Christian. President and Senior Fellow at Our Republic. NYT bestselling co-author of "The Great Reset." Author of "The Next Big Crash." Read me @FoxNews.
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Republicans have some serious explaining to do after the 2026 midterms. And I think the problems go much deeper than poor messaging, voter turnout, or bad candidates.
First, where is the Republican vision for America's future? The socialists are offering Americans a radical plan to transform the country. It's a terrible vision, but at least they have one. Meanwhile, far too many Republican politicians seem perfectly content to tinker around the edges of a dysfunctional federal government.
Second, Republicans promised to solve the affordability crisis, and they haven't delivered nearly enough. Housing remains unaffordable for millions of families, everyday necessities are still far too expensive, and congressional Republicans have continued to run enormous deficits. They've even wasted precious time pursuing more big-government policies. What happened to dramatically reducing the size and scope of government?
Third, regardless of whether you support the war in Iran, the Trump administration failed to convince enough Americans that it deserved to be one of the nation's highest priorities. The war divided the Republican coalition and made the affordability crisis even worse.
These are serious failures, and if Republicans don't make some major changes, 2028 could be a disaster.
I wrote about all three problems, and what conservatives should do differently, in my new Fox News column. I hope you'll take a few minutes to read it! foxnews.com/opinion/justin-h…
Justin T. Haskins retweeted
I got an email this morning that exposes just how dirty this next wave of political revenge from the Left is going to get.
@A1Policy just put out an 8-page readiness plan. If you are a charity, a 501(c)(3), a business owner, or a donor who ever supported a Republican or the party itself, YOU are in the crosshairs.
They are warning you to retain outside legal counsel RIGHT NOW. Check your insurance policies. Prepare for incoming subpoenas. Don’t wait for a letter to arrive because the records requests have already started.
This is all meant to intimidate the next generation of voters. They want to bankrupt you so that anyone in their teens or twenties watching right now is too terrified to ever stand up for conservative principles.
And they’ll just call it “oversight.”
Justin T. Haskins retweeted
If there’s one word that defines this post-election cycle, it’s outrage.
Democrats are openly threatening to wrap Donald Trump in “legislative razor wire,” while conservative voters are split between being fed up with the GOP and pissed off at the results.
And I get the anger. I really do.
But that rage you feel? It’s a trap. Revenge just keeps score, and a nation that only keeps score never finishes the game. We shouldn’t be score-keepers. That’s not who we are.
We’re dreamers, builders, and doers. We look at an empty lot and see a home. We look at a pitch-black night sky and see a path to the stars.
And honestly, I am just so sick and tired of the outrage and the political games. Politics was never meant to be our religion. This country wasn’t built on scoring points against the other team.
It was built on principles.
So put the post-election noise aside. Forget your party for a moment. Ask yourself the only question that actually matters right now:
WHO ARE WE, AMERICA?
Justin T. Haskins retweeted
Hackers just wiped out $1.5 billion in food by remotely heating European supermarket freezers overnight. This week, they moved on to blood banks.
If they are willing to target the food on your grocery shelves and the blood banks, what happens when they go after the rest of the infrastructure?
I’ve been tracking warnings like these for weeks, but today I had to pull out the chalkboard to put the full picture together.
THIS is why governments across the globe are telling you to prepare.
Justin T. Haskins retweeted
I think we're done with geriatric politicians now. If you're a Republican politician thinking about running for the presidency in 2028, and you're already over 70 years old, don't waste your energy. We've had Boomer presidents for like 30 years now. Time to give another generation a chance.
Justin T. Haskins retweeted
JUSTIN HASKINS: The 2026 midterm elections were a wake-up call for the GOP, exposing three critical failures that cost them dearly at the ballot box. From the crushing affordability crisis to the Iran war and out-of-control federal budget deficits, Republicans lost touch with the everyday struggles of American voters.
If they want any hope of winning back the White House in 2028, they must stop taking the media's bait and drastically cut government spending. It is time to eliminate crippling regulatory barriers and finally deliver the real economic relief that hardworking families desperately need right now.
Full story here foxnews.com/opinion/justin-h…
Justin T. Haskins retweeted
My analysis is basically as follows:
1) The Iran war obviously impacted Trump’s base. Due to opposition to forever wars and also how it raised gas prices.
