In America right now, the people are shouting, “Gas prices! Food prices! Health care costs!”
And the Republican Party, six weeks out from the midterm elections, is responding: “What’s that? You want us to fight with the media? Or how about we get mad about this issue nobody has ever heard of because it’s something we made up?”
It’s as if the words “read the room” never entered the GOP’s lexicon.
This dynamic was writ large Sept. 23 when the face of the Republican Party, President Donald Trump, turned his attention and more of our taxpayer dollars to a U.S. District Court in Washington, DC. There, a judge heard arguments from CNN, MS NOW and Politico over Trump’s recent decision to ban the news organizations from the White House.
Trump, Republicans battle the media, but midterm voters don't care
Those three news
organizations sued to block the ban, and before the hearing, dozens of other newspapers and broadcast news outlets filed a brief supporting an injunction on the White House’s ban (including USA TODAY).
The judge heard arguments but didn’t issue a ruling from the bench. We’ll likely get one soon, but the whole affair feels like an enormous waste of time. And aside from being all-but-certainly unconstitutional, Trump’s attack on the free press is of little importance to voters.
In Gallup’s monthly poll of Americans’ “Most Important Problem,” the media clocks in at a non-whopping 1%. The top-three issues in that poll are “The government/Poor leadership” (30%), “High cost of living/inflation” (13%) and “Economy in general” (11%).
It's the economy, stupid. And yet the GOP can't find a midterm message.
A recent KFF poll found the top-two issues rural voters want candidates to be talking about are the cost of living and health care costs. Nearly 95% of respondents said it was extremely or very important for candidates to address the cost of living and 90% said the same about health care.
In a Reuters/Ipsos poll last month, 47% of midterm voters said the single most important factor for them is a candidate’s position on the cost of living.
Nowhere in these polls does there appear to be any national longing for the public admonishment of news organizations that hurt the president’s feelings by reporting on how unpopular he has become.
Airline pilots who are furries? The GOP just keeps getting weirder.
Also absent from the tops of “what matters to voters” polls are big, scary GOP candidate issues like socialism (!) and communism (!!) and anything having to do with transgender people (!!!).
Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama stood on the floor of the U.S. Senate on Sept. 22 and babbled incessantly about transgender people, winding up at this particularly down-the-rabbit-hole statement: “What is more concerning is that this mentally unwell furry community that touts the fact that many – listen to this – that many airline pilots, flight attendants and air traffic controllers are part of the furry community. Lord help us. It is terrifying when you think about this. When you walk onto a commercial flight, it is possible that the pilot flying your plane could have a deranged fetish of dressing up like an animal.”
Tommy, there are a lot of things Americans are concerned about right now, but I can assure you “airline pilots who are furries” is the one thing no American has ever worried about, or thought about.
Even some Republicans acknowledge they're dropping the ball
Look, there’s losing the narrative, and then there’s what's happening with Republicans right now. They can’t focus on voters’ key issues because they and their war-starting president are responsible for high fuel and food prices and the overall affordability crisis.
GOP Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said earlier this month: “These prices are gutting the middle class like a fish and they expect Congress to address them. And we should have started five months ago. We didn’t. But we need to start talking about it now.”
They have not started talking about it, at least not enough. They have continued to fearmonger to their base, but even the base seems to be abandoning them. Every gas station in every town and city in America acts as a Democratic advertisement that says: “This is what Republicans have done for you.”
Democrats are favored on almost every midterm issue
A Marist University poll released Sept. 23 found voters have more faith in Democrats to handle everything from the economy and gas prices to foreign policy and immigration.
That may be, in part, because pretty much everything has gotten measurably worse since Trump and the GOP took full control of the government. But another reason is that Democrats are focused on things voters care about, while Republicans are focused on banning media outlets they don’t like and, apparently, addressing the fabricated crisis of flying furries.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Media ban, flying furries: GOP's midterm messaging is a mess | Opinion
