Some Republicans Are Fretting Over Their Party’s Ability to Message

House and Senate Republicans are acknowledging they have an uphill battle when it comes to messaging as the party heads into the 2026 election year.

Millions of Americans will see their health insurance premiums spike in January when enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies expire. Congress is gridlocked, and members are fleeing for the exits as the overall mood of everyone in the Capitol continues to trend downward. Instead of talking about President Donald Trump’s domestic policy bill they passed earlier this year, Republicans are fighting with each other over health care reforms and the Epstein files.

Prior to leaving for the holiday recess, House GOP leadership was encouraging the rank and file to talk up provisions in their policy bill when they’re back in their districts.

“We’ll be getting with our members to remind them,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said, “there’s so many, like, just in the ‘Working Families Tax Cut,’ there’s so many things that are in that bill that you could talk about that nobody’s ever heard about.”

Scalise cited modernizing the U.S. air traffic control system and school choice programs from the reconciliation bill, as well as messaging about lowering prices and energy costs and stabilizing tax rates. He also mentioned bills Republicans brought to the floor “to lower health care costs for 100% of Americans,” though notably he did not mention the discharge petition to put the ACA tax credits on the floor for a vote when members return in January.

“Obviously, as we’re doing all these things, you got to go back home and talk about them,” Scalise said.

Rep. Kevin Hern, the chair of the House Republican Policy Committee, told NOTUS recently that Republicans can “absolutely” improve on communicating what they’ve accomplished.

“We’ve had this discussion a couple of times now in leadership meetings about, how do we lead the story?” Hern said.

Republican moderates, including some in vulnerable seats, were quick to call out failures they see in their party’s broader messaging strategy. Rep. Kevin Kiley of California said messaging around the reconciliation bill was “mishandled, sort of from the beginning.” Republicans’ moniker for it, the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” and renaming it afterwards was a mistake, Kiley said.

“It should have been framed in a way that communicated what we were trying to do, which is to prevent a massive tax increase to provide targeted tax relief in a way that will stimulate economic growth and increase wages and purchasing power for American families,” Kiley said.

But Kiley also expressed his worries about broader Republican policy efforts, like the health care tax credits.

“Ultimately, good policy is its own message, right?” Kiley said. “Like with the ACA issue, if people suddenly pay thousands of dollars more for health care, I don’t know what kind of messaging is going to matter in that circumstance. It is what it is. We can try to, ‘Oh, it’s their fault or it’s our fault.’ Unfortunately that’s what a lot of the energy around here seems to be devoted to, like not trying to solve the problem but to blame the other side for the problem.”

Rep. Don Bacon, a moderate Republican who is retiring at the end of this Congress, echoed some policy concerns, telling reporters that Republicans need an “identity crisis,” citing specifically the president’s position on tariffs and Ukraine.

“I feel like we’ve shifted from what we’ve always believed in, and I think it’s hurt us,” Bacon told reporters.

Other Republicans, such as Rep. Tim Burchett, have been sounding the alarm that their party needs to improve its messaging or risk defeat. The Tennessee congressman did so after a Democrat in a neighboring district overperformed in a special election.

“The best friend the Democrats have right now is the Republicans’ messaging, because we do a terrible job of messaging,” Burchett told CNN’s Manu Raju earlier this month.

Sen. Jim Justice of West Virginia has been raising concerns since the elections in November about Republicans’ messaging, when Democrats had a string of significant wins.

“Republicans have done so much good and everything, but the messaging is not resonating with a lot of voters that we need it to resonate with,” Justice told reporters.

“If you’re not concerned then you’re living in a cave,” Justice added. “We’re not good at our messaging a lot of times as Republicans. The Democrats are professionals at it.”

But at this point in the election cycle, some aren’t worried at all.

“We’re a long way away from when that matters,” Rep. Tom Cole, the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, said of messaging.

And a couple of Republicans decided to blame the press when NOTUS asked what they thought of their party’s current job of messaging.

“It’s always a challenge up here, right? It’s who can win the messaging war, and, quite frankly, the press doesn’t help us a lot of times,” Hern said.

“The press does a great job of leading with the story that Republicans are destroying health care, that they’ve destroyed the underlying health care issues, and it wasn’t Republicans who destroyed it. It was the Democrats, but we’ve been not good at calling them out. We need to do a better job on that,” Hern said.