Trump is winning. That’s the GOP’s biggest problem

Nothing is more dangerous than success. In America, anyone can survive failure – you get up, dust yourself off and try again. But few politicians, or political parties, survive success because success kills urgency. And without urgency, voters don’t vote.

President Donald Trump has been dangerously successful.

With a seeming snap of his fingers, he has restored our nation’s borders. He has dismantled elite wokeness – rescuing our God-given pronouns and kicking men out of women’s sports. He has neutered Iran’s march toward nuclear weapons, ended taxpayer-funded pro-Hamas campus activism and quashed Bidenflation. To the astonishment of our foreign policy establishment, he has strengthened Europe’s support of NATO to match our 5-percent-of-GDP goal.

Trump has blown up the USAID’s corrupt funding of a global anti-American bureaucracy. His tariffs breathe life into the people’s economy, while unemployed bureaucrats flee Washington’s economy, leaving their homes behind like empty shells.

That’s all great news – and the Republican Party’s big problem, too.

Why would anyone still need to vote for Republicans in the 2026 midterm elections? When we’ve driven in all the nails, what is left for a hammer to do? Even Winston Churchill, two months after winning World War II, was tossed from power. Why? Because no one needed a wartime leader after the war.

Nothing is more dangerous than success. Without urgency, voters don’t vote

If they had any strategic sensibility, Democrats would embrace a few of Trump’s accomplishments and argue for post-war peace and quiet. They’d say, “We should preserve some of the good Trump has done, but this election, we need to calm things down.” That’s the campaign that would produce a Democratic House. That’s the campaign we should expect smart Democrats to run.

Fortunately for Republicans, the radicals who dominate the Democratic Party find it unbearably difficult to concede Trump any measure of accomplishment. Even so, we should expect Democrats with a keener sense of self-preservation to adjust course.

So, what must Republicans do? Perhaps the most important thing I’ve learned in five decades of campaigning is this: Politics is the business of competitive purpose. Who would choose to give their vote to a lesser cause? Republicans must offer midterm voters a purpose worthy of a Presidential year election. I’d suggest this: We must make sure President Trump’s successes endure.

Step One: Take every single Trump executive order and turn it into a one-page bill. Every few days, starting this fall, bring one to the House floor and force Democrats to vote “No.” Force them to vote against closed borders, against women’s sports, against energy independence. Force them to vote against English as our official language. With a uniparty-controlled Senate and a slim, one-vote majority in the House, these bills are unlikely to pass. That’s why Trump issued them as Executive Orders. But that’s good because…

Step Two: We turn those failed votes into the 2026 GOP campaign for Congress. We put them in their urgent and truthful context: Trump’s success is fragile. It’s not something we can count on beyond his tenure. His accomplishments leave with him: They are not American law.

If President Trump doesn’t expand his majority in Congress in 2026 while he remains in office, it’s game over. His wins vanish the day he leaves the White House for Mar-a-Lago.

The border may be closed now – but without law, it reopens. Wokeness is on the ropes now – but without Congress, it comes back with a roar. America is strong again – but that strength will dissolve in coming elections with a different President and a different set of Executive Orders unless we carve it in legal stone.

That is the Republican case for 2026: make the Trump agenda permanent or watch it all disappear. Give Democrats the House, and they will spend two years impeaching Trump again, trying to jail him, setting the nation on fire and organizing to reverse his triumphs. And the Democrats who are still laughing at mainstream America will laugh harder than before.

The 2026 midterms must be a Presidential election in disguise. Which side are voters on? The one that believes in women, borders, safety and sanity? Or the one that believes men are women, criminals are victims and you are the problem?

Donald Trump is one of a kind. He is irreplaceable. And if we want his accomplishments to outlast him, we must give him the tools to finish the job.

The war is not over. There is still work to do. This time, don’t just vote for Trump. Vote to make the good he’s done last longer than the next election – or the chaotic cultural fires that preceded him will return and burn hotter. That’s dangerous for all of us.