Tuesday night was about as bad as it gets. There is simply no way to sugarcoat that. It wasn’t a blue wave or even a blue tsunami; it was a blue meteor that crashed into the Republican Party. Yet despite how it may feel right now, this was not an extinction level event. The Republican Party and the conservative movement are not done…unless, of course, we decide to give up the fight.
The temptation to do so has perhaps never been stronger. Just move to Florida, let the Dems ruin yet another upper midwestern state, and call it a day. Maybe we can’t take the heartbreak of losing great congressional reps like Bryan Steil and Derrick Van Orden. Maybe we can’t fathom watching a campaign as effective as gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany’s still lose by a substantial margin.
Most of all, maybe we can’t handle fighting when most of the battle is ultimately out of our control.
That’s the hardest part of politics; that sometimes the national environment is bad enough that even your absolute best isn’t good enough. When the story of the 2026 Wisconsin election is fully written, it will become clearer that Republicans lost to history, not Democrats.
Simply put, the President’s party always loses the midterms and the only question is by how much. This time it was by a decent amount (especially in a swing state like Wisconsin), but it was not out of line with historical precedent stretching back over a cenutry.
That isn’t, of course, to absolve anyone of blame. And there is plenty of blame to go around. Voters by the millions felt betrayed by President Trump, who was elected on the promise of lower prices and no more foreign wars. Two years later, they got…higher prices and a new foreign war. Those voters gave Trump another chance because Democrats were so awful at running the country that they could overlook everything they didn’t like about him so long as he would simply lower prices and avoid new foreign wars.
Neither of those things happened, and voters punished Trump’s party for it. It’s really as simple as that.
And the next election is really as simple as this: Democrats will again screw everything up–just like they did the last time voters gave them a governing trifecta at the federal level in 2021 and the state level in 2007. President Biden and congressional Democrats destroyed the nation’s economy with inflationary policies and in the next presidential election, they lost badly. Governor Doyle and legislative Democrats screwed up Wisconsin’s finances so badly that Scott Walker and Republicans won a trifecta in the next gubernatorial election.
Fortunes change remarkably quickly in politics, especially in a state like Wisconsin, and the only way one ever truly loses is by quitting the game. It hurts to lose, never moreso than directly after a loss, but it is the act of losing that teaches us how to win.
The Brewers just won the World Series after sweeping the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Championship Series. A year earlier, the Dodgers swept the Brewers and looked so dominant doing so that it seemed as if they would never lose. Until they did. To the Brewers. The very next year.
Playoff losses in baseball don’t get more lopsided than a sweep, and that’s what this midterm election was–a clean sweep by Democrats. However, conservatives don’t have an offseason to lick their wounds and regroup. The political game never ends; it just changes.
Now the fight is against the massive spending and utter insanity that Democrats will assuredly introduce. The fight is against the radical direction that an increasingly socialist voter base will push this state. The fight is against this state becoming like Minnesota or Illinois.
And that fight starts now. Today. This very minute. And it doesn’t end until these Democrats are defeated just like the ones who lost badly nationally two years ago and here in Wisconsin in 2010. They will overreach, they will screw things up. History confirms that just as assuredly as it did Republicans’ midterm loss.
So where do we go from here? We fight, no matter how small the legislative minority, no matter how few justices remain on the Supreme Court. We fight in every municipal and county election on the ballot this Spring.
Here at the Heartland Post, we fight the informational battle that the left-wing press in this state will refuse to. We will provide the accountability that is often sorely lacking whenever Democrats have power. We will report on their every misstep, their every scandal, their every insane bill.
We will arm you with the knowledge that should motivate you to keep fighting against the insanity and incompetence that is surely to come from a political party that seems to squander its governing majorities in record time.
The only way that party won’t this time is if you don’t stand and fight with us, if you quit the game long before it’s over. We got swept in these midterms, but the new season starts right now. Play ball.
