Complacency is killing the GOP — and Democrats are seizing the moment

The party’s over.

I hate being the bearer of bad news, but despite our historic victory this past November, the right hasn’t won the battle for America’s soul — not even close.

Republicans think Americans voted for right-wing philosophy, when in reality, they voted for Donald J. Trump. The two are not the same.

I get it — it’s been fun to be a Republican since November. The problem is, we’ve been so busy running victory lap after victory lap that now the left might lap us.

A warning from Pennsylvania

Just look at what happened this Tuesday, when Democrat James Malone won Pennsylvania’s 36th Senate District by a razor-thin margin. Just for context, this is a district that President Donald Trump won by 15 points in 2024 and whose electorate tilts Republican by 23 points. The last Republican to hold it ran unopposed. In short, it shouldn’t even have been close.

And yet the Democrat won, which raises a much more uncomfortable question, not just about this race but about the entire Republican strategy for 2026: How could this happen?

To me, the reason is clear. They won because we didn’t show up. Why didn’t we show up? We were lulled into a false sense of security by the crushing victory of 2024. And yes, Trump’s use of the full machinery of the state to strip away the left’s entrenched power — along with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency chewing through federal fat — makes it hard not to feel a bit giddy, even invincible. But while overconfidence breeds vulnerability, I don’t think that’s the real issue.

Trump won 2024, not ‘conservatism’

The real issue is that Republicans think Americans voted for right-wing philosophy, when in reality, they actually voted for Donald J. Trump. Whether you like it or not, Trump had an advantage that virtually no other Republican has: Everyone knew he was the living embodiment of a political approach that elites in bothparties had tried to stop. And what’s more, he was up against possibly the perfect candidate — or really, candidates — to personify what everyday Americans hatedabout those very elites. Plus, there truly is no one like Trump. It is only because so many people showed up to vote against those people — and for him — that they also pulled the lever for a Republican.

But most Democrats are not as bad as former Vice President Kamala Harris. And most Republicans, I’m sorry to say, are not Trump. In fact, most Republicans seem to have taken the exact wrong lesson from Trump’s victory. They’ve treated it as a vindication of conservatism. It wasn’t. Trump is not a movement conservative, and most Americans aren’t either.

Unfortunately, many GOP politicians still resemble the conservative brand of old. Worse, many have tried to use Trump’s “America First” agenda as a fig leaf for unpopular past stances and discredited old ideologies. This loud group has nothing to do with “America First,” and they’re making us look bad to normal Americans — precisely at the moment when everyone from Gavin Newsom to Bernie Sanders is falling all over themselves to try to appear “normal.” Americans voted for Trump to stop the ideological madness, not to invert it.

Time to wake up

But MAGA stands for more than that. We know it. Trump knows it. The real issue, as Trump himself often says, is that we’re not used to winning this much. And because of that, we’ve grown too comfortable. We’ve started coasting, assuming success will continue without effort.

We forget that many of our victories have come simply because voters oppose the radical left. As Mike Solana recently told Megyn Kelly, “We’ve decided what we don’t want to look like.” But rejection alone isn’t a strategy. If the opposition doesn’t implode, we have to give voters something to support — something real, clear, and positive. That requires more than deciding what we stand for; it requires showing it in everything we do.

Whatever that vision is, we need to define it now — and act on it — because time is running out.

We already lost a state Senate seat in a swing-state district with a Republican advantage of 23 points. If that can happen there, it can happen anywhere. The upcoming Wisconsin Supreme Court race is a toss-up, and we cannot afford another defeat.

Yes, both the MAGA movement and Elon Musk have done more to nationalize the Wisconsin court race than they did with Pennsylvania’s 36th Senate district. But we can’t rely on billionaires or once-in-a-generation political talent.

The right must build a political machine that works — whether we’re in power or not. Democrats have one. They’re using it. And they’re not slowing down.

We shouldn’t either.