GOP stuck with 'ridiculous' plan as 2006-style blowout looks real: Kristol

President Donald Trump on Capitol Hill, the U.S. Capitol, in Washington, D.C., June 24, 2026. REUTERS/Annabelle Gordon

The Republican Party is stuck with "ridiculous" messaging plans and faulty strategies with a month left till the midterms, according to conservative pundit Bill Kristol, who told MS NOW that a 2006-style wipeout is looking likely.

On Friday, Kristol, a vocal anti-Trump conservative and editor-at-large for The Bulwark, appeared as a guest on MS NOW's On the Line, discussing the political prospects for both parties with roughly a month left until Election Day. Guest host Ali Vitali highlighted recent remarks from Montana Sen. and former chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee Steve Daines, who said at a recent event that the GOP might be in for a repeat of the 2006 midterms, when factors surrounding and including George W. Bush's toxic unpopularity cost them dearly.

"There arguably could be some similarities between the '06 cycle and the 2026 cycle," Daines said. "Think about the condition of the country back in '06: an unpopular war, 6 in 10 Americans opposed the Iraq War. At that point, gas prices had doubled. Does this sound familiar? And we ended up losing six seats [in the Senate]."

Kristol, who was working for the GOP back in 2006, said that he has suspected that the 2026 midterm would end up being a similar anti-Republican wave for a long time now.

"If a president's partycontrols Congress, a midtermelection becomes a referendumon, 'do you want the president'sparty to continue controllingCongress and enabling what he'sdoing, approving what he'sdoing? Or do you want to put acheck on the president, mayberebuke the president a littlebit?'" Kristol explained. "Midterm elections areabout that. And so we focus alot on individual candidates,and they matter at the margin. Precisely the definition of awave is [that] it's aboutsomething bigger. It's anational phenomenon. And that'swhy you see all these statesmoving in the same direction.And we get a little tooobsessed sometimes with thisindividual race."

He continued: "So I think it's a wave. Trump'sthe biggest picture. Trump'sapproval has gone from 49, 50 percent two years ago on Election Day,when he was running as acandidate, to what, 34, 35, 37 percent?That's a huge drop, and it'sgoing to take his party downwith him. And the only questionis how deep it goes. And I nowthink it can go pretty deep."

Later on in the segment, reacting to a clip of former Bush adviser Karl Rove encouraging Republicans to engage in "positive" messaging around Trump's agenda, Kristol called the idea "ridiculous," and added that their current strategy of demonizing Democrats is also faulty, given the nature of midterm elections.

"This is theproblem with thedemonizing of the Democrat side of it," Kristol said. "That works in apresidential race: you don'twant this person as president.It doesn't work very well in amid-year election where Trump'sgoing to be president for thenext few years. As for thepositive agenda, it's a littleridiculous. He's been presidentwith a Republican Congress — atotally compliant one, I mightadd — for two years... What'she going to do in the next twoyears that is different from whathe's been doing in the last twoyears?"

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