Instead of Making Canada The 51st State, Just Take Alberta
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The United States remains Canada’s gravitational center, whether they like it or not.Cooperating With Communist China On AI Regulation Is A Generationally Stupid Idea
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I have spent more than two decades working in politics and have been involved in roughly 50 campaigns, from local races to presidential contests. If there is one lesson I have learned, it is this: Never tell voters that what they are experiencing isn’t real.
With the midterm elections eight weeks away, too many campaigns risk making that mistake. Washington wants to talk about foreign policy, economic indicators, and political strategy. Voters are looking at receipts, and those receipts tell a different story.
Voters can forgive difficult circumstances. What they will not forgive is being told those circumstances don’t exist.
In the week ending September 7, the national average for diesel reached a record $5.97 a gallon. That matters far beyond truck stops. Farmers, contractors, freight carriers, and delivery networks all depend on diesel.
When those costs rise, they move through the supply chain. Fuel becomes part of the grocery bill, the restaurant bill, the cost of construction, shipping, and nearly everything else Americans buy. The consumer ultimately pays.
The line between foreign policy and affordability is not always clean. Wars, sanctions, and instability abroad can raise oil prices and transportation costs at home. But voters experience those events through household economics: the price on the pump, the supermarket receipt, and the balance in the checking account.
Politicians love macroeconomics. Voters live in microeconomics.
A candidate can talk about GDP, job creation, or the stock market, but those figures do not erase what a family pays for groceries, housing, insurance, and energy. The voter's checking account gets the final vote.
As much as it pains me to admit it, Democrat strategist James Carville got at least one thing right. During Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, Carville drove home a simple message: “It’s the economy, stupid.” More than three decades later, Republicans would be wise to remember the lesson.
I have seen campaigns become consumed with the issue they want voters to care about rather than the issue voters actually care about. Those are not always the same thing.
The evidence this year is hard to miss. A July Pew Research Center survey found that voters most wanted congressional candidates to discuss economic issues, especially prices and affordability. In a companion survey, 66% said they were very concerned about food and consumer-goods prices, 64% about housing costs, and 56% about gasoline prices.
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Foreign policy and national security still matter. China, Russia, Iran, and America’s place in the world cannot be dismissed. No single issue will decide every race. But elections are personal, and voters usually encounter national policy through its effect on daily life.
A parent in a supermarket aisle is not conducting a geopolitical analysis while comparing grocery prices. A driver filling the family SUV is watching the numbers on the pump. Both are asking the same question: How much is this going to cost me?
They are thinking about the mortgage, electric bill, car payment, insurance, groceries, gas, child care, and credit cards. They are wondering why an income that once felt comfortable now seems barely sufficient. That is affordability, and it will decide November.
Economic frustration helped return Donald Trump to the White House. Republicans cannot assume that the issue automatically works in their favor now. They cannot tell families struggling with grocery and fuel bills that everything is fine or insist that distant events matter more than household finances.
That does not require Republicans to abandon foreign policy or the administration’s agenda. It requires candidates to acknowledge what voters are experiencing and explain what they intend to do about it. There is an enormous political difference between saying, “The economy is great,” and saying, “We’ve made progress, but prices are still too high, and here is what we’re doing next.”
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Democrats should not celebrate, either. Economic frustration does not automatically translate into support for Democratic policies. Voters will judge which candidates understand their financial situation and offer credible solutions. That gives both parties an opportunity, but neither a guaranteed victory.
Campaigns succeed when candidates understand what voters are feeling. They fail when consultants persuade candidates that voters should care about something else. After roughly 50 campaigns, I have found that voters can forgive difficult circumstances. What they will not forgive is being told those circumstances don’t exist.
The question in November will not be whether Washington can produce statistics showing that parts of the economy are strong. It will be whether Americans believe they can afford their lives.
When they enter the voting booth, they will not be carrying economic charts. They will be carrying their grocery receipts.
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Once again, Beijing seems to prioritize power and control over the well-being of its citizens.Taking the scenic route to a very serious Republican problem
By the time you read this, my friend and managing editor Rob Eno and I should be somewhere in the Mountain West, headed southeast toward Dallas.
We are taking the scenic route.
The Republican Party is a house divided.
