Kurt Schlichter: We Need to Ritually Sacrifice a Squish GOP Senator to Encourage the Others

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There is a wonderful and salutatory effect to publicly posting a head on a pike for all to see. Now, after the hideous leftist celebration of the murder of that executive from an unpopular industry, it’s necessary – for the benefit of dumb and disingenuous people who will cry about this imagery – to make clear that this is not to be taken literally. It is to be taken figuratively. That is, we in the America First movement must figuratively post the head of at least one hack GOP establishment senator at the summit of Capitol Hill during the 2026 cycle. The real question is who we’re going to make an example of.

Now, I’m old enough to remember when there were a whole bunch of soft Republicans in the Senate. There are far fewer today than they used to be, believe it or not. About 16 years ago – how time flies when you are reforming the Republican Party – the Tea Party movement started up and shook up Washington. It was a direct response to the continued failure of the business-as-usual, managed-decline Republican Party. The establishment told us that we couldn’t ever change things. We had to vote Republican, no matter how bad the Republicans were, and keep our mouths shut. All we were were mere voters; it wasn’t like we mattered. But you know what? We did matter. We mattered hard. And we posted some heads on pikes.

Rand Paul didn’t just show up. Mike Lee didn’t just show up. Ted Cruz didn’t just show up. No, that was us. We changed things in the Senate. We beat unbeatable incumbents. We won unwinnable primaries. And we made it known that we expect conservatism from our alleged conservatives.

Did we also lose some races? Yeah, and as adults, we understand that you don’t win them all. Some of our candidates were subpar – remember that woman who had to go on TV explaining how she wasn’t a witch? That went poorly, but no one bats a thousand. We don’t have to be perfect to course correct back to conservatism. We just have to scare the living daylights out of the spineless invertebrate Republican senators who want to talk red back at home and vote blue in DC. They need to know they’ll be held to account. They need to understand that the head on the pike in 2026 could be theirs.

The current resistance to Donald Trump’s nominees—especially Pete Hegseth, but not only to him—demonstrates that some of these Republican senators have forgotten what happened nearly a generation ago. They have forgotten that sometimes primaries succeed. We are constantly told that it’s a terrible idea to primary Republican senators who are firmly entrenched in Washington. Why spend all that money on a primary? Why take the risk that we could lose the seat in the general? Why not just stick with the status quo?

Well, the reason is simple. Politicians need to know fear. It is said that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God. Fear is important. A healthy fear of the consequences of one’s action incentivizes better actions. The fact is that some of these Republicans don’t think they will ever be held accountable. If we listen to the sages and wise men – who are largely happy with the status quo, by the way – these senators will never be held accountable for their heresies and betrayals. 

By taking primary challenges off the table, we effectively tolerate collaboration with the enemy by Republican senators. It’s time to stop tolerating it. The 2026 election cycle is beginning, and we need to pick someone for the pike.

Yes, at least one GOP senator must be primaried and go down. It’s nothing personal. It’s only business. The methodology is sound for those who remember the British Navy before it became a ridiculous joke. Back in the day, a British admiral was required to do his utmost to win. That was an ambiguous and hazy standard, but the British admirals got the idea and did their utmost. Why? Because when they didn’t do their utmost, the British shot them to encourage the others.

Republican senators must do their utmost to get President Trump’s nominees and program passed. But they’re not going to if they’re not afraid of the consequences of failing to do so. Instead, they’re going to focus on the short-term attention of the regime media for being mavericks and rebels. We don’t need mavericks or rebels. We need reliable conservative votes to get Trump’s agenda through. So, we have to show them the consequences of these stupid games. We have to award them stupid prizes. We have to pick some Republican senator up for election in 2026 to make an example of.

Sure, it will cost the party some money. It could potentially put a seat at risk, although our selection of the target may mitigate that potential downside. But there’s no alternative. Too many GOP senators have forgotten that they can be fired. We need to remind them, hard and unpleasantly.

Now, who should it be? Who do we take out? We have several solid targets in the coming cycle. We shouldn’t focus on someone who can’t be conservative. Susan Collins of Maine is never going to be a hard-core conservative because she comes from a deep blue state. We must say “Yes” to success with her and accept that she needs to do what she needs to do. 

