GRIT, VERVE, AND HEART

How The GOP Wins It All In 2026 By Crushing The Dem Color Revolution!

It’s not a lie that Republicans have a habit of not turning out for off-year elections. The recent win by the Democrat candidate in Miami’s mayoral race is proof of that. The real question is: Why?

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There are a number of points that people like to look at. One is that presidential elections tend to have a stronger draw for those who are normally low propensity voters. The argument goes that minority voters who’ve flocked to Trump along with working class voters have not been turning out to the same extent they did in 2024. This “erosion” of support is a portent of doom, according to some anonymous consultants quoted in mainstream media.

In the aftermath of the early November races, The New York Times wrote:

“One place that illustrates the reasons for Republican concern is Passaic County, N.J., which is the most Hispanic county in the state. Trump won the county by three percentage points in 2024; last night, the Democrat Mikie Sherrill won it by 15 points.

That drop-off in support is an ominous sign for Republicans who are hoping to turn Trump’s voters into permanent members of their coalition.”

The secret to Trump’s success in 2024, then, is specifically Trump himself according to none other than Ron DeSantis.

“I think Republicans have an issue that Donald Trump has created a big pool of voters, but some of them are unique to him, right? ... So they’ll go vote for Trump, and they’ll vote for all Republicans when Trump is on the ballot. But if he’s not on the ballot, some of them don’t vote.”

This, coupled with the “President’s Penalty” wherein the party in power is usually checked in the midterms by stronger support for the party out of power, could spell a one-two punch for the GOP in 2026.

But if you’ll pardon my critique of these analyses, I don’t think they really answer the question “Why?” for the GOP in particular and at this moment in time.

I get the concept of the President’s Penalty, that’s a part of the organic ebb and flow of power in a Democracy in normal times. But these are not normal times and I believe that even the supposed “low information” voters have a sense that something epochal is going down right now.

But if that’s the case, then why the drop-off? Well, the answer would have to fall to the Trump factor.

However, people not turning out because Trump’s name isn’t on the ballot is not a cause either. It’s an effect. A rather puerile attempt at deflecting blame from those who paid the analysts’ salaries: the politicians.

“Why did we lose?”

“Well people didn’t turn out to vote.”

“Brilliant. Here’s $600,000.”

Many people believe that there’s something about Trump the man that’s especially inspiring and that’s how he turns out voters. They aren’t wrong. The problem is stopping at that point.

Though it feels like magic, it isn’t. The qualities of Trump aren’t exactly lightning in a bottle. They’re open to examination and definition and, because of that, they can be replicated.

I posit that they should be replicated on a grand scale.

What is it about Trump the man that makes him so different and inspiring compared to our average politician? Let’s take a look:

1) Authenticity

Trump is who he presents himself as. Smart, refined, caring and yet at the same time brash and unwilling to pretend that what our politicians like to think of as normal is in fact actually normal.

An appreciation for authenticity is written into the cultural DNA of Americans. We’ve never had an aristocracy and we’re prouder for that fact. Authenticity is honesty in action -- the exact opposite of the typical politician who promises one thing and then fails to deliver.

We have an innate sense of the authentic and are drawn to it. Whereas Europeans want to coalesce around authority, Americans look for the authentic. You can see it in our pop culture. Rag time music was replaced by jazz which was then replaced by rock, which was replaced by grunge and rap. Pop writing and film went from regency dramas, to travelogues, to noir, to westerns. Each successive iteration is grittier and more “real” than the one that came before it. Each is a reaction to an industry that relies on the formulaic -- a habit that turns off the consumer priming them for whatever breaks through as the next big thing.

It explains why today’s youth gravitate towards Asian pop culture. Our own “artists” can’t help but produce sermonizing Leftist screeds that obsess over pronouns more than character itself. There’s a sense that the Asian creator isn’t bound by that insanity and, in being freer, develop a more authentic personal relationship with their fans.

2) Energy

In terms of writing, Trump obeys the novelist’s rule that it’s always better to show than to tell. He doesn’t pontificate and plan as much as he manifests. Which we see as his endless frenetic pace. It’s rumored he doesn’t sleep. Good. Who can sleep seeing what’s going on in the country and the world these days?

