We cannot give up. It’s never the time to give up on America. As Rush Limbaugh said, and as fellow PJ Media writer Matt Margolis reminded us today, it’s not time to panic.
We’ve had it good for the past few years. We had a super salesman at the head of the party — the kind who would jeer at all the other salesmen as he drove by in his Cadillac Eldorado, laughing at the second-place winner of that set of steak knives in Glengarry Glen Ross. Because of the star quality of President Trump, we leaned too much on the magic of 2024: his ability to inspire voters with his rallies and his sheer, larger-than-life presence.
It caused me to spend too much time on X and not enough time doing my part: making more calls and doing more of the get-out-the-vote work I took part in this year. I could have put up more signs, talked to more neighbors — heck, even driven people to the polls.
Like any modern-day American, I like convenience. Knowing that someone else oversaw whipping up the votes and getting it done was part of the problem. That reliance on Trump’s superstardom kept me from doing the icky, time-consuming chore of getting to know my center-left neighbors.
We can no longer rely on someone else to do the work. Trump leaves office in two years. Now we have to do the hard work of persuading people to adopt our conservative point of view. That’s so much harder than making a fun AI-enhanced video owning the libs, or, easier yet, commenting on and forwarding someone else’s great post.
Now the real work begins
Turning my home state around, as well as turning around the rest of the nation, is going to require more of us than ever before. I see it as a four-step process. Feel free to add your own steps in the comments below.
Get to know the neighbors (and others in your “sphere of influence”). How many of your neighbors do you know well enough to have a conversation with? How many of them have you ever chatted with about politics? Sadly, I can count those people on one hand. How can you persuade people when you don’t even talk with them? True, some people will never listen to us and vote our way. But there are plenty of centrists and center-leftists who can change. I know — I used to be one in my muddle-headed early twenties. Unlike my colleague Stephen Kruiser, I did stray over to the liberal side for an election. It was the good example of others (and the experience of paying taxes) that made me wise up.
I’ve made overtures to neighbors I know lean left by bonding over our dogs during morning walks. Next, I’ve got to step it up and talk more with them.
Listen to your friends’ and neighbors’ concerns. No, we can’t just yell at them the way campus leftists do to us. The way to start persuading others is to first understand what their concerns are. (It’s painfully obvious that the Republican Partydidn’t do enough of this in the midterms.) This is one of the hardest parts for me. It’s something the late Charlie Kirk did so well and modeled for us all. Just watch one of his clips and see how he would put down his microphone to fully listen and engage.
I can (and do) make assumptions about my neighbors based on their yard signs. But I cannot know their concerns, their problems, or what they truly care about until I start listening. Once we start listening, we’ll make some inroads. At least some of our center-left neighbors and friends will realize that this conservative is not the wackadoodle CNN and TikTok are constantly warning them about.
Be prepared with an answer for why you vote the way you do. (I realized as I wrote that sentence that it echoes the Biblical admonition in 1 Peter 3:15 to always be able to give a reason for your hope.) I tend to make this more of a stumbling block than it has to be. You don’t have to be ready for a debate at the Oxford Union. You just want to tell your story — why you were drawn to conservative principles. Perhaps your paycheck isn’t going as far as it used to, due to the crazy taxes states are levying on gas. Maybe government regulations are strangling your business. You may have been forced to leave a job you loved due to the economic struggle of living in a blue state. Or maybe you have very strong beliefs about social issues that conservatives care about, such as being pro-life or supporting the Second Amendment. Tell your story.
Remember: you are getting the background on conservative issues that you need by reading PJ Media and the other sites in the Townhall family.
Never rise to the bait. We’ve all seen the way leftists on YouTube, X, or TikTok debate. They don’t. They won’t listen, offer an argument in good faith, or engage. Instead, it’s straight to the ad hominem attacks, or just shrieking. It’s altogether too easy to fall into a heated argument with them.
Take heart: most of the time, our normie neighbors are not going to be frothing at the mouth like the specimens seen on Libs of TikTok. Most just have different ideas based on different exposure. I may not convert my neighbor with the "Annie Andrews for Senate" sign in her yard, but if I can stay calm and not play to the stereotypes of conservatives she sees on her social media, then there’s a chance to plant a seed.
The long, hard work of changing people’s hearts and minds starts with conversations. Those day-to-day interactions let those who can change know that conservatives aren’t crazy and that we do have some good reasons for the way we think.
These next two years are going to be hard, unglamorous work, with no likes or retweets. But getting to know our neighbors, sharing our conservative beliefs and backing them up with experience and facts, will make both us and our communities stronger. Isn’t that part of what we’re trying to conserve?