Lisa Murkowski in Alaska is just awful. She’s a continual pebble in our political shoe. Our challenge is that she’s popular in her state, and she’s helped impose their ridiculous rank choice voting system to establish herself in power forever. One of our important considerations in selecting the appropriate senatorial sacrifice is that we win – you don’t want to strike at the king and miss.

How about Thom Tillis in North Carolina? He’s always been terrible. He’s genuinely soft. There are harder noodles. The problem is that North Carolina could go blue if we don’t get the right candidate. We don’t want to risk that if we can help it, and he might be the best candidate to hold it. But we shouldn’t take him out of contention. If he knows he’s a potential primary target, he may ignore his Romneyesque instincts and play ball.

There’s the obnoxious John Cronyn of Texas. I may establish residency there just to vote against him, which would be a joy. He’s got a ton of money but he’s also created a ton of resentment. He really screwed up badly by joining with Democrats on a gun control bill that they spent the 2024 election cycle touting as a bipartisan achievement. What the hell is a Republican thinking signing onto a gun control bill that is not purely a repeal of prior gun control bills? The good thing is that Texas is deep red, and it’s got a deep bench of good conservative candidates who can win a primary and almost certainly win the general. The loss of John Cronyn is no loss at all. We haven’t yet seen him take the lead in fighting Donald Trump’s nominees, something we might expect him to do because the President is not selecting bland, status-quo establishment hacks of the kind that people like Cornyn are comfortable with. Perhaps Cornyn has already gotten the message that he is a prime primary target and adjusted his attitude accordingly.

And then there’s Joni Ernst. I would love to give her the benefit of the doubt because she’s a fellow colonel, but boy, she sure miscalculated. As many have pointed out (which I noted after I drafted this column), the Iowa timeserver managed to draw unwelcome attention to her hack record by refusing to provide a full-throated endorsement of Pete Hegseth, and for, according to some, acting behind the scenes to stop his nomination. That’s a problem for her because, until the spotlight shown down upon her, most of us didn’t realize that she backed the terrible Lankford immigration compromise bill, that she supported the Cornyn gun control fiasco, that she is OK with mentally ill trans people in the military, that she voted for a lot of Biden’s terrible nominees, and that she was all in for all sorts of other terrible stuff. America First folks dug up her appalling George Floyd suck-up tweets and other examples of her Washington Post-friendly kind of weak Republicanism. None of that’s good. 

She thought she was going to be a heroine by opposing Hegseth. This was a big mistake. Instead of hosannas for opposing Hegseth’s his unrepentant heterosexuality and appreciation of beer, she gave every America First social media pundit reason to trawl through her crappy record, and all because she thought she might get some regime media love by blocking Trump’s pick. Hope it was worth it, Joni.

So, is Ernst the right senator to go after in 2026? Well, she was at least savvy enough to finally realize that what she thought would give her a star turn might just lead her to getting turned out of office. By the end of last week, she was explaining that she’s not necessarily against Pete, and that she really just wants to see how the hearings work out, and that she doesn’t want to be SecDef herself, and blah blah blah blah blah. 

At the end of the day, she’s going to vote for Pete Hegseth because she knows if she doesn’t, she definitely becomes target Number One. After all, Iowa is a pretty red state, and there are some potential challenges there who don’t have her baggage. Will capitulating be enough to not make her our electoral target du jour? I don’t know, but if I were her – and I would not be because I am not soft – I would try to explain why all this stuff about not backing Pete is just a terrible misunderstanding and then put the “hard” in hard-core for the next couple of years.

A lot of this is going to depend on Donald Trump. At the end of the day, he may be the one to pick the target. He’s very good at selecting an enemy and personalizing it. We will soon know who he thinks is the problem, and we will be the solution. This is a good thing. It’s necessary. It’s been far too long since we launched a primary against an incumbent squish and tossed him/her/them onto the unemployment line. But somebody in the GOP caucus has to go. Somebody has to be the head on the stick. My advice to the soft senators – don’t be that guy.

Or gal.

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