Kevin McCarthy Tells The GOP How To Not Get Crushed In 2026

The general assumption among most in Washington, D.C. is that Republicans are headed into a tidal wave of Democratic wins in November. While the Senate remains a close call, most assume the House majority will be lost by a wide margin. But not all assumptions in politics go the way that the consultant class expects. The Daily Wire reached out to the man who had the experience of knowing what it takes to win the majority for Republicans — Kevin McCarthy, the 55th Speaker of the House. Here are his frank, honest thoughts on the 2026 election — what Republicans need to do better, how they need to talk in a challenging political climate, and what they can do to stave off a blue wave. The conversation has been lightly edited for length and content.

Daily Wire: Should Republicans have done this redistricting push a lot earlier? Should they have done this years ago?

Kevin McCarthy: I think we should have done it years ago when the Democrats started it. Remember what the Democrats did when Eric Holder left. This is all he focused on. They did it in Illinois, and we kind of just sat back. I remember when I first went to the State House in California, my very first bill on the very first day was to change redistricting. So you actually had competitive lines. You couldn’t do the things that the Democrats were doing. And now I think it’s really bad when you let politicians pick the voters. I like competition. I like the idea of winning fairly at the end of the day.

The day I became Republican leader, Nancy Pelosi became Speaker. Four years later, we had a five-seat majority. I ended up winning five more seats in California, and I didn’t have to redraw lines. I got better candidates and came up with better ideas. This is taking over entire states and saying only one party – the California voters decided that they wanted a commission, and then Gavin Newsom, for his own political favor, went against where 61% of them voted in the Constitution.

Daily Wire: Well, there was that whole period where everybody was doing this independent commission thing, and there was this whole, “Oh, we’re going to take it out of the hands of politicians and we’re going to have these lines drawn according to some kind of fake nonpartisan sort of perspective.” But now it just seems to be complete open warfare. The Virginia experience is just the worst of it.

McCarthy: Well, think about this. That Governor [Abigail] Spanberger, she said when she’s in Congress, “you shouldn’t redraw,” right? Yes. She gets elected and runs as a moderate and she’s become further left than Mamdani to raise taxes, to redraw the lines, to prepick. I mean, it’s so absurd that it really shows you that absolute power corrupts absolutely. And remember what Carville has recently said. He said, “First of all, the Democrats shouldn’t tell the voters, but when they win, they should pack the Supreme Court, make Puerto Rico a state, do the redistricting, because they know the public doesn’t agree with what they’re doing.”

Daily Wire: The cycle and the history is obviously against Republicans, especially in the House, which everybody has basically written off. What are the three things that you think Republicans and the House in particular should be doing differently?

McCarthy: First of all, you study history. So the party in off-year elections usually doesn’t do as well. If you look at New Jersey and Virginia, how those gubernatorial races go, it kind of gives you some indication. If Democrats win both, they usually flip. If Republicans win one, we flip. But there are some things internally that upset me that Republicans should be doing differently.

First, the use of discharge petitions. Now, a discharge petition is 218 people sign a discharge petition, your bill automatically comes to the floor. If you’re in the majority, that’s simply saying, “I’m going to turn the floor over to the Democrats.”

They should stop allowing that to happen. They have passed more discharge petitions in three weeks than happened in 30 years. They let a discharge petition authored by a squad member just pass.

Too many retirements; we’ve now set a new record. So that’s another indication. You’re not just running for higher office; you don’t like the job.

They’re fighting with the Republicans in the Senate too much. So what they’re doing in this is they’re setting every indication to the public that they can’t win or they can’t govern.

They should stick together. They should put an agenda together and they should stop recessing. Now, the Senate stayed in when the Democrats shut down the government, but the members of the Republicans in the House left.

Think about this. The voters gave you 24 months to be in the majority, and you just took two months of that and didn’t use it. If I was in the minority and I stopped the majority from being able to govern, that’s a victory. You could be in there passing bills that are 80 / 20 every day of the week. You gave up your majority for two months when you only have 24 months of it. This is the part that upsets me. And then I watched, like the week before, they fought on things that were never going to fly in the Senate, and they took up so much time with that. I want to see things that shift in the voters’ minds that they want to have you be in the majority. So you know what? Focus on the economy, focus on crime, and you can divide the Democrats on this and really show the public who they want to be governing.

