Townhall Review | Commentaries

Waking up to the shocking realities of Tuesday’s election—confused, resentful, and a bill of long-avoided realities—one might say we have all the conditions of a blackout or a hangover.  Let us then take cues from those 12-Step programs—and realize there is a problem, we are its cause, and our principles must be put above personalities.  2026 is a rude awakening, but it can commence our recovery.  Our nation, and the West, cannot afford denial.

The party’s and the movement’s ideals, taught from Lincoln to Coolidge to Reagan to Trump—as he campaigned in 2016 and 2024—are still commonsense and favored. Living up to them and articulating them are what suffered, along with too many Pied Pipers of Podcastistan masquerading as having the country’s best interests at heart and taking a lot of youth with them.

Electing so many Marxists/Islamists in the year of our own country’s birthday, celebrated anemically at best, is the unkindest cut of all. But a serious recommitment to what we’ve long preached is the path to renewal.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ronald Reagan used to quote the philosopher Montesquieu: “The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principle upon which it was founded.”  Reagan cited this point to warn us as more and more policies were enacted violating our principles of self- and limited government.  Later in his career, Reagan would also warn about our decayed and degraded state of knowledge about our own history.

Indeed, today, Americans’ knowledge about history and civics is at record lows, helping explain our new acceptance and promotion of literal socialist policies and politics in America.  Our education system, our schools, have failed us.  Thank God, however, a few historians have given us a gift to help us recoup the things we used to know.  Particularly beautiful and helpful is Allen Guelzo and James Haskins new two-volume history of Western Civilization: “The Golden Thread.”

Enough cannot be said about such a work as Guelzo’s and Haskins’—nor its scholarship, readability, and beautiful presentation.  Their work comes just in time and could not be more necessary.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's election day 2026, the midterm elections. What is at stake? Lots of governorships across the country. The control of the United States Senate, the control of the US House of Representatives, the future direction of Congress.

There are huge issues at stake. You know that's true in every election, but we know it's particularly true in this midterm election, 2026.

The future of our country is very much on the line, as is the future of states, the future of Congress. You just go down the list. America's role in the world is very much on the line. The future shape of American culture, very much on the line. There is no escaping the responsibility if you have the power of the vote.

If you have that power, then go vote. And as Christians, of course, vote your conscience on Christian principles and as Christians, of course. Let's pray for our country.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our long midterm election cycle has almost come to its end. What will follow it?

A long national nightmare – if voters don’t take Democrats at their word.

Their party no longer represents a loyal opposition. They have nominated House and Senate candidates who openly espouse the deadly ideology of Marxism, which imposes poverty and tyranny everywhere it has ever been tried. Their nominees now openly oppose the only Jewish state, perhaps our most strategic ally, while sympathizing with radical Islamists.

One Senate nominee, Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, claims Iran is less of a threat to America than Israel – and no Democrat candidate will contradict him.

Ronald Reagan warned that we are only one generation from an end to liberty. This is that moment Reagan feared.

This election will result in the end of American liberty – unless patriots turn out to vote and to oppose every Democrat on the ballot.

What will you choose? Apathy or freedom? Get out and vote … while you still can.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 1964, Ronald Reagan delivered a famous speech called “A Time for Choosing.”  A few years earlier, Paul Harvey delivered a famous broadcast entitled “The Testing Time.”  In those days of a heated fight against Marxism abroad and an aggressively expansive welfare state at home, we needed to be warned about a lot of decisions before us.

Both Marxism and the welfare state are here at home now. We are in such times again—times that are testing us, times where we are forced to choose, once again, not between right and left but up or down.

These times are brought to us by the same philosophies too regnant in the 1960s, revived by a leftist professoriate dominating our education system for over three decades, churning out millions and millions of students soaked in the study and praise of anti-Western curricula and Marxism.

They are also brought to us by a Democratic party so thirsty for votes they have complied and endorsed with candidates representing those radical views. 

This is why this election is crucially important.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Barack Obama was back on the campaign trail in the run up to the election. And, as he so often does before an adoring crowd, he indulged his penchant for mockery.

