The GOP midterms strategy is Trump and a prayer

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What we learned from the first day of the Republican convention in Dallas.

Welcome to The Midterms, Actually. Every week I’ll be writing about two things: one big idea or trend I see forming across the 2026 primaries, and one thing I’m hearing from a voice on the ground. You can sign up here to get it in your inbox every week. Let’s get into it.

The first-of-its-kind Republican midterms convention began in the same vein as President Donald Trump’s second term: open grift. The president announced a pledge to give every American $5,000 if Republicans win the House and the Senate — part of what he’s calling a new dividend for American voters, and what some Democrats are calling an attempted bribe.

Astead W. Herndon’s weekly guide to the big ideas and key people behind the political shifts shaping the 2026 elections.

Obviously, there are lots of questions about Trump’s announcement: Who will pay for the $1 trillion-plus dividend? Taxpayers. Could this even happen without congressional approval? Probably not. Why not just vote on it now, while Republicans control Congress? It would likely fail.

But I think the pronouncement — and the GOP convention broadly — is best understood as a proxy for the Republican message in the midterm elections, not a policy roadmap for what Trump would do if Republicans maintained control of the House and Senate.

So what can we actually glean from the GOP’s two-day bonanza in Dallas, and how does the message they were offering on that made-for-TV platform match up with the message they’ve delivered on the campaign trail? I took a close look at the convention speeches on Wednesday and Thursday, dug through our America, Actually reporting focusing on Republican voters and their candidates, and pulled together some trends that help explain the GOP strategy for defying the odds (and the polling) come Election Day.

1. Republicans are mostly in hiding — One reason Trump’s midterm convention sticks out in this year’s landscape: It’s one of the rare places Republicans will campaign out loud. Congressional candidates, even in battleground House districts, have rarely held public events or town halls this year. And as Trump’s unpopularity has continued to grow, driven by rising gas prices and an unpopular war with Iran, it’s not like the GOP has responded by mounting a defense of its leader. They’ve mostly gone AWOL, a result of the electoral pickle the president has put them in.

Trump is undoubtedly still the most powerful figure within the party, particularly among the Republican base, but Trump is also the biggest motivator for the Democratic base, and is increasingly off-putting to independent voters, who backed him in 2024. His approval has sunk to 33 percent in one recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, the lowest of his presidency, and that same poll found Democrats markedly more fired up for the midterms than Republicans — an enthusiasm gap that’s poison for the party in power. The independents who put him over the top have soured as the war drags on: a UMass poll found mo

So when Trump tells voters at the GOP midterm convention to “pretend that he’s on the ballot” and turn out in November, I think his opponents listen with glee. Democrats are in the position they’re in because of a brewing electoral backlash to Trump — and the reason Republicans are so hard to find on the campaign trail is that they sense that same backlash is brewing, too. Check out what Ted Cruz said on The View this week: “The big open question is, do Republicans show up?” Cruz asked. “If we stay home, there’s a blue wave.”