Now, bear with me on this, but I personally find part of this to be frustrating because (while I also oppose forever wars and detest high gas prices) I think a portion of Trump’s base conflated the military operation in Iran with the forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I think that comparison is unfair, based on the reality of what the military operation in Iran is so far, and also based on Trump’s stated goal that I think most people agree with, that Iran shouldn’t have a nuclear weapon because that poses a direct threat to America. And also based on Trump's history of opposing forever wars.
But regardless of whether I think that conflation is unfair, the reality is Iran did make a difference in the election. Look at that graph that Mollie Hemingway posted about Trump’s approval rating as it correlates to gas prices. Those two numbers track together. So I don’t know if necessarily the war itself was a mistake, I can’t say that honestly, because you and I don’t have access to the intel that answers the million dollar question, was Iran really imminently about to acquire a nuke? Or, was it the way that Trump communicated that it was going to happen quickly and then when it wasn’t over as quickly as promised, he lost people's trust… Regardless, this is obviously going to be the narrative we hear about most from now until 2028.
Worth noting too, that Trump’s base would’ve given Trump more leeway on the Iran war & even the domstic implications if they felt trust… If Trump had pounded justice as soon as he took office. We wanted perp walks and jumpsuits. Fauci, Brennan, all of them. But Pam Bondi didn’t do that, basically zero of the Democrats who weaponized govt under Biden against YOU have been held accountable, and people feel that viscerally, they feel disillusioned because they voted for justice. So they were very quick to feel “oh same old same old” when Trump launched the war in Iran, versus trusting him to execute it differently than the GOP establishment of the past.
2) BUT I think a critical point that has been ignored is the question, not just how did the GOP or Trump disappoint his base but HOW do we have a nation where more than half the people vote for Talarico and El Sayed? Where half the people cheered for the murder of Charlie Kirk? The Democrat party has been overtaken by a very sophisticated and motivated apparatus that is committed to their ideology and knows how to win strategically. I’m talking about the DSA. This is not an RNC v DNC world anymore. And not only does the left have the political apparatus to produce such radical candidates and then run effective targeted campaigns for them, we have ceded control of all the institutions in our country to leftists who use the institutions to indoctrinate young people to vote for those radical candidates. This is a problem nobody on the right wants to address! Because colleges and universities are a status symbol and what would happen to the economy if Trump cut off federal funding to schools that brainwash our youth, etc etc. But this is a HUGE part of the problem. The electoral strategy, the campaign tactics, the DSA takeover of the Dem party wouldn’t be effective if our institutions weren’t producing the voters to support it. So what are we gonna do about that? Conservative MUST confront this if we ever want to win again.
3) Candidate quality also matters, obviously. Like Darline Graham, Paxton, and Vivek? C’mon are we even trying to win.
4) Whitepill: the good news is Democrats are so diabolically crazy that they’ll spend the next two years abusing their power so badly that voters will turn on them in 2028 unless Republicans are idiots again.
May God have mercy on our nation.
Justin T. Haskins retweeted
There will be lots of policy wonks giving you analysis in the coming days, and they will all have good points. But let me focus on some less policy-driven - but very real - reasons I think Republicans lost so handily last night.
1. People are tired. After working so hard for a seemingly impossible win in 2024, another (perhaps bigger and uglier) fight erupted in 2025 after Charlie was murdered that fractured the right, demoralized the base, and made people want to disentangle themselves from politics altogether.
2. Bad Republican candidates. For example, as much as Talarico makes the normal person’s skin crawl, Paxton, to many people, is worse. They see an uneasy look, an off-putting vibe, a storied past, and what appears to be apathy. Even people who loathe Talarico couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Paxton.
3. Trump doesn’t have his aura right now. Can’t even blame the media for this one. He comes across as dismissive of economic concerns. His Truth Social is pettier than ever. He’s making weird comments about people’s a**es (not kidding), making him come across as unserious when voters are hurting. This can be fine if things are getting done. But when they’re not, it’s just annoying.
4. The loss of Charlie. We may never know the extent of his unifying power and activism, but I think we understand it more now. His connection the White House, his finger on the pulse of conservative/independent concerns, his ability to bolster enthusiasm, his effectiveness in getting out the vote, especially among young men… All of that is now missing and sorely missed.
There’s a lot more, of course. The war costing more than anyone wanted. Prices that are crushing the average family. Republican-approved immigration, causing huge demographic and cultural shifts, which are inherently destabilizing and demoralizing. Failure of congress to pass the SAVE Act and other important legislation. Democrats’ demure-but-deadly strategy to keep most of their candidates out of the headlines while doggedly getting out the vote.
