Will the Trump assassination attempt turn right-wing bluster into action?

Apathetic. That is the best way to describe the Republican electorate since COVID. Listless, downtrodden, distracted, dejected, and consigned to a dismal fate. Will the attempted assassination of Donald Trump finally be that catalyzing moment that transforms the American right into a devastatingly effective and efficient political movement?

Saturday’s shooting is one of many political violent acts perpetrated against the right in America over the past decade. From the Family Research Council and Scalise shootings to the attempted assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Black Lives Matter assaults on motorists, it’s unmistakably clear that leftists want us dead in the most literal sense. Will we finally match their ideological intensity and work toward their political defeat? Will we finally use the power we have to govern in the way the left accuses us of but that never actually materializes?

With Trump almost dying, Biden exposed as unfit for the presidency, and widespread malaise in the country, now is the time to act decisively and without compromise.

COVID wasn’t enough to change us. Those who hate us created a virus, blocked effective treatments for it, locked us down and stripped us of our dignity, and then unleashed the vaccines that likely killed and crippled millions of people.

Black Lives Matter and Antifa weren’t enough. The entire political system lied to us about a cop who followed his police training, made George Floyd a martyr, and used his death as a pretext to remake our country, culture, economy, and workforce into an unhospitable place for white people. They burned down neighborhoods and attacked innocent people with impunity — all because it served the “right” purposes.

But it didn’t galvanize us to act. We re-elected the same incumbents in the 2020 and 2022 elections as if it were 1996.

January 6 wasn’t enough, either. The government and the media gaslit us about what did and didn’t happen on that day as a pretext to criminalize our beliefs and revert to pre-Enlightenment government by prosecuting political opponents mere months after letting thousands of violent rioters off the hook for attacking cops, burning buildings, and beating motorists.

Nonetheless, we continued to elevate the same feckless GOP without any strategy to govern or get on the playing field with new candidates, new ideas, and new strategies. Apathy won the day again and again.

We watched both parties work together to bankrupt our way of life, invade our country with millions of subversive elements, reverse a generation of gains against violent crime, and indoctrinate a generation of youngsters into gender-bending cultural Marxism that makes the radicals of the ’60s seem reserved.

What was our answer? We elevated people like Reps. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Mike Johnson (R-La.) to lead. We had the most pathetic Republican Congress of all time give Democrats practically everything they wanted on every major issue, even as they continued to prosecute Trump.

Did we learn our lesson? Were we galvanized by the Trump prosecutions and the persecution of pro-life activists?

Nope. We renominated every single one of these clowns in the primaries, and the only incumbent to go down in the primary was the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus — sadly, at the behest of Trump himself.

We sleep through the primaries and ignore our influence and dominion over red states while most Republican governors act more like Democrats than like Ron DeSantis.

This time must be different: for us, the party, and Trump himself.

Most of my colleagues will merely suggest that we just need to vote for Trump harder. But anyone who reads our content or listens to our voices was already going to crawl over glass to vote for him. We need more this time. We need to get on the playing field of self-governance and use our power and influence to create political kill zones for leftist policies that are as effective as the physical kill zones leftists evidently want to create for us.

Use our influence in red states

The slew of crazy leftists engaging in political violence makes it self-evident that we cannot share a country with them. Blue states are irretrievably leftist, yet red states are not a mirror image on the right side. There is a reason we continue discussing Ron DeSantis and, now, maybe Jeff Landry of Louisiana. But where are the other Republican governors? We still have outstanding primaries, and we need to vote against status quo Republicans who represent apathy and aloofness to the existential threats we face.

We need to elect people like Bill Eigel of the Missouri Freedom Caucus as the Show Me State’s governor — a man who promises to deport illegal aliens and make Missouri as inhospitable to the left as California is to the right.

We need to get involved in state legislative sessions, demand more from our elected officials, and threaten them with primaries. In other words, merely turning out in a general election to vote for Trump, then returning to our apathy like Punxsutawney Phil every year on Groundhog Day — just 60 miles east of the site of the attempted assassination — will not save us. We need to stick the landing.

November 5 is important, but every day between now and Election Day is even more important for making the plays.

Demand that House Republicans declare political war

We will never have greater tailwinds politically to crush the left than now. With Trump almost dying, Biden exposed as unfit for the presidency, and widespread malaise in the country, now is the time to act decisively and without compromise.

Refuse to fund the government unless the border is sealed and the Trump prosecutions are defunded. Republicans control the House right now; we don’t need to wait for the election. So what if the government shuts down? Let the government stay shut down until Trump’s inauguration if that is what it takes.

There is no better way to ensure an electoral landslide than by forcing a dramatic inflection point to highlight our strongest issues. And there is no better way to verify that Republicans are willing to undergo a major change than by demanding that change now, before the election, rather than after the election on the first Tuesday in November. No more “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.”

Trump must become the man his opponents fear

The irony of this assassination attempt is that it comes on the heels of Trump reconciling with the political system like never before. He has adopted many liberal policies, watered down the platform, and denounced the policy and personnel plan that would make his administration everything the left claims to fear. It’s time for him to red-pill himself and become that man — embracing all the fantasies about Project 2025 that we wish were true.

Let’s govern with the same indefatigable energy and ruthless efficiency with which Trump campaigns. Stop compromising with the left and with those who hate you in both parties. Stop giving Democrats everything they want on policy. Don’t be like Brett Kavanaugh, who was politically assassinated in the most grotesque manner but who responded by siding with the left on key issues, including handing over free congressional seats.

If we believe they have crossed the line this time, we must change our outlook and strategy. “Fight, fight, fight” should be more than a symbolic act of defiance or a mere bumper-sticker slogan. It must be a clarion call to act, behave, and govern.