Obama ridiculed President Trump’s White House renovations, joking that they looked like “Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory.” The crowd roared.

But perhaps Obama revealed more about himself than about the president. To make Trump the target, he made regular Americans the butt of the joke — people who happily patronize Cheesecake Factory on a night out.

Maybe they’re relatives of the “bitter clingers” Obama famously belittled back in 2008.

The remark is revealing of today’s Democratic Party, which once proudly called itself the party of the working person. Bereft of any new or exciting ideas, too many of its leaders now seem to offer little more than cultural condescension and sneering elitism.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Turnout, turnout, turnout. Everybody —everybody—agrees this year’s elections on November 3 come down to turnout.

If the ordinary GOP voters and the new voters Donald Trump brought to the Republican party show up on or before November 3, Republicans will hold on to their majority in the Senate and perhaps even the House. A blue tidal wave will be averted.

That is a big “if.” History tells us the midterms for a president in his sixth year can be tough.

If the GOP gets a “thumpin’”—President Bush’s description of what they got in 2006, it will be a wipeout for Republican majorities in House and Senate. That result: Bigger deficits, cuts to defense spending, endless impeachment circuses.

The battle with Iran is nearing its end. Oil flowing out of the Persian Gulf back as prewar levels. Voters should assess all of the great news—along with the cost of gas of course—and conclude that it has in fact been good to have Republicans in charge of the Congress—and vote accordingly.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the 25 years since deadly terrorist attack shocked the entire world on September 11, 2001, our nation has been forced to have a conversation about Islam.

And from the George W. Bush administration to the Obama administration and the Biden administration, there's been one degree or another of evasion, both by these political leaders and by our cultural and intellectual elites.

The true nature of Islam is rarely acknowledged.

All this underlines the importance of an important new book by Eyman Ibrahim, the title of the book, “Sharia versus the US Constitution: Why Americans Must Choose Freedom.”

Professor Ibrahim writes with remarkable candor and academic precision, openly asking the question of whether Islam's core commitment to Sharia law is compatible with US Constitution. With remarkable accuracy and candor, he reveals that no such compatibility exists.

It's not just an awkward fit, it comes down to a contradiction.

Islam is fundamentally incompatible with our form of government and the US constitution, and Americans cannot say they were not warned.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Minnesota's massive fraud scandal could deliver a stunning Senate upset.

I’m referring to contest between longtime NFL broadcast professional Michele Tafoya and the Minnesota’s Lt. Governor, Peggy Flanagan. They’re squaring off in the senate race.

Tafoya demonstrated decades of quick on-camera thinking in her debate with Flanagan this week, combining it with a deft slash at Flanagan’s greatest vulnerability. That is: Flanagan’s apprenticeship as lieutenant governor to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz during the tidal wave of fraud that swept across Minnesota after Covid-era “look-the-other-way” policies became a feature, not a bug, in Minnesota’s vast system of "safety net" programs.

Tafoya’s knockout line— “Sell it to someone else, Peggy”—was a wake-up call for the electorate.   

Tafoya would have been a good candidate in any cycle. She’s a terrific one for a midterm statewide campaign when her matchup is among the most watched in the country.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ignoring the riots in France will not constitute the first time we downplayed important lessons from Europe at our peril.

Note the banners under which the protestors are rioting—the expanse includes every radical left-wing organization from the Revolutionary Socialist Party to Resiste Palestine to the International Communist League.  Palestinian flags and keffiyehs are everywhere. What do those movements have to do with what started out as a protest over education conditions? 

Everything.

The omni-cause of anti-Western civilizational sentiment is found in every part of today’s amalgamated left, yoking socialists’ Marxist philosophy to Islamism and Palestinian anti-Western violence.

Do not ignore the effort to sanitize the Democratic Socialist of America here in our country—as they look to decouple it from communism. That’s a separation wholly unknown to the members of the DSA, whose leaders and members affiliate boldly with their communist caucuses. Our DSA candidates may speak a genteel language, but the troops and members within it can be seen in full expression in the streets of France.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.