Daily Wire: The complaints that you said are all complaints that I’ve heard from members, particularly leaving town. Why does that happen? Who in the architecture of power thinks that’s a good idea?

McCarthy: I don’t know, because I would not have allowed that to happen.

Because if you’re given this power for a short time, the public’s going to judge you on how you use it. If you’re in a sporting event, if you’re in a basketball game in the last seconds, are you going to quit? Are you going to set up and take that shot?

You want to show the public that, even if the Democrats are doing derelict things, that if you’re in charge, you don’t walk away. You put them in their place, and then you go show simple bills out there, and the Democrats vote “no,” you vote “yes,” and show the public the difference. I give the Senate credit. They stayed in session.

Daily Wire: The other one I hear a lot from members is frustration with the Senate, that they feel the Senate has expectations and priorities that aren’t aligned with theirs. I literally had a member last week saying, “The Senate’s going to screw us over on this particular thing again.” And my question is, why don’t Republicans in the House and Senate understand that voters in this midterm are going to vote based on you as a unit?

McCarthy: It’s always the old argument. The Senate is the enemy. The other party is my adversary; they get mad at us. You’re 100% correct. The public is not going to sit back and say, “Oh, it was the Senate. Oh, it was the House.” They could say, “Republicans, you were in charge. What job did you do?”

Recently, I watched as the Democrats shut down the government, and when the Senate passed the bill over to the House, the House Republicans voted no, and then a month later voted for the exact same thing by voice vote. But what they did there was take the shutdown. It’s a difficult job and a hard job to lead, but if you only take advice from the Freedom Caucus, you’re only going to end up in one or two places: in a cul-de-sac or in the minority.

You’ve got to understand the rules of the House are different than the rules of the Senate, but that’s why you’ve got to work together, achieve as many conservative aims as you can, pass that, and come back for what you didn’t get the next day. But fighting with each other lets the Democrats sit back and say, “They’re the problem,” instead of highlighting and putting the Democrats in a weaker position, or having them vote against popular bills.

Daily Wire: The conversation around affordability has been one that Republicans seem really frustrated by. In part, I understand their frustration because the Democrats basically aren’t actually offering any kind of agenda when it comes to affordability. They’re just giving a nod to the term. But when it comes to the Republican answer to that, they just haven’t seemed to hold on to anything in particular. What do you think is the best response to affordability concerns that isn’t just sort of what the White House has been saying, which isn’t arguing till they’re blue in the face, things are not as unaffordable as the media is making them out to be?

McCarthy: You’ve got to literally show it. And what I always love is members going out directly in their district, showing it, going to the store, and showing the successes. The tough part is that, when they passed the One Big Beautiful Bill, it didn’t go into effect until later, and now you’re seeing some of the outcomes. Okay, your fuel prices are higher. Admit that, but they’re going to come down as the war ends, but show the other things of the growth that you’ve been able to do. And don’t let the Democrats just say something. This is where you put items on the floor. I love the Trump Accounts where you’re literally looking toward the future for your kids.

Daily Wire: By the way, haven’t they done a crap job of talking about those? It’s weird. It’s actually awesome. I mean, the flexibility you get with it is great.

McCarthy: They’re going to transform not just your family, but the country. I would be holding booths to sign kids up in your district. I would be doing it on the weekends when you’re going to the grocery store, “Parents, let me help you sign this up. Let me explain what it is.” I’d be holding brochures. I’d go to the Little League games, right? Not all of you on the team will get an athletic scholarship. It’s going to transform people’s lives. And I would go into the heart of every part of the district. I would go into the part that I did the worst in the polls, and I would be on the sidewalk handing out the card. I care about your kids. You may not have voted for me. That’s okay. I care about your kids having a better future. And you know what? People would like what they hear.

Daily Wire: You still have to explain compound interest to them.

McCarthy: Well, remember, Albert Einstein said there’s only one miracle in this world, the compound of interest.