Republicans have a lot to learn in a short amount of time. Will we?
All this to say… there’s reason to be concerned, yes, but not to be discouraged. God’s eternal plan of redemption is always going off without a hitch. He’s never taken aback. He never has anxiety. He’s never wondering what the outcomes will be. He’s in control.
We trust in His total sovereignty while also recommitting ourselves in seeking the welfare of the city in which He has providentially placed us (Jeremiah 29:7). We’ve got work to do!
JUSTIN HASKINS: 3 huge reasons Republicans lost. Here’s what they need to win in 2028 @foxnews @FoxNewsOpinion foxnews.com/opinion/justin-h… #FoxNews
Justin T. Haskins retweeted
Here's why Republicans lost last night: nearly nine in ten voters said the cost of living drove their vote. People across the country were exhausted and angry. And they fired that anger at whoever was holding the keys. This time, we were holding them.
I know a lot of people woke up today angry, depressed, wanting revenge, or wanting to tune out the news completely.
But the biggest mistake we can make today to expect Washington, a political party, or one man to save us. President Trump did more to fight progressivism than anyone in my lifetime, but no politician can fix this alone.
So today, my challenge to you is the same one I give myself: give thanks to God right now.
Thank Him for the blessings, the victories, and the opportunities He’s given us, but ALSO thank Him for our failures and the hard times.
Because trials like what we’re about to face are the very things that refine us and make us better. It's our turn now to strengthen what we can in our own hearts and homes. And prepare for what's to come.
Justin T. Haskins retweeted
One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up.
So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us."
Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.
There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true.
But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone.
Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were:
1) End the war
2) Focus on cost of living/inflation
3) Put America First
4) Change our relationship to Israel
Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.)
In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you.
The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.
If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest.
But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.
I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.
Justin T. Haskins retweeted
On days like this, I’m reminded of the late, great Rush Limbaugh. Because he said it perfectly: “It’s NEVER going to be time to panic! Because we’re NEVER going to give up. We’re not going to give up on America.”
Republicans lost because they stood for nothing. They were so afraid of losing their power that they did zero work for the people who put them there.
So what do we do now?
First off, we don’t freak out or complain. That will get us nowhere.
Yes, America just gave Democrats a chance, but they’re going to fail. Their policies won’t lower your gas prices or fix this economy. They’re only going to make the problems worse. And in two years, the voters will judge them for it all the same.
This isn’t the time to panic or throw in the towel. Not even close.
The 2026 Election was truly a catastrophe for the Republican Party. But there is some hope for those of you who are feeling hopeless today: THE DEMOCRATS WILL UNDOUBTEDLY SCREW THIS UP.
Instead of governing with center-left policies, they will go all in on the most insane positions you can think of, at the state and federal levels. The economy will likely get worse. At best, it won’t improve. We’ll be flooded daily with crazy socialist and leftist social rhetoric. And after two years of that, Americans will probably be sick of it and want change (again).
So, there’s no need to panic. Democrats are going to blow it like they always do.
But there’s a bigger story here. The truth is, voters will never find what they are looking for by electing the “right” politicians in Washington. They keep trying, and that strategy never works.
That’s not how America was designed and it’s not who we are. The only way we’ll ever be happy is if state and local communities are allowed to implement the policies people want, getting the federal government out of the equation in nearly all instances.
Let Democrats have the left-wing policies they want. Let Republicans do what they want—all the state and local levels. The best ideas will win out. That’s the ONLY WAY to save this country, and I think voters will find this appealing, if only someone will actually deliver the message.
Justin T. Haskins retweeted
I thought tonight couldn’t get any worse. Now it looks like the drunk lady in Indiana is going to lose her race by a slim margin of 60 points. Devastating loss for the drunkard community.
Justin T. Haskins retweeted
I told you all about affordability being key and side quests like tariffs, ongoing conflicts, etc. being unforced errors and many of you argued with me. 🤷♀️
Justin T. Haskins retweeted
According to exit polls, 74 percent of voters said the Iran war was a crucial or major factor in their vote.
62 percent of those voters sided with Democrats in today’s election.
We had a generational opportunity and a massive coalition in 2024, and neocons pissed it all away for yet another pointless Middle East war.
Justin T. Haskins retweeted
I took a lot of slings and arrows just to try to get the American people what they voted for, and then everyone attacked me for honest polling.
Please consider following my work at thehonestpoll.com
