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Resetting Republican Enthusiasm and a Senate at Risk: Jim Pfaff on The Vicki McKenna Show | Sep 8, 2026

Published: September 8, 2026
Network: WIBA Madison / iHeart
Analysis: Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff

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Vicki McKenna called the first Republican National Committee midterm convention a good idea the moment she heard about it — a way to reset enthusiasm — and then named the problem: almost nobody was covering it. On the September 8 edition of The Vicki McKenna Show, one day before the convention opened in Dallas, she put that to Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff, who joined her from the setup he had at the GOP midterm convention. New polling had just landed suggesting the Senate is at risk. She did not fully trust the numbers, but she asked the question anyway: can two days in Dallas, with a slate of speakers and a major keynote from President Trump, reset Republican enthusiasm before November? Pfaff said yes, with conditions. The rest of the segment covered the Save America Act, John Thune, Cornyn and Paxton in Texas, the ten points lost in Wisconsin’s WOW counties, and the healthcare argument Republicans keep refusing to make.

Topics Covered

• Can the Dallas Midterm Convention Reset Republican Enthusiasm?
• Legislative Victories, the Save America Act, and John Thune
• Cornyn, Paxton, and Why Texas Is Tied
• Trump-Only Voters and the Ten Points Lost in the WOW Counties
• Housing, Energy, Healthcare: The Case Republicans Will Not Make
• Key Takeaways

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Can the Dallas Midterm Convention Reset Republican Enthusiasm?

McKenna framed the stakes as a recurring Republican habit: the failure to seize upon the gifts Democrats keep carrying into Republican hands. Her question was whether a midterm convention — a thing the party has never done before — can reverse it in two days. Pfaff’s answer was direct: that is a very real possibility. The conditions attached are what the rest of the interview was about, and they begin with what the convention says from the stage, a point TCC made in our preview of the RNC Midterm Convention in Dallas.

“The way to do that is not just to talk about only everything that Donald Trump has done. Now, you need to do that, of course, because that’s part of the message anyway. But what you have to do is connect this into the people running in their districts”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

That is a specific instruction, not a mood. The Trump record is part of the message — Pfaff was clear he is not asking anyone to drop it — but a record recited from a podium in Dallas does not move a voter in a congressional district in Wisconsin or Texas. What moves that voter is the candidate on their ballot touting the same message and projecting some great ideas for what they can do if they obtain power. Republican enthusiasm, in Pfaff’s model, is generated locally and only amplified nationally.

Legislative Victories, the Save America Act, and John Thune

Pfaff’s first condition for turning Republican enthusiasm around is not rhetorical at all. It is a floor vote. He raised the rumor that keeps going around that J.D. Vance might use his powers as president of the Senate to get the Save America Act done, and then explained why that matters more than another lap around last year’s accomplishments. Republicans are going to try to tout the one big beautiful bill, and Pfaff granted there are good things to say about certain aspects of it — but people forget. That was last year. This is this year.

What he wants instead is the Contract with America approach, in his own words: you have got to contract with America a bit, saying here are the things we have done and here are the next things we can do if you give us the opportunity.

“But I think the only way that they can do that is to come back and make a serious attempt at the Save America Act and see what happens there to let people understand that they’re serious.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

The test is the attempt itself. Voters cannot see a whip count, but they can see whether a majority tried, and Pfaff’s read is that no attempt is being made. He named who he holds responsible, as TCC did when Thune defied the 80% of Americans who back the Save America Act.

“I would argue that John Thune’s doing everything he can to make sure that they lose the freaking Senate.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Pfaff’s explanation is institutional, not personal. Thune is taking on the same attitude as Mitch McConnell: put your head low, sometimes we lose the majority, no big deal, we will be back later. That might have worked in 1810, Pfaff said, when there were no substantive party organizations and there was not much that government did. Government is now so expansive that head-down patience is itself a decision — a decision to cede the field to Democrats who literally want to overthrow the American Republic.

Cornyn, Paxton, and Why Texas Is Tied

The other drag on Republican enthusiasm, in McKenna’s telling, is that Senate Republicans look like they are working against their own president. Thune, she said, looks like he has his thumb in the eye of the president of the United States, given that Trump had taken out John Cornyn and some of the Mitch McConnell acolytes. Pfaff let the appearance stand and corrected the history on Texas.

“John Cornyn took out John Cornyn, not Donald Trump.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Trump did not get deep into that race until the very end, when he made his endorsement. The primary was decided before that, and Pfaff gave the reason in one line.

“The reason Ken Paxton got the nomination is because John Cornyn never does anything.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Cornyn pretends like he does stuff that he never does, Pfaff said, and he does just the opposite — that message came out, and he lost the primary. The lesson he draws for the rest of the conference is that these are uninspired Senate Republicans who do not understand that they are their own demise. It is the same failure behind the Republican enthusiasm problem: voters who only turn out for Trump are being asked to turn out for people who look like they are working against him.

McKenna then asked the obvious follow-up: how is Paxton tied with James Talarico in Texas? Pfaff gave two answers. The first is money — the campaigns have not spent a lot of it yet, which he said he still cannot figure out. The second is demographic, and he had a number for it.

Trump-Only Voters and the Ten Points Lost in the WOW Counties

McKenna brought the argument home to Wisconsin, and described a bloc that other battleground states have too: people who voted for Trump three times and voted for nothing else. They did not turn out for Wisconsin Supreme Court elections. They did not turn out for the gubernatorial elections. They are, in her phrase, the quintessential low-propensity voter.

