There’s no one fatter and lazier than a deep red state’s Republican organization, with few exceptions, and this bit us badly on the butt last week. Now, California is not a red state — not anymore, though it was when I grew up there — but this little story kind of sums up the problem with Republican organizations. They aren’t about winning; they are social clubs. I was at some GOP event and sat down for rubber chicken next to somebody who proudly announced he was the Republican chair of, say, the 69th District and had been for 20 years. I asked him when the last time a Republican won in the 69th District was, and he looked at me like I was insane, like it never occurred to him that electing people might be a remotely relevant consideration for a district chair. The answer, of course, was “Never.” The Republicans had never won it. But he had his gig, a nice seat on the dais, and that was what mattered. Not victory. Just his place in the social club that is the California Republican Party.
In the red states, we got too used to winning easily. Far too used to it. We got so used to winning that it never occurred to us that we might not win, and it never occurred to us that we might have to work to win. We forgot that we need to earn votes, that we don’t just inherit them by right. Sure, some marquee candidates were awful, but it wasn’t just the marquee candidates who lost. It was everyone from governors down to assistant deputy dog catchers. If you had an R by your name, you were about as popular as an openly herpetic participant in a polycule orgy.
Here’s the thing. We got soft. When you are challenged, when you don’t have to fight – and even when you do (Hi, California) – you run the risk of your organization becoming sclerotic, petrified, and wussified. The last part, the wussy part, is particularly important. In a deep red state, where it was difficult (before this year) to get elected anything if you weren’t a Republican, a lot of people who should be Democrats were joining the GOP. That’s how we get squishes. That’s why we get RINOs. John Cornyn has always been a Republican, but it should be no surprise that he helped Democrats with things like gun control, and that he eagerly helped, in the feminine and sneaky way of his ilk, to get James Talarico elected by undercutting the actual Republican nominee and then rushing to congratulate the Democrat. Now, all ex-Democrats aren’t bad – both Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump started out as Democrats – but joining the GOP because they’ve had a change of heart is different from joining because you think it’s to your advantage. That’s how you end up with extremely soft Republicans.
Another is having no fear of the voters. Too many red incumbents think they can’t be dislodged from their sinecures. Look at James Lankford in Oklahoma. It’s no surprise that a clueless tool like Jimmy colluded with the Democrats on a border bill that critics said would effectively allow 5,000 encounters a day before emergency authority kicked in. He gave the other side huge assistance, and it never occurred to him that it might put his seat at risk. He’s up for reelection in 2028. Of course, he’s going to get primaried — he’s like the buffalo with a limp as the wolves circle. But is he going to do the manly thing and refuse to run rather than put the GOP through an expensive primary so it can get a Republican who actually does Republican things in office? Absolutely not. The idea of selfless service is completely alien to this archetype. We voters are there to serve them, not vice versa. You see the problem?
You look at a state like Utah, and you would think that a state full of Mormons should be a state full of hard-driving conservatives. They’ve got one, Mike Lee, but holy cow, John Curtis is an absolute disaster. He’s a posturing twit who makes Mitt Romney look like Genghis Khan. And their governor, Spencer Cox, plays footsie with the trans weirdos. How did this happen?
Again, if everybody’s a Republican, then everybody’s a Republican. And that means people who shouldn’t be Republicans, too. I guess if you’re looking to make lemonade out of this lemon suppository, one good thing is that you might see Democrats joining the Democrat Party in red states that had a blue spasm. But who still holds all the key positions? The people who’ve been there forever. The people who’ve never been challenged, and when they were challenged this year, they failed with flying colors.
Look at Indiana. There’s a state that should be ruby red, but enough of its state legislators refused to do their part to gerrymander the districts to a Republican advantage. Why? Because principles or something. It never occurred to them to be team players because they considered themselves the team. It wasn’t about them serving the people through the Republican Party. It was about the people serving them through the Republican Party.
It just never occurred to them that they had to fight. They thought they'd get wins handed to them on a silver platter. The Texas Republicans sure did. What did Greg Abbott do in his campaign? I think I saw one ad for him. Was he out there connecting with the voters whom he had governed for 12 years? Apparently not. What’s frightening is that maybe he thought he was going to win, and maybe the other Republicans thought they were going to win, too. How could we get so out of touch with our own voters? Hey, I’m not taking myself off the blame list – as a pundit, I thought we were going to do a lot better than we did. But the rumblings were out there. The clues were out there. The guys and gals who work with the grassroots every day should’ve seen that many of the people they expected to show up either weren't going to show up or were angry/desperate enough to give the Democrats a chance.
And then there’s the treachery. In Texas, you had this whole group of establishment swells within the Republican orbit, ex-Bush types, who had absolutely no loyalty to the people who had been loyal to them. They had nothing but contempt for voters. The voters were supposed to shut up and pull the lever. Well, the voters shut up to the pollsters and pulled the lever for the other guys. And the Bush types, at some level, are happy about it. They think this is their way back in. If we don’t fight these clowns off, it will be.
Mississippi was a heartbreaker and a headscratcher. Did you know the Democrat Senate candidate spent far more on ads and organization than our clueless Republican incumbent? And they organized the hell out of their people. We didn’t. We didn’t even bother. We just assumed we'd win. Even in the post-election ballot counting, the Democrats have everything lined up, from lawyers to vote-count watchers. The Republicans have barely scraped together a team to respond. This is the Republican Party of Mississippi. These are the people in charge. And they didn’t do anything. It’s a disaster.
This must stop. The Republican Party is not a social club. It has one purpose and one purpose only, and it’s not to provide a venue for activists to high-five each other. It’s to win elections. That’s it. That’s all. It’s not for making friends or padding résumés. It’s to beat the Democrats and save this country.
Republicans in Florida understand that. The Republicans in Florida worked. Look at those registration numbers they’ve put up there. It’s a majority Republican state. You couldn’t say that 26 years ago. Remember hanging chads? I do. It was purple back then. Democrats used to win in Florida. But you had a governor who wanted to govern, and a party apparatus that wanted to lock in power. How did it do it? Hard work. It organized. It focused. It got people to call themselves Republicans and, vitally, to pull that lever for Republicans. And as a result, because of that hard work and preparation, the tsunami came up short in Florida. It was close – too close – but the hard work of the hard-working Florida Republican Party was enough to save it from disaster.
We need that focus and ruthless aggression everywhere. Every state Republican organization is on notice that the Democrats are coming. No more whistling past the graveyard and no more relying on clichés and copium. No one is safe. Every single state Republican Party organization needs to get its tail in gear for 2028.
This is where you come in. I know you don’t like politics. I know you don’t like the party. But if people like you who care about this country more than their own personal interests don’t take an interest in the Republican Party, we’re going to continue to fail. It’s not enough to complain that the people in charge aren’t getting it done. You need to get up off your rear and get involved. You know who controls the parties? The people who show up. So, show up, or don’t complain when you run by a bunch of communists who have no business winning in a red state.
Kurt’s new action-packed conservative novel, “American Warlord,” has been unleashed! Get it now and follow Kurt on X @KurtSchlichter!