How Do You Beat The Rising Left Populists? Republicans Have To Learn On The Fly

The Republican playbook for November comes down to a wardrobe change no Democrat can pull off. That’s the bet, at least, from the officials tasked with beating a new class of Democratic candidates who slip on a Carhartt jacket and call themselves working-class populists.

Across the country, Democrat populists like Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff and Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed are running on the economy, courting voters frustrated with the state of the country and pitching themselves as the answer on prices and the cost of living. (RELATED: ‘DSA Is Our MAGA’: The Democratic Establishment Faces A Reckoning)

In some cases, they’re proving hard to beat, officials directly involved in the GOP’s 2026 midterm operation told the Caller. But the officials say they have a plan to strip away the disguise: don’t just call these Democrats socialists. They need to prove it, using their own votes, words, and party platform.

In conversations with the Caller, officials described a two-track approach that brands the national party as captured by its far-left flank while defining individual candidates race by race.

“It comes down to displaying the evidence, and if the party isn’t disciplined about following through on those hits, we pull the punch,” one official told the Caller.

VANCE: “You don't stop socialism by throwing slogans at people about the free market. You stop socialism by making people's lives better." pic.twitter.com/EbpMdTtSYI

The GOP faces steep hurdles. History favors the opposition in a midterm, when the president’s party almost always loses ground. And the environment is unforgiving: with less than 100 days to go, the president’s approval rating remains underwater, the standoff with Iran drags on and voters remain anxious about prices.

One official acknowledged the uphill battle, even admitting it has been a challenge to keep the party on message in recent months. Fundraising poses some other issues.

Another GOP operative working on the midterms was candid that while Republicans are well positioned nationally, their candidates are still being significantly outraised at the individual level.

It is a problem compounded by how much more expensive winning campaigns have become as digital and targeted advertising take up a bigger share of the budget.

President Donald Trump recently made his second trip to Nevada this year to tout his “no tax on tips” policy. It is a message the official said the party hopes to hammer harder. Trump had made an initial trip to Nevada in April for the same purpose. He was on message; he was focused on domestic issues and the 2026 midterms, and the Iran conflict appeared to be winding down. But then the conflict didn’t, and the Vegas trip, which seemed like a step in the right direction, became a faded memory.

Now the GOP is in part counting on the September midterm convention to serve as a kickoff that finally unifies the messaging.

So what is that message — and where do officials believe it can hit these Democrat populists where they’re weakest?

It starts on the economy.

It’s “not good enough to tell voters what we’ve done,” one official said.

The goal, multiple officials explained, is to assign blame: to remind voters that Democrats are responsible for their current problems, and that Republicans are cleaning up the mess left over the four years Trump was out of office. One official said they’d seen success at the local level pushing the president’s work to lower drug prices and the “Trump Rx” initiative.

Trump walks over to the press: "So, the headline today is that prescription drug prices record sharpest drop in more than 60 years. Okay, got it? And I told you that was going to happen." 🔥 pic.twitter.com/UtPOD3dZV3

An internal National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) memo, obtained by the Caller, details how the committee is advising its candidates on their economic messaging.

According to the memo, an NRSC survey found that highlighting “Democrats’ votes to hike taxes outperformed positive tax-cut messaging” among low-propensity Trump voters, 2026 general election voters and swing state voters.

Among low-propensity Trump voters, the voting block that helped secure the president the 2024 election, “adding an immigration frame further increased message effectiveness,” the memo stated. Adding accountability messaging on the economy performed well with general election and swing state voters.

“You have to have a vision and you have to be a little more sympathetic with voters,” one GOP operative told the Caller of the party’s message on the economy. As prices remain high, voters are blaming the incumbent party and the war in the Middle East.

The memo gives several examples of messaging that works for different voting blocks: “Targeting low-propensity Trump voters: Democrats support tax hikes that help fuel taxpayer-funded healthcare for illegal immigrants.”

Another example reads: “Targeting general election and swing voters: Democrats support bloated government spending and budgets that encourage massive fraud and abuse.

But officials believe the most effective move goes beyond the socialist and communist labels, and even beyond economic messaging, and leans on messaging they’ve used for years: defining each candidate individually, at the local level.

The officials pointed to El-Sayed as a case where the socialist tag alone isn’t enough. The sharper attacks, they said, center on framing him as a “terrorist sympathizer” and tying him to left-wing streamer Hasan Piker.

“You use the candidate’s own words. Our opening ad against Abdul Al Sayed has him saying himself, ‘I’m pretty damn dangerous.’ Our 100 days out video had Bernie Sanders saying, ‘Progressives are on the march.’ We had the head of the DSA saying, ‘Communism is our goal,’” an NRSC official told the Caller.

“Using those candid moments from these candidates and candidly reminding voters that even if your specific candidate hasn’t said it, they are going to vote in lockstep with the people who have,” the official continued.

Trump tells me the war with Iran should be over soon and prices will drop: pic.twitter.com/SPs1hckgZq

The Ossoff race is where officials say their approach gets its clearest test. Rather than lean on a label, they described building the case against the Georgia senator on his voting record.

“Fight it with the facts,” an NRSC official said.

They pointed to Jon Ossoff as the model: rather than leaning on a label, the attack is built on his voting record. He repeatedly voted to shut down the government, including the longest shutdown in history, and voted with Democrats to block the working families’ tax cuts, including no tax on tips, overtime, or Social Security.

The through-line, in the official’s telling, is that whenever Ossoff has a chance to show he’s a moderate or dealmaker, he instead sides with the most extreme part of his party.

The larger argument officials made is that the populist label is packaging, not substance. Most of these Democrats, one official estimated, have “over 90 percent voting overlap with people like Bernie Sanders” and no amount of “pretty wrapping paper” changes that.

Through all the conversations with the operatives, there was a common thread: stop leading with what Republicans have delivered and start hammering what Democrats are trying to block, repeal or overturn.

The reasoning, one official explained, is about what actually moves a voter. People like hearing what Republicans have done, but they’re far more motivated when they’re shown what the other side is doing that will hurt them.

Still, the approach is multifaceted, pairing empathy with contrast. Republican candidates, one operative explained, are doing well on the ground by acknowledging that voters are struggling with high prices, pointing to what’s been done and being honest that the job isn’t finished.

And then of course, it’s reminding voters that socialism is actually knocking on their door this time.

“It’s less of in 2020, we were like ‘oh the socialists are coming for you,‘“one of the officials said.

“Now it’s actually happening… if you look at the DSA website, all we got to do is just repeat what they’ve written down and what they say in their past comments,” the official added, saying it is more effective than just the predictions they were making in 2020. “And I think that’s just more effective rather than just trying to scare people, say, ‘Oh, yeah, DSA is coming to you.’”