In races around the country, Republican incumbents and would-be legislators will need to convince a skeptical country to stick with the status quo in this fall’s midterm elections. It’s a tough bid in the best circumstances, with the ruling party in the White House and Congress historically suffering from voter backlash. This year is made even more challenging for the GOP by the party’s lack of a convincing sales pitch for why Americans should bother granting President Donald Trump another two years with a friendly Congress in place.
As things stand, prospects are looking particularly shaky for Republicans retaining the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., currently presides over a slim three-vote majority (with two vacant seats.) The GOP’s odds of retaining a Senate majority, on the other hand, are high. Despite defending more seats than Democrats, according to the Cook Political Report, the overall map still leans red. But as Politico noted last summer, it would be conceivable — albeit near miraculous — for Democrats to flip the four seats needed to take control. Complicating things further for Republicans’ chances are the many, many resignations legislators have announced over the past year, more of whom come from their side of the aisle.
The path of least resistance for congressional campaigners would be to follow Trump’s lead. The president believes himself to be the GOP’s greatest messaging machine but isn’t keen on talking about the ongoing affordability crisis, instead insisting the economy is doing better than ever. Trump’s reticence is being reflected in lagging poll numbers that should make candidates wary of emulating his callous approach.
The president believes himself to be the GOP’s greatest messaging machine but isn’t keen on talking about the ongoing affordability crisis
Without Trump to guide them, Punchbowl News reported Thursday that Republicans are “planning to make their marquee tax bill the centerpiece of their 2026 election messaging.” As part of that effort, according to Punchbowl, lawmakers are apparently altering the branding of the law formerly known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill” into the “Working Families Tax Cut.” It’s a bit of a stretch, given how few of the legislation’s benefits went toward lower- and middle-income families versus flowing into the wealthiest Americans’ pockets and bank accounts.
If you ask Johnson, though, the GOP’s problem isn’t that it lacks a good sales pitch to the American people this year, or that there’s a problem with messaging around affordability. Instead, he told Fox Business host Stuart Varney last month that the main issue is that Republicans “had so many things to message. I mean, it’s a blessing and a curse. The Big Beautiful Bill was aptly named because there was so much in it, so much policy, and there were so many things to message all at once.”
The part about the bill being jam-packed is true, as it contained almost everything the GOP wanted to get done legislatively for the year. The $3.4 trillion package included billions for Trump’s immigration crackdown, tax cuts for businesses and the rich, and crude attempts to make good on campaign promises such as “no taxes on tips.” And most of the positive effects of the law won’t be fully felt until later this year at soonest, making singing its praises into more of an abstract work than many candidates would prefer.
It also doesn’t help that Trump didn’t do the traditional tour of the country to sell the package to his base after signing it. Rather than promoting his administration’s biggest supposed win, his focus swiftly jumped toward renovating the White House and his quixotic campaign to win a Nobel Peace Prize. Individual members were left to figure out their own strategy for convincing their constituents that the law is great — an effort that doesn’t bode well for a repeat performance this year.
Absent the boost that fresh legislating would bring, Republicans will be forced to make do with the hand they’ve dealt themselves Democrats, for their part, have had no problem with messaging around the tax law. For months now, they’ve been hammering the cuts to social programs Republicans jammed through, especially those targeting Medicaid and food assistance. Multiple polls showed that most Americans didn’t like the bill even before it passed; the media blitz from Democrats can at least partially be credited for keeping its popularity floundering in the months since it became law. It would help Republicans’ case for them to spend the next several months passing legislation that benefits most Americans. For example, Sen. Jon Husted, R-Ohio, told Punchbowl he’d want to “see regulatory reform passed to drive down the cost of housing.” It’s the kind of thing that’s great on paper and would really boost him in his race against populist Democrat former Sen. Sherrod Brown, who’s gunning to return to the chamber. (I could even potentially see an enterprising Republican selling Trump on the idea of becoming the “housing president.”) But Johnson has already said he hopes to spend the first half of the year dealing with health care. It’s not exactly a policy area where Republicans shine, especially not after letting insurance subsidies lapse for millions of Americans. And Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, isn’t optimistic about another big partisan reconciliation bill getting through Congress. Absent the boost that fresh legislating would bring, Republicans will be forced to make do with the hand they’ve dealt themselves. They could always follow Trump’s lead and hope that bluffing about how bad things are (or even outright cheating) is enough for them to win big in November. But that’s a message that will ring hollow for many of the swing voters who were promised the GOP would bring down prices — as their costs continue to soar.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House. 