Too many politicians are like me: analytical and ideological. They pride themselves on their intellect and never miss an opportunity to demonstrate it. But talk isn’t just cheap, it’s become meaningless in the minds of the average voter.

Movement is king.

More than planning, implementation. More than posturing, action.

This isn’t just a matter of personal style. Every politician who wants to capture the admiration of the voter should find their energy and turn it to eleven. It won’t look the same way for everyone, but that doesn’t mean that we should toss this important qualification aside. So many of the Democrats get this and have mastered the art of appearing to have energy. They scream, swear, and protest all in the name of looking like they are doing something.

It is through his energy that Trump communicates his authenticity. The health and well-being of the nation and we the people are important to him. He doesn’t have to tell us that. He shows us. Everyday.

3) Moral Imperative

The secret behind that energy is the fact that Trump has the moral imperative. He’s the reformer of the thing that desperately needs to be reformed.

We don’t like the graft and the corruption and the systems set up to destroy the country from within. He doesn’t like it either. He’s not just on a mission, he’s on our mission.

That’s democracy 101. The people voted him into office in order to set to right real concerns. It’s clear that he shares these same concerns and is as horrified by what’s going on as the rest of us.

While his backstory may not be the most pristine in the conventional sense of your average Conservative Christian politician, there is no doubting that his heart is in the right place when it comes to wresting power from the grimy mitts of the administrative state and putting it back in the hands of the people.

Here then is the magic combination that must become the new criteria by which we choose our future representatives and senators. These are qualities that “trump” the old and busted qualities we used to look for in our politicians: experience (ahem “age”), good at public speaking, and a high degree of establishment education which is almost universally a degree in law.

Those traits made sense in the olden times. But just like pop culture that’s gotten formulaic and stale, they’ve completely lost their value, and hence their appeal as well. In the 21st century, voters don’t look for these. It’s obvious when you see the rise of Democrats like AOC, Mamdani, and John Fetterman that what they really want is authenticity, energy, and moral imperative.

It’s not the absence of Trump on the ballot that keeps Trump voters home. It’s the absence of these three important traits. If a candidate doesn’t have these three qualities, then the voter doesn’t see a reason to vote.

And it’s not up for argument. It’s increasingly clear that voters in almost every age demographic have soured on the slick aged attorney model of politician for a very good reason. The worst characters at the top of the worst scandals in the nation’s history: Comey, Biden, Obama, the Clintons, Milley, even Fauci -- all are in their own way avatars of this model. The slick aged attorney has become so closely associated with greed and corruption, that it instinctively raises red flags in the minds of voters.

Authenticity, energy, and moral imperative are three qualities that each feed into the other. Like our God and our government, they are triune. They are worth emulating because, more than a college degree or a stint as partner at a private law firm, they communicate the sincerity and the goodness of the politician.

Grit, verve, and heart.

Call it whatever you want, it’s what the voter is looking for.

Because our nation is messed up beyond all reckoning and the voter needs tools actually suited to the job to fix it.

I’d like to put my thesis to the test. Here, I’m going to show you what these traits would like on a party-wide scale. You tell me if what I’m describing would get you and your “low-information” or “low-propensity” voter friends to the polls in 2026.

My theory isn’t that those voters are unplugged or dumb. It’s that they’ve made the determination that voting for someone who isn’t a change agent is the same as not voting at all. So I’m going to design a party platform and plan that would smash that perception from coast to coast and bring red voters to the polls in numbers equal to or greater than those in 2024. All without Trump on the ballot.

What I’m about to detail here isn’t drawn up with any concern about practicality or feasibility. Consider it instead the new guiding star to which Republicans must orient themselves and strive to attain almost as if they’re platonic ideals.

Brace yourselves, because this is about to get extreme.

1) Stop Pretending

As Sundance has repeatedly stated, our politicians know the government is a completely evil clusterfark of a mess. But they act like it isn’t.

So my first and greatest suggestion is that we drop the act.

