Speaker Mike Johnson is selling an "extraordinary record" that doesn't match what Americans are paying at the pump—and the opposition's alternative is a former CIA operative threatening to destroy young conservatives who dare serve in government.
With November's midterms weeks away, Republicans face a blunt problem: their sales pitch isn't matching the price tag voters see every day. Johnson ran through a laundry list of achievements on "Fox News Sunday"—border security, the largest tax cut in U.S. history, $1.6 trillion in spending cuts, energy dominance, school choice, prescription drug cost declines. But when host Shannon Bream pressed him on polling that shows Americans feel "very pessimistic" about the economy's direction, Johnson conceded the ground. "Gas prices are too high, we know that, and, of course, we have much more work to be done," he said, before blaming a "hostile media environment" for the messaging gap.
That gap is the story. The Daily Caller reports that polls show rising dissatisfaction with the economy even under Republican control. Johnson's list—border secured, a million private-sector jobs added in 19 months, the biggest regulatory rollback in memory—reads well on paper. But paper doesn't buy groceries. If voters are still squeezed, the list isn't doing the political work the GOP needs.
The Democratic alternative isn't exactly a relief package, either. HotAir reports that Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA operative and member of what's been dubbed the "Seditious Six"—a group of Democrats with military and intelligence ties who attempted what HotAir describes as a "military soft coup against Trump late last year"—is openly promising to make public service a liability for young conservatives. "I want young people coming out of school to say, 'Should I go work for the Trump administration? Like that sounds fun. I might get an opportunity.' I want them to be like, 'Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don't want, and so let me avoid participating in that,'" Slotkin said. The Center to Advance Security in America filed an ethics complaint, calling her remarks "an anathema to the very foundations of our political systems."
So the midterms present a familiar frustration: one party that talks tough but hasn't delivered where it hits hardest—the cost of living—and another that wants to criminalize participation in government itself. Johnson insists Republicans offer "common sense solutions and a steady hand at the wheel" while Democrats "are going crazy." But steady hands don't lower gas prices, and crazy doesn't fill a tank.
The question neither side wants to answer: when does the record start feeling like a record to the people paying for it?
