The 2026 midterms will go down as one of the worst cycles for Republicans in modern times. In key congressional, legislative, and local races around the country, Democrats crushed their GOP foes, winning U.S. Senate seats in the likes of Texas, Iowa, Kansas, and the Carolinas; capturing the U.S. House by a surprisingly comfortable margin; and flipping several Republican governorships and legislative chambers.
But was conservatism itself defeated? Hardly. While the GOP is, indeed, the movement’s main political vehicle, American conservatism’s founding principles of liberty, order, family, federalism, and free enterprise cannot be negated by a single election cycle, even one as cobalt blue as the one we just witnessed.
Don’t just take my word for it. I admit I’m a movement lifer, with dozens of years of experience establishing and running conservative organizations, and I co-founded the Freedom Conservatism project to restore these principles to the core of the American Right. A skeptic might say I only see what I want to see.
Well, examine the 2026 results more closely. The overriding issue was affordability, about which victorious Democrats talked incessantly and doomed Republicans never found their voice. What was the single most potent Democratic attack? That President Trump had raised rather than lowered consumer prices by socking Americans with tariffs. It was an anti-tax message! It was correct on the merits. And it worked brilliantly.
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