Every citizen in our great nation knows the following:

• The Deep State performed a soft coup in 2016

• Then the Deep State performed a less-than-soft coup in 2020

• Now the Deep State is openly agitating for color revolution

In each of these scenarios, the rights of every single American was violated. And in these scenarios even the personal rights of our congressmen themselves were violated. It’s all illegal, from stem to stern, and we can’t even censure a Democrat politician like NJ Representative LaMonica McIver for knowingly playing a role in fomenting unrest by illegally attacking law officers who were only trying to enforce the laws people like her were elected to draft.

Like McIver, none of the other coup participants have faced any real consequences and, as a result, trying to kick off the violent overthrow of the government has practically become a sport on the Left.

While the Seditious Six are a recent example, they won’t be the last.

Question: Setting aside the fact that these people should be in jail, why haven’t they even been censured in congress? This is something our representatives have within their power to do. But when the time comes, it’s not just the Democrats but also the GOP that comes to the rescue of these lying illegitimate and violent revolutionaries.

The party pretends that what’s happening isn’t what we see. The fact they aren’t scandalized the way the rest of are even when they themselves are the victims, only adds to the outrage.

But it doesn’t end there.

DOGE showed massive corruption and congress failed to codify any measures to prevent the same thing from happening in the future.

They’re pretending. It wasn’t that big of a deal.

That should stop. Not in November or October, but today. Start making consequences for treason real. That’s what it means to Stop Pretending.

2) Judicial Overhaul

At the heart of both Deep State coups and the current color revolution is Judge Boasberg. The man has been a key player in every aspect of the bureaucratic overthrow of American democracy. These days, his behavior is emblematic of federal judges in general. He’s a crony. A thug in a black robe.

SCOTUS told him he was wrong. He ignored them. Congress summoned him to testify. He ignored them. He’s merely one of hundreds of rogue judges who assume for themselves the power to refuse to enforce laws on the books, or the power to control the military, or the power to invent rights for non-citizens while depriving actual citizens of their constitutional rights.

The GOP must universally condemn these actions and implement a complete clearing of the DC federal bench along with new measures to hold judges accountable when they do things like facilitate illegal spying on the highest executive in the land in a blindly partisan witch hunt. For example.

People complain about the lack of action from the DOJ on prosecuting these criminals and clearing up the story of the J6 pipe bomber, but if every judge in DC is co-opted and compromised, it doesn’t matter if Bondi sends out a thousand indictments yesterday, every single one of them will be dismissed with a chuckle and it’ll be a slap in the face to every American who understands that government is supposed to abide by its own laws or else politics is nothing but a national humiliation ritual.

Fix the judges. That should priority number one for fixing the DC machine. Everything else is wasted breath. Pretenders act like this is just the way things are. But no clause in the Constitution gives judges the ability to unilaterally overthrow the executive.

3) Inquisition Now!

The other obstacle to justice are the cops themselves. Namely the DC FBI and DoJ lackeys. These are dogs that are determined not to hunt. Spare us the virtuous “rank and file” drivel. These are the same guys who mobilized by the thousands to hunt down Americans for the crime of protesting a stolen election. Protesters were murdered. Others would go on to commit suicide. Jobs were lost, careers destroyed, homes sold, families broken. The “rank and file” never batted an eye. There were only a handful who protested and turned whistleblower. The rest we can comfortably assume were more concerned with the cost of organic kale at Whole Foods than they were about our civil rights.

They don’t deserve to be fired. They deserve to be jailed. But I think at the very least they have to face the former if American law and order can ever be restored to some semblance of legitimacy.

Not only was the DoJ caught with its pants down with the sudden arrest of a pipe “bomber” they’ve known about since 2021, the person running the prosecution was a key player in the first and second coups: Jocelyn Ballantine.

“Jocelyn Ballantine was one of the Department of Justice attorneys assigned to Michael Flynn’s prosecution. The Department admitted altering evidence in the case following a reprimand from the judge. She called this an inadvertent mistake at the time.

Ballantine also provided altered documents to Sidney Powell, and submitted an FBI interview report with redactions to information that was crucial to the case, according to En-Wikipedia. When the US government threw out the case against General Flynn, Ballantine declined to sign the motion to dismiss the charges against him.

She is as crooked as they come.

Jocelyn Ballantine was later assigned to the infamous Proud Boys Trial.