We took off Friday in a rental car from Inland Southern California. This was not entirely my idea. My doctor advised me not to fly for the time being, on account of a “blood pressure-induced event” in late March. Eno required remarkably little persuasion to turn a business trip into an expedition. He collects counties. He loves Buc-ee’s. He is weirdly excited about a 13-foot Sasquatch at a Terrible’s in Jean, Nevada.
We are also stopping in Moab, Utah, on purpose.
I have owned Edward Abbey’s “Desert Solitaire” for years and have never read it — an oversight I have always assumed I would get around to correcting eventually.
So naturally, we’re going to Moab to pay homage to a writer I respect but haven’t read.
There will be plenty more levity along the way. I expect Rob and I will have developed three podcasts and sketched out a couple of book proposals before the trip is over.
The destination calls for a bit more gravitas, however.
We're going to Dallas as part of Blaze Media’s coverage of the Republican National Committee’s first-ever midterm convention, a two-day spectacle at the American Airlines Center. President Trump will appear both nights. Vice President JD Vance will keynote the first night.
This is a big deal. Not necessarily because the convention needs to happen. Good Lord, no.
Nobody is being nominated for anything. There are no delegates fighting over a platform or credentials. Republicans are spending a princely sum of money to stage something resembling a presidential nominating convention two years before the next presidential election.
It’s political theater, pure and simple.
Donald Trump, of course, understands the business of show very well. He wants a spectacle ahead of a midterm election that could be very bad for Republicans.
Notice the conditional: could.
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I offer no predictions. The conventional wisdom says the president’s party loses seats in a midterm. Republicans have a razor-thin House majority. Trump has political problems. Nobody likes the war in Iran. Nobody likes the high cost of living. Nobody wants to pay $20 for a burrito, assuming such a thing exists. Republicans know they need to persuade voters that the country is moving in the right direction. Those anxieties are part of the reason Dallas is happening at all.
But Democrats possess a remarkable talent for self-immolation.
We have seen it with Graham Platner in Maine. We may be watching it in Michigan, where Abdul El-Sayed has spent precious weeks creating problems for himself with Jewish Democrats that Republicans would be foolish not to exploit.
Then again, Democrats can be ruthlessly effective when they choose to be. They have killed candidacies that became liabilities and cleared paths for stronger nominees. Anyone who remembers what the party establishment did to Bernie Sanders in 2016 — or how quickly Democrats jettisoned Joe Biden in 2024 — should hesitate before assuming they will simply stand around while Republicans win.
The Republicans have problems of their own, and they run deeper than any generic ballot.
Like it or not, the Republican Party is very much a house divided.
What remains of the Bush-Romney establishment still possesses considerable institutional power, especially in Congress. It is conservative in the least attractive sense of the word: hidebound, risk-averse, and frequently several election cycles behind its own voters.
MAGA defeated that establishment without entirely replacing it.
Trump transformed the Republican electorate. He changed its language, its priorities, its geographic base, and its relationship with the working class. But he also made himself indispensable to the coalition he created.
That’s dangerous.
Trump is 80. The Constitution bars him from another term. Sooner rather than later, Republicans will need to answer a question they have spent a decade avoiding: What is Trumpism without Trump?
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If the answer is “nothing,” the Republican Party is in much worse trouble than any poll can measure.
Maybe Dallas will provide a glimmer of an answer. Maybe JD Vance will be the heir. Maybe, just maybe, economic nationalism, immigration restriction, and a less interventionist foreign policy can become a durable governing program rather than the preferences of one extraordinary political personality.
Or maybe the convention will simply be a very expensive show about Donald Trump.
Eno and I should have a better idea by Wednesday.
But first we need to traverse the mountains and the desert.
And see the Sasquatch.
‘Lake America’ is all swagger, no leverage
As an AP U.S. History student nearly 40 years ago, one of the more vexatious essay questions my classmates and I had to tackle was whether the War of 1812 was a matter of “national honor” or “national interest.”
As I recall, we went round and round for days before settling on national honor.
National honor can serve the national interest. National vanity does not.
Honor is often a dumb reason to go to war.
Often — but not always! In reality, the war was fought for honor and interest. The British were impressing American sailors, interfering with American commerce, and treating the sovereignty of the young republic as something they could disregard when convenient.
National honor and national interest were entangled.
Donald Trump is very big on national honor. He wants America respected. He hates the idea that foreign governments might laugh at us, exploit us, rip us off, or conclude that the United States is too weak or timid to defend its interests.
There is much to be said for that instinct.