Daily Wire: So when it comes to the energy side of things, Republicans have obviously had success in the past, becoming the party of “we are going to drill baby drill.” We’re going to make American energy the centerpiece of everything. I don’t hear a lot from Republicans about the energy question right now because we are in the midst of this Iran conflict. What do Republicans do to get back on a good footing on energy?

McCarthy: That’s 100% true. The price has gone up because of what happened; you have to take it head-on. You can’t avoid it. Talk about it. Talk about where it was before Iran, and we’re watching what’s happening hopefully today. The president’s getting an agreement there. The price dropped 10% just on the barrel today — show people how it’s going to get better, but also the strength of where America is in the energy sector of what we’ve been able to accomplish already. Because I will tell you in California, even when the price of a barrel of oil was low, it was really expensive because the Democrats were just adding taxes to it. And I think proposing an ability when the price is up, having a holiday on the tax, offering ideas and solutions to make it better for people.

Daily Wire: The Iran War question, you said that they have to talk about it and they have to lean into it. I’ve seen members who clearly don’t want to talk about it. What would your message be to the conference right now about the fact that you cannot divorce yourself from this? This is actually a central question to the election, and you’ve got to embrace it with both arms, and understand I’ve got to talk about this because otherwise my opponent is going to completely wreck me on this stuff.

McCarthy: The one thing I’ve learned from everyone is that people respect you if you’re honest, authentic, and straightforward. They could disagree with you, but they understand your handling of the situation: that this is temporary, that this is for the better of the future of where America is going to be. And what you’re able to show is, talk about Venezuela too, talk about very quick successes. And that has a lot to do with energy. That transforms and resets geopolitics because China relied so much on it. And because of our policies, we are stronger in this from that point.

Daily Wire: The Democrats have an extremism problem. They like to depict Republicans as having an extremism problem. Most of the extremism problem among Republicans or perhaps even adjacent people is podcasters as opposed to candidates. When it comes to the Democrats though, they’ve got this situation in Maine, this El Sayed guy, they’ve got Mamdani obviously, and they’ve got a lot of crazy people who are running in various places across the country who might end up just accidentally winning. What do Republicans do now to make that extremism and radicalism an issue before those people actually end up in office and suddenly people wake up to the fact, “Oh wait, did we just elect a guy who’s really crazy on a bunch of things?”

McCarthy: Yeah, and you look at Virginia, you could have a Spanberger who runs as a moderate and then governs as one of the most extreme leftists. So I think you show that as an example. What I’m really worried about in this campaign are Republicans who have won in districts that Trump carried from six to 12 points because they really didn’t have to do much and somebody else was electing them. If they sit back and think, “Oh, someone’s running against me, but no one knows who that is,” they’re going to have a wake-up call this election because it’s just like a tide. Sometimes the waves are with you, and sometimes the waves are against you.

This is where you have to lean in. You have to have the ability to communicate with your district. You have to have an agenda where you show your record and what you’ll do if the public trusts you with another two years. So don’t lean back and wait for election time. You should be walking door to door now, listening, and then finding solutions.

Daily Wire: I’m going to ask you about Senate races because you pay attention to those, too. How do you feel about Maine? How do you feel about Michigan? And how do you feel about Texas?

McCarthy: I’m concerned about Texas because that shouldn’t be competitive. Otherwise, Republicans are going to spend a lot of money on a safe seat, which will make us weaker everywhere else. We want to be on the offense, right? We want the Democrats to be spending a lot of money in Georgia. We want them to be spending a great deal of money in any Democrat seat that we want to be on offense. But if we’re spending money in places that should be safe, we have less to go around.

Now, thankfully due to President Trump, we have a money advantage here for the House and the Senate. Maine, look at the Democrats. This is the problem that Schumer’s going to have. Schumer picks the sitting governor. She has to back out because the progressives have taken over. So if the Democrats are going to get behind an individual that has a Nazi symbol tattooed on their chest and they think that’s okay, I don’t understand.