Ballantine and the Biden prosecutors made up evidence, pressured the defendants to lie to the court, planted evidence in the Proud Boys chat group, and led the charge to send the innocent men to prison for over a decade each.

Ballantine is scum.”

What is this person doing still roaming the halls of DC Justice? Not only that, but she’s managed to insert herself as the lead prosecutor in the J6 pipe “bomber” case? That she remains at all displays either a stunningly childlike naivete on the part of Pan Bondi, or a desire to enter into the anti-American conspiracy with these administrative color revolutionaries.

Congress can act. Here’s an idea: Propose an Inquisition. Not the historical Inquisition, but an Inquisition more akin to the kind found in the grimdark scifi of Warhammer. In that world, the Inquisition are elite investigators granted enormous authority and extraordinary powers.

What I propose is the establishment of an investigative team composed of outsiders and virtuous insiders. People with experience taking on large criminal networks like the mafia or trafficking rings. Spare no expense. Give them access to every tool and any experts. Give them the authority to flip insiders. Send seasoned spies into the ranks of the comfy DC elite. Give them the authority to fire unilaterally. Arrest anyone, even judges. Unfetter their ability to interrogate. These are traitors we’re dealing with after all. Monitor all government communications. Cloaks. Daggers. Bugs. Honeypots.

Do to them what they so brazenly did to Trump and his inner circle. Turn their every tool against them and in the process, turn the screws as well.

We tried the Inspector General. IGs have been revealed to be part of the scam. They’re coverup artists with a badge.

It’s not time for another special counsel or IG. We don’t even need an IG with teeth. We need an IG with fangs. Fangs and a purview over the entire DoJ including the FBI. And the Pentagon, the CIA, the State Department, and the Inspector Generals themselves. These are the same organizations that think they got away with usurping the government at least twice before. We the citizens of America don’t care about their precious little rights because they never cared about our fundamental right to self rule. Treat them like the disease to democracy they are. They are agents of hostile foreign powers. They should spend their remaining days cowering in utter shame for their manifest crimes.

That’s what justice looks like.

Go hard against the government and the smug rabble that until now have reserved for themselves the power to veto the will of Americans. This is what it means to Stop Pretending.

Up to now, we’ve allowed ourselves to accept as fate this idiotic idea that once Trump disappears from the scene, the party will go back to being what it was. The midterm will be the first test of that theory. Normally, I’d expect Conservatives to just give up. But that’s what failure look like. What does success look like?

It looks like what I’ve just outlined. A party that’s learned how to fight. A party that places a premium on Authenticity, Energy, and Moral Imperative. Grit, verve, heart. The new holy trinity of American politics. We want a party that’s serious about results and implementation and not endless debates and sternly-worded letters and congressional investigations that go nowhere.

Trump’s success isn’t a superpower. It’s a formula. Up to now, we’ve been content to pin all our hopes on that one man. It makes for an epic tale, to be sure. But we’re Americans, not Europeans. When we need a hero, we become the hero. Applying this three-part formula, and then using it to zero in on the problem with the express intention of solving it is something we all can do.

No one said that our hero has to stand alone. It’s time for the party to demonstrate what they’ve learned and do what the voters want them to do: become heroes in their own right.

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Spy, Inmate, Research Consultant, Intel Analyst, Writer, Sentinel, Teacher, Reporter, SIGINTer, Activist, Librarian. I pushed a shield at the Capitol and Judge Nichols thought my reward for surviving the Epiphany Massacre should be that I be in prison when my mother died. Now I’m picking up the pieces of my life desperately clawing my way back to that rarest of treasures: The Better Day. Languages: English, Japanese, Mandarin.

Matt da Silva once worked at the highest levels of government trust as a Japanese and Mandarin Navy linguist. In addition to working at the tip of the intel spear, he also has the distinction of having served 18 months in federal prison for his involvement in Jan 6. Now he’s pardoned and using his intel analysis and writing skills in defense of the 21st century civil rights movement known as the MAGA movement. You can find more of his writings at his substack (which is free). You may also want to give him a follow on X and TruthSocial or watch his videos on his Rumble channel, da Silva Bullet. Please subscribe!

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