2026: The Great Republican Opportunity
President Donald J. Trump and the Republicans have an enormous opportunity in 2026.
President Donald J. Trump and the Republicans have an enormous opportunity in 2026.
If they focus on three major themes to dramatically fix large areas of government, they can attract a majority comparable to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Democrat majorities in 1932 and 1934.
Those three themes are transparency, work, and honesty.
These three ideas directly affect the lives of the American people and attract massive majorities. Republicans can use them to set up a vivid contrast in the impact the two parties have on the lives of everyday Americans. The right policy focus could lead to three huge choices, each one to the advantage of the Republicans.
Imagine a choice between the GOP effort to let you know the price and quality of health care so you can make choices that fit your needs and the Democrats’ focus on propping up obsolete, inefficient, and often fraud-riddled government health care bureaucracies.
Imagine a Republican Party that has rallied around former President Ronald Reagan’s principle that the best social program is a job. An in-depth Republican effort to eliminate barriers to work, make it more desirable, and put work at the heart of building healthy neighborhoods and communities would overwhelm a Democratic program that punishes work, ridicules entry-level jobs, and creates barriers to job creation.
Imagine a choice between a Republican Party dedicated to cleaning up fraud and corruption and stopping people from stealing your money or a Democratic Party whose bureaucracies and union allies oppose virtually every effort to reform the system – and are often the sources of the corruption and fraud. (Note the multibillion dollar Minneapolis fraud, the Government Accounting Office projection of $4 trillion-plus in theft over the next decade, and the scale of corruption in Baltimore City Schools outlined in “Failure Factory.”)
Following President Abraham Lincoln’s rule that “with public sentiment nothing can fail, without public sentiment nothing can succeed,” these three major choices command huge majorities of support from the American people.
According to America’s New Majority Project polling, 85 percent of Americans favor transparency in cost and quality for health care.
In other America’s New Majority Project surveys, by 81 percent to 12 percent, Americans want hiring to be focused on merit rather than diversity. Work requirements for getting Medicaid attracts 78 percent support (with 70 percent support from people who were on welfare in the last 12 months). In fact, support for work is so strong that 68 percent said, “that individuals who can work but choose not to while receiving taxpayer-funded safety net benefits are committing fraud.”
Finally, Scott Rasmussen found that 84 percent of Americans say fraud is a serious problem in state government (this is a pre-Minneapolis scandal survey). Even before all the attention was paid to the Minneapolis scandal (which by some accounts has grown to $9 billion or more) Rasmussen reported that 69 percent of Americans believe there is a lot of corruption in government while only 6 percent believe there is little or no corruption.
If you are designing a campaign to arouse and attract Americans and consolidate support into a stable governing majority, just consider these reinforcing majorities: 85 percent for health care transparency; 81 percent for merit-based work; 78 percent for work requirements for Medicaid; and 84 percent for replacing corruption with honesty.
If Republican incumbents and candidates – and their respective staffs and campaigns – could learn to master, focus on, and endlessly repeat these reforms, they could build majorities on a shocking scale. It could become an historic event that would be studied for two or three generations.
Daily events will divert time and effort away from these reforms. The propaganda media will do everything it can to avoid covering them. The Democrats and their activist allies will do everything they can to campaign on other topics and distract from this potential 80 percent-plus Republican majority.
President Reagan was faced with the challenge of getting his message through despite intense media opposition during the in 1979-1980 campaign. In 1993 and 1994, House Republicans were faced with media hostility and ridicule as we focused on the core values in the Contract with America. When then-candidate Trump came down the escalator on June 16, 2015, the media refused to popularize the MAGA movement or accept the focus he wanted to put on immigration and the border.
In all three cases, discipline, focus, and a willingness to repeatedly drive the key points home allowed these Republican campaigns to succeed despite media hostility, Democrat-led counter efforts, and all the intervening events that could have blurred or distracted voters from the big choices on offer.
If 2026 is a big choice election for the 80 percent-plus majority I have outlined, then Republicans could win on a scale no one can imagine today.
I lived through this process of creating choices, driving them home, and achieving previously unbelievable outcomes in 1972,1980, 1988, 1994, and 2016.
Campaigns matter. Voter education and outreach matter. Communication matters.
As Joseph Neapolitan warned, “you should never underestimate the intelligence of the American people nor overestimate the amount of information they have.”
The House and Senate should build hearings and legislation around these three themes.
President Trump should direct the key elements of his administration to focus on turning these three themes into reality – changing rules where they can and asking for legislation where it is needed. Every member of the administration should be trained to communicate these three reforms.
President Trump himself is incomparably the best communicator in the country. He should use every opportunity – including the State of the Union and the midsummer convention – to focus on and drive these three themes. With his leadership, the American people will rally to a new solution-oriented GOP that’s dedicated to improving their lives and meeting the challenges of a rapidly changing world.
If the American people understand these critical reforms, learn how sick our systems have become, and believe the Republicans will fix things, then November 2026 will be cataclysmic for Democrats – and amazing for Americans.
Transparency, work, and honesty will beat health bureaucracy, dependency, and corruption. Americans will vote for a better future.
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