirety of federal law enforcement to task for these highly defensible altercations, primarily because whenever the bulk of the American people see a very public death, some automatically assume the police are at fault, since they’re the ones with badges and firearms.
Yes, Alex Pretti had a gun. But it might as well have been invisible as far as the public narrative was concerned. It’d didn’t matter. By then, the reactionaries spotted the body and that was it.
President Trump wisely noticed that the narrative was spinning out of control and dispatched Tom Homan to quiet the situation down, while individually speaking with Minnesota’s Democrat rulers – and then afterwards describing the conversations as… “good”. This is a solid example of controlling the narrative.
The protesters are still out in force, but the situation has calmed in terms of media hysteria. Maybe Americans just got tired of the phony outrage from the left. Or maybe the federal tactics changed. Whatever it was, it worked.
Americans needed to know that the left’s hissy fit over ICE was the latest iteration of “Defund the police” that crops up every time there’s an incident and video pictures involved which can be employed to agitate the leftist crows and get them squawking about “dictatorship” and “police brutality”. This is the left’s persistent narrative. It’s predictable because it repeats endlessly.
Republicans can’t sway what the media does or Democrats say. It’s all the same. But they can control, at least partially, what the story narrative would be.
Other instances where Republicans must shape the public narrative include the recent push to enact stringent citizenship and Voter ID requirements for all future elections (SAVE America Act). Democrats responded with the usual false retorts about “suppression” and “racism” and “xenophobia” over immigrants and newcomers, legal or otherwise. Yet surveys show Americans of all racial and ethnic categories overwhelmingly support ensuring elections are limited to one person, one vote.
Republicans must direct the narrative on these topics. How to do it? President Trump has tried, but Trump has been speaking out about safe elections since 2020 and then there was the J6 protest, etc… He can’t do it alone.
More examples? Joining a long list of outrages, the Virginia legislature has begun using its majority power to enact stringent gun control measures in addition to proposed tax increases and “climate change” mitigation boondoggle-type cooperatives. Limiting gun sales won’t make an iota’s difference in public safety, but the gun grabbers will be happy as a hog in slop!
The narrative is already well-settled on guns. Republicans need to champion them and refute the left’s “safety” distortions. Common sense people will know the difference.
Abortion is yet another subject Republicans are hesitant to touch, with good reason, but the Democrats’ extreme positions must be highlighted to help shape the narrative. The Pro-Life cause won a major victory when the Supreme Court (in the Dobbs decision) tossed out Roe v. Wade, but Democrats have since abandoned their “Safe, Legal and Rare” limiting rhetoric to favor unlimited abortion, including the politically unpopular partial-birth procedure.
Polls show a preponderance of Americans favor abortion being legal, but a sizeable majority also believes access should be restricted to certain circumstances and time limitations. Where’s the public discussion of the topic? Where’s the narrative Republicans are using?
Other subjects where the GOP narrative needs a makeover: Climate Change and the Green New Deal. How hard are Republicans working to get the facts out about what’s happening with developed countries and their respective energy crises? Republicans need more than having President Trump call the Democrats’ climate fixation a “hoax” and moving on from there.
Many anti-ICE protesters are the same Antifa-like nuts bloviating about the destruction of the planet. What year was the “end” supposed to take place, anyway? Did everyone enjoy the freezing winter? How about the record rainfall in California?
How about Obamacare and its role in skyrocketing healthcare costs? President Trump has achieved great things in lowering popular prescription drug prices and the out-of-touch Democrats are still obsessing over racism and the LGBTQIA+++ agenda and ensuring that kids can sign-off on self-mutilation. They rest on Obamacare, but it’s a disaster.
The list goes on and on. Republicans must devise a means to control the issue narrative, and they’d better agree on it before it’s too late. All of these concerns must be ancillary to the GOP’s economic message, since household money matters are still the number one topic, with immigration also ranking up there.
There’s too much at stake for Republicans to fail this year; they’d best learn to tell a good story and leave the rest for the People to decide.
Jeff Rendall is editor and publisher of GolfintheUSA.com and has written about golf and politics for over a quarter of a century. A non-practicing attorney from California, he moved to the east coast three decades ago to pursue and combine his interests in all things American history and culture. Jeff has worked as an intern on Capitol Hill and in various capacities in grassroots organizing and conservative organizations and publications, including a nearly two-decade stint at ConservativeHQ.com. Column republishing or other inquiries: Rendall@msn.com .