Townhall Review | Conservative Commentary On Today's News

The GOP isn’t dead, but it sure does look and feel that way in the harsh light of the day after last week’s walloping.

But the Republican Party isn’t dead. It’s just beaten badly, and it will take some years to mend. A lesson from the endless rebuild of the Cleveland Browns: There aren’t any shortcuts. You need patience, and you have to work through the draft.

President Trump remains the leader of a badly banged-up party.

He’s often been a terrific cheerleader. He needs to be so again.

The greatness of the Republic is its wonderful resilience. The Constitution is terrifically strong, a work of genius that endures. Parties thought dead beyond recovery indeed do come back. That lesson is not ancient history.

Recall the eclipse of the GOP after Barry Goldwater’s kamikaze presidential run in 1964, which left the GOP with just 32 senators and 140 members in the House. Really.

Recovery after a political crash out can be painful, but it’s best undertaken with clear eyes about what ails the GOP body politic.

Let’s get busy.

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Republicans are reeling from the massive electoral defeat they’ve just suffered. Some argue that emboldened Democrats will inevitably overreach, handing Republicans the presidency and Congress in two years.

Perhaps.

But the most troubling implications of this election are long-term. Americans voted for avowed socialists. And they supported a candidate whose family has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

That’s more than a political problem. It’s an educational and cultural one.

For decades, our schools and our culture have taught generations of Americans that their country is irredeemably flawed, that creating wealth is morally suspect, and that government should redistribute what some have earned to others.

The consequences of those lessons are now becoming clear at the ballot box.

We have work to do.

Because unless we change what Americans are taught — and the stories our culture tells — this election may be only the beginning.

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There are many reasons for the stinging repudiation Republicans suffered at the polls this week. But none is more important than this:

As President Reagan understood, elections are about the future. Always. They’re about what voters want and need — and what politicians propose to do about it.

Any politician will run into trouble if he or she forgets that. Elections aren't about them. They're about the voters.

And any party that ignores voters’ priorities — offering no real accomplishments, no solutions, and no plans — is asking for defeat.

This election was ugly. Its repercussions may be felt for years to come. And it has helped normalize candidates whose left-wing views were once considered far outside the mainstream.

All because Republicans forgot the most basic rule of politics: It’s not about them. It’s about the future. And the voters.

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Waking up to the shocking realities of Tuesday’s election—confused, resentful, and a bill of long-avoided realities—one might say we have all the conditions of a blackout or a hangover.  Let us then take cues from those 12-Step programs—and realize there is a problem, we are its cause, and our principles must be put above personalities.  2026 is a rude awakening, but it can commence our recovery.  Our nation, and the West, cannot afford denial.

The party’s and the movement’s ideals, taught from Lincoln to Coolidge to Reagan to Trump—as he campaigned in 2016 and 2024—are still commonsense and favored. Living up to them and articulating them are what suffered, along with too many Pied Pipers of Podcastistan masquerading as having the country’s best interests at heart and taking a lot of youth with them.

Electing so many Marxists/Islamists in the year of our own country’s birthday, celebrated anemically at best, is the unkindest cut of all. But a serious recommitment to what we’ve long preached is the path to renewal.

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Ronald Reagan used to quote the philosopher Montesquieu: “The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principle upon which it was founded.”  Reagan cited this point to warn us as more and more policies were enacted violating our principles of self- and limited government.  Later in his career, Reagan would also warn about our decayed and degraded state of knowledge about our own history.

Indeed, today, Americans’ knowledge about history and civics is at record lows, helping explain our new acceptance and promotion of literal socialist policies and politics in America.  Our education system, our schools, have failed us.  Thank God, however, a few historians have given us a gift to help us recoup the things we used to know.  Particularly beautiful and helpful is Allen Guelzo and James Haskins new two-volume history of Western Civilization: “The Golden Thread.”

Enough cannot be said about such a work as Guelzo’s and Haskins’—nor its scholarship, readability, and beautiful presentation.  Their work comes just in time and could not be more necessary.

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