Commentary: Republicans need to listen to voters, not their loudest voices

For too long, the loudest people in our party have been at the head of the table. They have been bombastic, attention-seeking and consumed with proving party loyalty. In Missouri and across the country, voters finally asked what was behind the bravado. The answer was very little. Fed up, voters turned against Republican candidates, delivering what Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called “close to an extinction-level event” for Republicans.

Republicans in Missouri have been tone-deaf to the concerns and frustrations of voters. When Missourians said they wanted access to abortion, Republican lawmakers tried to sell them another ban two years later, this time packaged as a “reasonable” compromise. It didn’t work, and it was insulting. When Missourians approved a higher minimum wage and paid sick leave, the Republican-led legislature repealed the sick leave requirement and eliminated future inflation-based wage increases. Again, tone-deaf and insulting.

Nationally, a party that campaigned on stopping endless wars found itself defending a war with Iran and the higher gas prices it helped cause. Families paying more to drive to work needed leaders who took their frustrations seriously. Instead, they were told the economy was thriving.

Republicans deserved the reckoning they received on Tuesday. Voters are tired of the empty bravado and won’t tolerate policies that ignore their priorities. The question now is whether we’ll learn from it.

I remain a Republican because I believe individual liberty, responsible spending and economic opportunity can help families build good lives. Those principles have long given us a case to make to voters. Now we have to show what they mean in people’s lives.

What does our commitment to families mean for a mother recovering from childbirth who can’t afford time away from work? That question is especially personal to me as I write this while nursing my seven-week-old son. What does economic opportunity mean for parents whose child care costs swallow a paycheck? What does individual liberty mean if we are unwilling to trust women with decisions about their own pregnancies?

Those questions deserve serious solutions that Republicans can and should provide. But that requires us to listen to what families need, even when the answers challenge our party’s preferred policies.

Good policies aren’t worth much if the people who write them can’t get them passed. We have rewarded candidates for sensationalism and treated cooperation as a liability. This election should make us reconsider that approach. We should be confident enough in our ideas to discuss them with people who disagree. Sometimes Democrats will have good proposals. Sometimes Republican perspectives will improve them. And sometimes Democrats will improve Republican ideas. Negotiating those differences is part of the job voters expect our elected leaders to do.

Democrats may very well overplay their hand in the next two years. But Republicans can’t build a comeback by simply waiting for the other party to stumble.

My hope is that Republicans will move toward the middle, giving pragmatic voices a place at the head of the table again.

Republicans have two years to decide what they’ll offer voters in 2028. The people who will decide whether they get another chance care a lot less about party loyalty than many politicians in Jefferson City and Washington do.