In football, we call them “splash plays” — those big, momentum-changing moments that instantly turn the tide of the game.
A short, quick strike to the tight end isn’t a splash play. Nor is tackling the running back for a three-yard gain.
Think bigger and more dramatic: interceptions, fumble recoveries, sacks, 20-plus yard strikes.
There’s a little bit of an “eye of the beholder” effect: Splash plays are similar to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s 1964 definition of obscenity — “I know it when I see it” — meaning that the definition may vary from team to team. The Pittsburgh Steelers may define it one way; the Philadelphia Eagles another. There’s no clear-cut meaning.
But for the most part, you know a splash play when you see it.
That’s because a splash play is less about what it is and more about what it does. (Which is why it’s defined less by process and more by outcome.)
In politics, it’s called a game-changer.
When you’re riding high in the polls and cruising to electoral victory, you don’t need a game-changing splash play. Instead, your job is to maintain the status quo: Keep the momentum, avoid stupid mistakes, and bleed the clock dry.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t break it.”
But if you’re behind in the polls, the status quo is your enemy. You can’t win unless it’s changed — and in politics, things don’t move until they’re pushed.
Sometimes, a political game-changer is a scandal, i.e., an “October surprise.” But it could be almost anything, as long as it flips the narrative, reverses the momentum, and forces voters to reconsider key assumptions.
Scandals are preferable because they tend to be shocking and/or salacious — exactly what the trailing candidate needs to upset the status quo. In an attention-driven economy that feeds on anger and outrage, scandals hit the sweet spot of mobilizing one side while demotivating the other.
But an idea itself can be a game-changer: It just has to be an idea that’s so shocking and unusual, it pushes voters out of their comfort zone, making ‘em reevaluate their core assumptions.
For example, what if the GOP accused the Democratic Party of declaring war on the world’s smallest, most vulnerable minority?
The allegation would turn heads and instantly capture attention, since the Democratic brand depends on them being champions of minorities — and thus, the archenemies of the evil white Patriarchy. That’s because nearly half of all Democratic voters (44%) are now minorities.
In 1996, 77% of the Democratic voters were white. Nearly 30 years later, that number has plummeted by 21 percentage points!
And therein lies their biggest vulnerability.
The mainstream media has so thoroughly co-opted the word “minority” that when audiences hear it, they automatically think of one thing: racial minorities.
But a minority is simply any group that isn’t in the majority.
(Random observation: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is black; House Majority Leader Steve Scalise is white. I GUARANTEE YOU, somewhere in America, at least one dopey student has noted this correlation… and completely misinterpreted the meaning of those titles: “Will you stop calling Hakeem a ‘Minority Leader,’ you vile racist, he’s simply a Leader! For shame!”)
In the 2026 midterms, the Democrats will be going all-in on socialism. From Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani to AOC to Bernie Sanders, their “solution” to every problem is to limit capitalism and promote socialism. That’s the only play they’ve got in their playbook.
In the Democratic mind, all roads lead to MORE government intervention — period, end of story.
They’re all about the collective at the expense of the individual: increased government control, less individual freedom.
Mamdani meant what he said in his victory speech, “We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about.”
But the smallest, most vulnerable minority in America isn’t black, Latino, Asian, gay, trans, Jew, atheist, immigrant, or Muslim.
It’s the individual.
The GOP should launch a PR campaign that focuses on protecting the smallest minority of them all and position itself as fierce defenders of the individual.
Wanna know a secret about blacks, Asians, Arabs, and Latinos? Most of ‘em don’t want to be identified solely by their ethnicity; they find it repulsive, demeaning, and un-American. Instead, they’re individuals — with individual dreams, hopes, fears, and aspirations — and they yearn to be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
Yet every Democratic proposal further limits their personal freedoms.
So let’s flip the script: Accuse the Democrats of declaring war on the smallest minority of all, the individual.
Force them to defend the other side of the field: Extolling the virtues of collectivism is easy; there’s a reason why socialism’s popularity is unaffected by its countless real-world failures. As a theory, socialism sounds splendid — especially when you’re envious of those who have more than you.
Socialism requires class-envy to survive.
It’s not exactly coincidental that most of the folks who favor wealth-redistribution are those who think they’d be enriched by it.
But when the focus is switched to the individual, socialism is unmasked as government plunder: It’s using the threat of force to take what others have.
And so far, nobody’s come to the individual’s defense. It’s a wide open lane!
The Republicans should seize it ASAP, condemning the left’s bigotry against the world’s smallest, most vulnerable minority.
Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political functions of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual). [emphasis added]
Rebrand the Democratic Party as anti-minority. Position the Republicans as the only ones defending the most vulnerable minority on the entire planet.
It’d be a helluva PR splash play.
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