Commentary: Missouri Republicans, voters didn’t leave conservatism. We did.

Missouri Republicans learned this month what happens when a party trades its principles for a personality. Ann Wagner represented the 2nd Congressional District since 2013. She entered the summer with roughly $4.2 million in the bank against her opponent’s $242,000.

She lost by nearly five percentage points to Fred Wellman, who will be the first Democrat to hold the seat since the early 1990s. In Jefferson City, Democrats broke the Republican supermajorities in both the House and the Senate.

There will be excuses about a “national blue wave” or a court ruling that kept the 2022 district lines in place. Both mattered, but neither fully explains what went wrong. The blue wave was built on millions of individual votes and verdicts, and Republicans should pay attention to the concerns behind them: what groceries cost, what gas costs, and whether Washington is making their lives more secure or less.

The good news is that the Republican Party already has answers.

They are our own. Our Republican Legacy, co-founded by former Missouri Sen. John Danforth, rests on five principles: the Constitution, unity, fiscal responsibility, free enterprise and peace through strength. Three of them speak directly to the concerns voters expressed at the ballot box.

Start with free enterprise. Soybeans are Missouri’s most valuable crop, worth roughly $2.9 billion in 2025. China, once the largest buyer, sharply curtailed purchases of American soybeans during the trade war. Even after a deal, its tariff on our soybeans stood at 13 percent at the start of this year, versus 3 percent on beans from Brazil and Argentina. Washington picked a fight, and Missouri farmers got the bill.

Tariffs are taxes, and Americans bear the costs. When the government imposes tariffs that hurt farmers and then writes them relief checks, that is not conservatism. It is the crony capitalism Republicans once spent careers opposing, with political favors picking winners and losers instead of markets.

The same goes for peace through strength. Reagan’s phrase never meant reaching for force first, and it never meant walking away from friends. It meant being strong and reliable enough that adversaries think twice and allies sleep well.

Today, our allies, from Kyiv to Seoul, have reason to wonder whether America’s word still holds. Whatever one thinks of the war with Iran, Missourians are paying for it at the pump, and Wagner’s challenger made her support for it a campaign issue.

Peace through strength is the opposite of drift and bluster: steady alliances, credible deterrence and the patience to keep wars from starting in the first place.

Then there is unity, and Missouri voters sent a message Republicans should heed. Wellman held 13 town halls, campaigned in every corner of the district and talked about restoring faith in government rather than demonizing the other side.

In St. Charles County, where Wagner won by about 16,000 votes in 2024, her margin shrank to roughly 4,000. That shift should force Republicans to consider whether voters are growing tired of politics built on division. Even Wagner’s concession pointed the way: she called Wellman late Tuesday night, and he described her as gracious. Unity used to be something Republicans did better than anyone. It can be again.

Republicans do not need to become Democrats to win again. We need to remember who we are. Missouri does not have to look far for an example. Jack Danforth served three terms in the U.S. Senate and later represented our country at the United Nations. He believed in a strong defense and open markets, and he saw public service as earning the trust of people who did not always agree with him.

That is the Republican Party many Missourians still recognize, and the one I believe they could support again.

Rebuilding will not happen in one election cycle. It starts with recruiting candidates willing to be honest with farmers about what trade wars cost them, who will stand with our allies even when it isn’t popular, and who understand that elected office means answering to the people back home, not to the powerful.

It requires county committees that welcome back the Republicans who drifted away rather than purging them. And it demands accepting the voters’ verdict instead of looking for someone else to blame.

Missouri voters did not abandon conservatism on Tuesday. They abandoned a party that had stopped practicing it. The way to win them back is simple, if not easy: start practicing it again.