The problem is that Trump sometimes confuses national honor with national interest. And sometimes he confuses both with national vanity.
Which brings me to Lake America.
On Thursday, Trump signed an executive order directing the federal government to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America.” The order gives the United States no additional territory or water rights. It opens no market, lowers no tariff, strengthens no alliance, and makes no American safer.
It does, however, annoy Canada.
This is where the War of 1812 becomes more than an old high school essay question.
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One assumption behind the American invasion of Canada was that it would be easy. Thomas Jefferson famously predicted that acquiring Canada would be “a mere matter of marching.” Not quite.
We surrendered Detroit, lost at Queenston Heights, and repeatedly failed to conquer Canada. Oh, and of course, there was the not insignificant matter of the Brits burning down Washington, D.C., in 1814 as retaliation for our burning and looting of York (modern-day Toronto) the year prior.
Americans had looked at the disparity in power and concluded that the disparity settled the question.
There is an echo of that mistake today.
My friend Kurt Schlichter captured the attitude neatly last week in a Townhall column headlined “It’s Always Cute When Canada Thinks It Matters.”
Schlichter is right about the imbalance of power. Canada is vastly weaker than the United States. It neglected its military while sheltering beneath the American security umbrella, and its economy depends much more on our market than ours depends on Canada.
But “Canada is weaker than we are” and “Canada doesn’t matter” are very different propositions.
My old teacher Angelo Codevilla had a useful maxim: “What is nearest is dearest.”
Writing about Mexico in 2009, Codevilla argued that geography had joined our countries together “whether anybody likes it or not.” Events close to home bear more directly on American peace and prosperity than events halfway around the world. “Canada’s position is analogous,” he added.
Canada matters not because we owe Canadians special deference. It matters because geography says it does.
We share more than 5,000 miles of border, the Great Lakes, continental defense, energy systems, supply chains, waterways, pipelines, railroads, and deeply integrated economies.
An America First foreign policy should understand this instinctively.
That does not require being nice to Canada. If Ottawa is free-riding on defense, demand more. If Canadian protectionism hurts American farmers or manufacturers, fight it. If pressure produces better terms for Americans, squeeze away.
The question is what American interest the pressure serves.
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Trump has spent much of his second term calling Canada “the 51st state,” referring to ex-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “Governor Trudeau,” dismissing the border as artificial, and threatening or imposing economic pressure on our northern neighbor. Canada’s navy is barely a coast guard!
Canada did not respond by becoming more accommodating. It became more Canadian.
At the beginning of 2025, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives appeared headed for a crushing victory. Trudeau was finished, and the Liberals were exhausted and deeply unpopular.
Then Trump changed the question.
Instead of asking whether they had finally had enough of the Liberals, Canadian voters increasingly asked who was best equipped to deal with Donald Trump.
That was a much better question for Mark Carney.
Trump did not single-handedly cost Poilievre the prime ministership. Carney was a strong candidate in his own right, and Poilievre had weaknesses of his own.
But the reversal was extraordinary. The Liberals came back to win bigly. Poilievre lost his own seat even as Conservatives won a record 8.1 million votes.
Trump helped turn a Liberal Party on its heels into a government with a political incentive to resist the United States.
That should interest an America First president, shouldn’t it?
I do not especially care whether Canadians believe their national honor has been wounded. I care whether wounding it makes them more or less likely to do what is advantageous to us.
Foreign policy is not therapy. We do not need to validate Canadian feelings or pretend Canada and the United States are equals in power.
But statesmanship requires understanding how other people are likely to behave.
Tell 40 million Canadians often enough that their country is a joke, their sovereignty is optional, and their border is imaginary, and some sizable fraction will become willing to pay a price to tell you no.
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That may be foolish of them. It’s also predictable.
The United States can hurt Canada much more than Canada can hurt us. Of course we can.
But the measure of foreign policy is not whether you can hurt the other fellow. It is whether hurting him gets you something you want.
Tariffs might. Pressure on Canadian defense spending might. Hard bargaining over trade, energy, manufacturing, critical minerals, or Arctic security might.
What does Lake America get us? No land. No water. No money. No security. No concessions. Just the satisfaction of reminding Canada that we are bigger than Canada. Big whoop.
Nearly 40 years ago, my classmates and I decided the War of 1812 was chiefly about national honor.
I’m less interested today in settling that old argument than in remembering the question.
National honor can serve the national interest. National vanity does not.
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