Her prescription for that bloc is not a turnout tactic but a proof of loyalty. You need to give them a reason to think that the Republicans have Trump’s back, McKenna said, because right now it looks like John Thune is sticking it to Donald Trump. Show them that you are a Republican who is a Trump person too, and you could turn the light switch on in those votes. Pfaff did not dispute the diagnosis; his own answer was that the right message can get some of those people out, but that the more important work is talking to the voters actually in front of a candidate — which, he said, the John Thune types do not want to do, while the Ken Paxtons of the world do. That is the second half of the Republican enthusiasm equation.

McKenna then supplied the number behind the urgency. When Barack Obama came to Wisconsin he went to Waukesha County, mispronounced Waukesha, mispronounced Lambeau and said something about 57 states — but he was there to establish a presence in what McKenna called the Helm’s Deep of Wisconsin red politics, the WOW counties. Since then Republicans have seen a minimum ten-point reduction in strength there. It took a long time to lose those ten points, she said, but they are ten points Republicans do not have anymore, and they now have to be found in central Wisconsin and squeezed out of Trump-only voters.

“You gotta have the Patton attitude. We’re gonna wade through the enemy, we’re gonna go through them like crap through a goose, right?”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

The Patton line is Pfaff’s answer to the retreat map McKenna had just drawn: Republicans cede the cities, then pull back on the WOW counties because the fight is getting harder, and there are only so many places left to retreat to — not into the non-population areas, she said, where the square miles required to find the votes are massive by comparison. Pfaff’s reply was that you do not retreat, you go ahead and take territory. Then he named the mechanical failure underneath it.

“Republicans have sucked at something that Democrats are excellent at, which is finding out who voters are and why, and then messaging to that.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

That does not require compromising principles, Pfaff said. It requires finding out what people really think and communicating what you are trying to do in a fashion they can receive, down to the granular level, voter by voter. The Conservative Caucus is building the database structure to do exactly that. Republicans say they do microtargeting; Pfaff’s complaint is that they are not consistent with it, and that even when they know who a voter is they do not do the things that make a difference when they ask that voter to vote.

Housing, Energy, Healthcare: The Case Republicans Will Not Make

McKenna laid out the three legs of the stool — housing, energy and healthcare — and asked how Republicans do not turn that into a win-win-win. On energy, she said 100% of energy inflation comes from the rigged cartel utility game nobody wants to talk about unrigging and from climate policy: costs keep going up because we keep pulling solar and wind into the grid. On housing, 30% of the increased cost is immigration, which also hits job availability and public safety. On healthcare, 100% of the increase in costs is Obamacare.

“That should be a layup, Jim.”
— Vicki McKenna, host, The Vicki McKenna Show

Pfaff’s response was to name why the layup goes unattempted, and it is the same answer he gives for the Republican enthusiasm problem generally. On healthcare, he said, this is Republicans being cowardly instead of taking aggressive action.

“Every problem we have in healthcare right now has some connection, fully or partially, to the emergence of Obamacare.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

He backed it with his own household numbers. Around 2014, Pfaff’s family of four paid about $350 a month with a $1,500 deductible, young kids in the house. Young Democrat staffers in Washington who overheard him telling that story were shocked by it — six or eight years on from passage, they had no idea those numbers had ever existed. McKenna’s own view is that Republicans pretty much lost the issue when they refused to repeal Obamacare, but that the case can still be made rhetorically and that there are good solutions to the problem.

Pfaff’s diagnosis goes past cowardice to belief. Republicans do not take stands on these issues because they believe in government too, and that is the massive problem with the Republican Party that Donald Trump has been stopping somewhat. The instinct is to pass a bill to get something done rather than to say we are repealing all the bad things that are killing and harming everyone. That distinction — repeal rather than legislate — is the Republican enthusiasm argument Pfaff wanted coming out of Dallas, and McKenna’s closing demand was that whatever the convention says be punchy and tailor-made to be cut and pasted into campaign material.

Key Takeaways

1. A convention can reset Republican enthusiasm, but not by itself – Pfaff called it a very real possibility, on the condition that the Trump record is connected to the people running in their districts, touting the same message and projecting what they will do if they obtain power.
2. Enthusiasm requires a legislative victory – Touting the one big beautiful bill is not enough, because that was last year. Pfaff wants a serious attempt at the Save America Act, and raised the rumor that J.D. Vance could use his powers as president of the Senate to get it done.
3. Pfaff holds John Thune responsible – Thune has taken on Mitch McConnell’s attitude of keeping his head low and accepting the occasional lost majority, which in a government this expansive cedes the field to Democrats who want to overthrow the American Republic.
4. Cornyn beat Cornyn – Trump did not get deep into the Texas race until his late endorsement. Ken Paxton won the nomination because Cornyn pretends to do things he never does. Paxton is tied with James Talarico because the money has not been spent and because Austin has gone from R+17 to D+21 in twenty years.
5. Ten points are gone in the WOW counties – McKenna put the loss at a minimum ten-point reduction in Republican strength there, and said those points now have to be found in central Wisconsin and squeezed out of voters who have only ever turned out for Trump.
6. The healthcare answer is repeal, not another bill – Every problem in healthcare connects to the emergence of Obamacare. Pfaff paid about $350 a month for a family of four with a $1,500 deductible around 2014, and says Republicans avoid the argument because they believe in government too.

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About The Conservative Caucus:
The Conservative Caucus is a grassroots public policy action organization, formed in 1974. Headed by President Jim Pfaff, the Caucus is committed to advancing free enterprise, limited government, and traditional values.

Originally broadcast Sep 8, 2026 on The Vicki McKenna Show, WIBA Madison / iHeart, with Jim Pfaff joining from the RNC Midterm Convention in Dallas.