{"id":672,"date":"2026-07-22T17:39:47","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T17:39:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanindustryreview.com\/?p=672"},"modified":"2026-07-22T17:39:47","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T17:39:47","slug":"republicans-time-is-not-on-your-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanindustryreview.com\/?p=672","title":{"rendered":"Republicans: Time is not on your side"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

There are plenty of variables when writing campaign strategies. But one thing that you can\u2019t control is time. How often have we heard losing candidates complain, \u201cIf we\u2019d only had another week?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more Tick bites snag Congress\u2019 attention as red meat allergies rise<\/a><\/p>\n

But Election Day is fixed and finite and every politician must adhere to that reality \u2014 including the president.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Right now, looking at the polls, time isn\u2019t on the side of the GOP with slightly more than 100 days left to make their case to the voters for keeping Congress in Republican hands.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump\u2019s address to the nation last week, focused mostly on passing the SAVE Act, stepped on his administration\u2019s improved economic story. Instead of talking about economic progress and updating voters on the state of the Iran war, President Trump chose an issue dear to his heart, but not anywhere near the top of most voters\u2019 priorities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The grumbling that we\u2019re beginning to hear from congressional Republicans, staff and strategists could have been avoided if Trump had spent more time on the economy and less on past grievances and political losses.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The truth is that the SAVE Act isn\u2019t likely to pass this year, and even if it did, most of its provisions couldn\u2019t be implemented in time for the 2026 congressional elections.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Trump missed the opportunity to help voters understand the economic progress that has been made because of last year\u2019s Big Beautiful Bill extension of the 2017 tax cuts (Tax Cuts and Jobs Act) for individuals and small businesses that put money back in the pockets of most Americans.<\/p>\n

He could have helped them understand how their sacrifices at the pump will help make the country safer today and for future generations that won\u2019t have to live with the threat a nuclear Iran poses.\u00a0He had plenty of data to back up those claims.<\/p>\n

Just two days before last week\u2019s speech, the June Consumer Price Index report (CPI, or the rate of inflation) was released.\u00a0It was good news.<\/p>\n

Since February, prices had been going up significantly, driven by rising gas prices as a result of the Iran war.\u00a0But in this report, we saw an actual decrease in the price of gas, which led to an overall decrease in consumer prices.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

This, combined with continued steady wage growth, was a welcome improvement over the May report.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

During President Joe Biden\u2019s tenure, prices outpaced wages by 4.8 percent, which represented a significant reduction in household disposable income, and there were many months when that margin was more than 6 percent. That 4.8 percent is what he handed off to Trump, and by January of the following year, Trump had reduced it to 2.7 percent, the lowest margin since December 2021.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the war in Iran, a difficult policy decision, brought with it higher gas prices. By May, the margin between prices and wages had increased for four consecutive months to 5.3 percent. But the June BLS numbers showed solid improvement as the number dropped to 4.4 percent, better than the last Biden number and heading in a positive direction.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The CPI and other encouraging economic data gave Trump a great opening but, inexplicably, he chose instead to talk about election integrity, important but not what voters wanted to hear.\u00a0It isn\u2019t that the majority of voters don\u2019t favor many of the SAVE Act\u2019s provisions like requiring an ID to vote.\u00a0They do but it isn\u2019t a top priority for them.<\/p>\n

The No. 1 issue for voters remains the cost of living and the economy. Rather than talking to voters about their top concern and showing empathy for a public tired of war, inflation and promises from both sides of better times ahead, the president seems to be playing a \u201clong game in a short game\u201d moment.<\/p>\n

But we\u2019ve seen the president focus on the wrong issue before.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2018, the Friday before the midterm election, a remarkably good BLS unemployment report was released and should have been the perfect closing message for Republicans. It was so good that Jared Bernstein, who chaired the United States Council of Economic Advisers from July 2023 until the end of Biden\u2019s presidency, described it as \u201cpretty much everything you could want in a monthly jobs report.\u201d This was the validation of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, and just days before the election.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Trump, however, decided to focus on another issue, in this case, the \u201ccaravan\u201d of immigrants coming through Mexico heading to the United States.\u00a0 Even when pressed by his political team to end the campaign with a message on the economy, he ignored that advice.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Election Day, Republicans lost 41 seats, down 19 points with women and 12 with independents.\u00a0 Democrats won 235 seats despite the fact that the percentage of the electorate who thought the economy was good or excellent (according to the exit polls) increased from 36 percent in 2016 to 68 percent in 2018.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The economy should have been a winning issue for Republicans, but Trump\u2019s focus on immigration made it the No. 2 issue for the electorate, pushing the economy down to third place. This let Democrats get health care to the top of the list \u2014a negative issue for Republicans.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last week\u2019s presidential address felt a bit like 2018 all over again. Important issue \u2014 election integrity \u2014 but the wrong issue for a major speech with gas going up and the war \u2014 the driver of gas prices \u2014 expanding.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The president is almost out of runway if he wants a soft landing this fall. Time to talk to voters about their concerns and better explain the dynamics of the Iran war and its impact on the economy. Otherwise, if Democrats win in November, we are likely headed toward endless investigations and impeachment over the next two years, rather than continuing to build on the private sector successes that the BBB has started to put into motion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With all due respect, my advice to the president is to make the voters\u2019 No. 1 issue, the economy, his No. 1 issue. The base alone won\u2019t win the election for you this year any more than it did in 2018 or even 2020.\u00a0More to the point, they are already with you; women and independents are not.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The president has a positive economic story to tell if he would just tell it. The bully pulpit is a terrible thing to waste.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

David Winston is the president of The Winston Group and a longtime adviser to congressional Republicans. He previously served as the director of planning for Speaker Newt Gingrich. He advises Fortune 100 companies, foundations and nonprofit organizations on strategic planning and public policy issues, as well as serving as an election analyst for CBS News.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more Trump-backed candidates sweep to victory in Arizona primaries<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are plenty of variables when writing campaign strategies. But one thing that you can\u2019t control is time. How often have we heard losing candidates complain, \u201cIf we\u2019d only had another week?\u201d   But Election Day is fixed and finite and every politician must adhere to that reality \u2014 including the president.   Right now, looking at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":671,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"yoast_head":"\nRepublicans: Time is not on your side - American Industry Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/americanindustryreview.com\/?p=672\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Republicans: Time is not on your side - American Industry Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There are plenty of variables when writing campaign strategies. 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