I don’t want to see Republicans fighting among themselves. Do they want the majority? Susan Collins is with us the majority of the time, and she comes from a state that is going to have some independence, rightfully so at times. But if we’re spending a lot of money in Alaska, in Texas, in Iowa, we have an open seat there. Let’s not forget, Obama won Iowa both times. It could be very competitive. When I came in as leader, we only had one congressional seat there, Republican. We now have all four. That hasn’t happened since the 1950s. It’s going to be competitive. I’d like to see us more on offense in North Carolina. In Ohio, we have an appointed senator, and they took their old candidate and spent lots of money. It’s going to make it competitive there. We want to be able to win Michigan. I think we got a good candidate in Michigan. They’re internally fighting. I see Stevens, the appointed Schumer person, get booed at the Democratic Convention, only because they’ve gone so far left. So let’s not let that sit just with the Democrats. Bring that out to the public because those Democrats sitting in the convention are probably not the same as the mass Democrats throughout that state. They’re going to realize, “This party has left me.”

Daily Wire: The Fox News and Daily Wire audience sees the radicalism of all of these various people. But the dominant legacy media, which is still dominant to a certain extent, can whitewash all the way until November. And we just saw this play out with Mamdani, for example. Condé Nast and New York Magazine were running pieces, “We’re not sure about this Mamdani guy,” the skepticism, that kind of thing. As soon as it became clear he would be the nominee, they started doing profiles of him. “Oh, he’s going to the U.S. Open today. Look at him smiling with all these people and doing Instagram shots and stuff like that. Isn’t he fun? Bon Appétit did a thing about Mamdani talking about his favorite hand food in New York. The point is they still have a lot of power. How can we get this Republican party currently to understand that they’ve got a much higher hill to climb than I feel like a lot of the people who are the satisfied voters who came out for Trump, who are tuning into Fox and places like that and that feel like, “Oh yeah, these guys are all radicals, the voters will reject them” and feel that without an honest understanding of what average voters are seeing.

McCarthy: That’s some of my greatest fears. That’s people waiting till the end when the campaign comes. You’ve got to start explaining that now. And you ought to use the majority to put the bills on the floor that show who voted against it and how it’s just common sense and how far they’ve gone. I mean, listen to Barney Frank. Look, he’s close to the end of his life and he’s one who believes the Democrats have gone too far Left. And remember what a progressive he was in his own Democratic Party. Now, regardless of what you think of Barney, he was very smart. I remember I served on Financial Services with him. I could disagree with him, but that man was smart. But then you have Obama out there praising Mamdani…

Daily Wire: So here’s a question about that. Do you think he’s scared of his base?

McCarthy: Yes.

Daily Wire: He doesn’t have to do that. So it seems to me that he does that because, on some level, he is scared of what he sees happening within his own former coalition.

McCarthy: Exactly. He wants to hang out with the mayor to try to get a positive reaction from him. That’s very sad. I think he just doesn’t want people looking at what his library looks like.

Daily Wire: When you survey the Republican scene here, you’ve got the dollar advantage, you still have the majority, you still have these thin margins. What should their priorities be for the next couple of months to start doing what you’re talking about on setting up the messaging that they’re going to have to run on in the fall if they’re going to have any hope of preventing — the kind of tidal wave that will take years to crawl out of as opposed to a backlash that you could recover from fairly quickly?

McCarthy: Now, even if the Democrats have a great advantage, like in the election, I don’t think they’ll win that big of a seat margin because they’re still disliked. They have no agenda and redistricting has made fewer competitive races. So it won’t be like 2010, where we beat 63 Democrats. But the first thing you have to do is meet with yourselves and say, no more internal fighting. No longer do we turn the floor over to the Democrats. No longer do we question whether our rules come up and we’re only going to put bills on the floor that are 80 / 20 and is positive for our agenda moving forward and we’re going to stop taking breaks. We’re going to make a pledge to the American public that you trusted us with this, and we’re going to deliver for you. And if you keep trusting us, we’ll even deliver more.

Daily Wire: Last question: Does Spencer Pratt have any hope in Los Angeles?

McCarthy: I would tell you this: the demographics, I thought no, but he has tapped into something, and not as a Republican. His messaging … okay, I was calling a friend who was a big Democrat, and the person at his house was Spencer Pratt, and he had three or four other Democrats over, and they had just been to an event for Spencer Pratt. They are so frustrated with homelessness that they can’t rebuild their houses, so they’re willing to try something new. And Spencer Pratt, he was just going to go and do what he can, but he’s tapping into something that’s pretty exciting.