Washington must not forget the grassroots

Football is back. The first harbinger of fall is just around the corner, bringing game-day tailgates, late-night bonfires, and hope that this just might be your team’s year to win it all.

Fueling this hope is a fresh round of hype videos getting folks excited for the season. For NFL and college football fans alike, these edits of last season’s highlights are just the thing to paper over last year’s disappointment and turn over a new leaf for the season ahead.

The real strength of the conservative movement is not in the ivory tower or stone colonnade.

One hype video broke out of the college football echo chamber with over 4.5 million views online. What about this video is so resonant? The message — and conservatives should take notice.

The video opens in the Auburn Tigers' locker room, where coach Hugh Freeze is giving a pep talk. “Life is more about others than it is yourself,” he begins. “What buys long-lasting purpose is you understanding selflessness and it being about something bigger than yourself.”

Hopefully every coach and every political movement understands teamwork relies on humility to achieve a larger goal.

He continues, “Tonight, I submit to you that there’s some family that drove from I don’t know where, parked five miles away from this stadium, and they saved all ... year long, just to buy a ticket, to climb to the top of that stadium and watch your tail play!”

As the music builds to a crescendo, Freeze screams the most potent line of the video: “YOU OWE THEM SOMETHING!”

In sports, as in politics, conservatives must recommit to playing for the fans in the cheap seats.

This does not mean rallying around the lowest common denominator or dumbing down conservative messaging. It means remembering why so many conservative advocates got into the trenches to begin with.

How many of those players in the Auburn locker room started as kids in the cheap seats?

How many conservative politicos began as local activists knocking doors, eating cold pizza, and making calls for something they really believed in? Conservatives need to recapture some of that grassroots energy and turn it into tangible victories for the people who put them in office.

We owe them something.

For those working in the professional conservative movement in D.C., that means less time on niche debates and more time delivering for average Americans who share conservative values and need a voice in the nation’s capital.

In 2024, voters elected President Trump and a Republican Congress on clear promises to improve the country. They expect results, just like the family saving all year for one game expects the team to leave it all on the field.

With the announcement that the House is canceling the final two weeks of session this month, it’s now or never. The House will have four days left to crystallize the case they’ll take home ahead of the November elections.

There is no shortage of opportunities to create contrast.

RELATED: Congress gets a clean vote on gender sanity

Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call Inc./Getty Images

The Chloe Cole Act from Rep. Bob Onder (R-Mo.) or the Title IX Clarification Act from Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) would undermine the gender industrial complex in medicine and women’s sports.

The southern border is secure in part because of President Trump’s executive orders; Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy’s Permanent Trump Secure Border Act would codify the administrative changes necessary to preserve national sovereignty if another open-borders Democrat came into office.

House Republicans could take a major step forward toward a longtime conservative priority to close the Department of Education by passing the Less Bureaucracy, Better Education Package, codifying transfers of authority of duplicative education programs.

Passing any of these measures would be a good step to demonstrate that conservatives in Washington are moving the ball down the field for those cheering fans.

No one wants to cheer for a team calling it quits while there is still time on the clock.

Those in D.C. tend to bristle at giving credit beyond their elite circles, but it is time to acknowledge the real strength of the conservative movement is not in the ivory tower or stone colonnade.

It lies in every hardworking American chasing the American dream who still believes in the principles that have made America exceptional and votes to keep it that way.

We owe them our best. Let’s give them a reason to show up.