By Noah Rothman
Monday, August 10, 2026
Commentary executive editor Abe Greenwald’s
admonition for the GOP ahead of the midterms is worth careful
consideration.
The rise of the Democratic Socialists has given the GOP
hope in a year in which they probably deserve none. The far left’s policy
preferences depart substantially from the median American voter’s, and
socialist candidates display a consistently high tolerance for anti-Western or
even anti-American views. It’s a target-rich environment, Greenwald observes,
and there is opportunity in that. But there’s plenty of risk, too.
“When a candidate makes his opponent’s unfitness the
central message of his campaign, he also makes the race all about his
opponent,” he writes. “That opponent then exploits the spotlight to sell voters
on himself and his compelling vision for the future.” That’s the precise
dynamic that Donald Trump took maximum advantage of in 2016 and 2024, but
there’s no iron law of the universe that prevents Democrats from turning the
tables on the GOP.
If existential dread hasn’t settled over the Republican
Party yet, it will soon. On Monday, the Wall Street Journal described “a significant reversal
in views of the GOP’s ability to manage the economy.” In one public opinion
survey after another, respondents now see the Democratic Party as better suited
to manage America’s economic affairs — “a rare finding in recent years.”
The Journal is quick to note that Democrats have
not “fully” capitalized on their advantage. Voters still remember the Biden years, and their dissatisfaction with
the second Trump administration has not retroactively conditioned the public
into looking back on the last Democratic administration’s economic record with
affection. Likewise, the Democratic Socialists’ big debut on the national stage
could backfire. After all, most voters freely express a dim view toward socialist economic prescriptions.
But the left is also retailing a radical vision for the
country of the sort that Greenwald warns about. Republicans can and must
articulate the problems with that vision. They should rail against the nationalization of the health-insurance industry. They are obliged
to point out the predictable failures that are associated with the public
ownership of banks, supermarkets, and housing units. Economic growth all but depends on the GOP’s
arguing convincingly against the left’s confiscatory tax policies and the heedless Luddism it promulgates under the banner of
“progress.”
That’s what the GOP is against. But what is it for?
Are they for the president’s tariff regime and the
manufacturing boom it was intended to produce? If so, they’ll have to contend
with the public’s manifest contempt for Trump’s tariffs and its failure to repatriate manufacturing jobs (even as the
output from U.S. factories explodes amid productivity gains).
Are they going to argue that U.S. energy production is
reducing the costs Americans pay for utilities and at the pump? The
deregulatory regime over which the Trump administration is presiding certainly
does provide Republican candidates with a good
story to tell. But it’s not one to which voters will be receptive while
they are receiving regular unwanted reminders of the fallout from the Iran war
whenever they gas up the car.
Will the GOP ask voters to endorse its incrementalist
approach to reducing health-care costs? Republicans are quietly
promoting a proposal designed to reduce insurance premiums by giving
consumers more opportunities to cut insurers out of the process — allowing for
more price transparency via direct payments to medical service providers. But
while Republicans say we need less government in health care — and, it’s
important to add, fewer government subsidies to insurers — the left promises a
wholesale government takeover of the health-care sector.
That may resonate more with the 52 percent of Democrats
and 28 percent of Republicans who told Fox News’ pollsters last month that they
want to see “dramatic or revolutionary change” in the American civic
covenant.
At least when it comes to health care, Republicans are
promoting a competing vision that gives voters a rationale for backing the
GOP’s candidates. Otherwise, the Republican Party is promising voters more of
the same for the next two years despite the public’s dissatisfaction with the
status quo. Given the radicalism of their opponents, Republicans will be
tempted to run a negative campaign against the Democratic Party’s socialist
fringes, perhaps at the expense of popularizing a positive economic vision of
their own.
If dissatisfied voters are confronted in November with a
choice between two competing radicalisms, they may not default to the devil
they know.
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