Republicans are winning not just in Congress but in culture and media, while Democrats stumble into shutdown fights over radical priorities and lose ground.

The Republican Party has not just won the political fights (so far), but they are winning the culture wars, too. And even the media wars are going their way, especially on the latest Shutdown Showdown.

No longer do they have to worry about the lame-stream, liberal corporate broadcasters defaming them. They have social media on their side, with Elon Musk running the X (formerly Twitter) ship of state. MSDNC, er … MSNBC, ABC, and CNN have been laying off their worst “journalists,” which is just about all of them. They have little power now, and President Trump has enabled Republicans to enjoy living in the limelight for once.

Republicans have not been used to having it this good. “Shutdown” was often a bad word, taboo among Republicans after the infamous 1995 Congressional budget fights. Why was the 1995-1996 shutdown a PR failure of sorts for the Republicans? It’s not fair to blame Newt Gingrich. After all, Republicans had not held the Congressional House majority since 1952.

They needed to get used to the reins of government, and for the first time in fifty years, politicians were taking real steps to cut the spending and restore faith in the federal government’s ability to govern. It was not the easiest fight, and Newt Gingrich ended up resigning after Republicans failed to capture stronger majorities after the 1998 election. The House did impeach Bill Clinton; good for them, but they were always going to face a brick wall with the US Senate, where 67 votes were needed to fire Bubba, and a handful of Republicans crossed over or voted “not proven” to give themselves a break.

By the way, Election 1996 went for Clinton, but Republicans also performed very well, capturing three additional US Senate seats!

Subsequent shutdowns have not hurt Republicans, either, in part because more voters are paying attention to the unsustainable debt issues plaguing the country. Voters already hold Congress in low esteem as it is, but if members of either party are willing to fight for what they believe in, even if it means a shutdown, the parties can step up without bad publicity.

Because Republicans are keeping more of their campaign promises (thank you, President Trump!), they have more cards. The Big Beautiful Bill was a big, beautiful win for the GOP, not just because they accomplished key, extensive priorities, but also because they provided the necessary funding far in advance so that any future shutdowns would not thwart President Trump’s efforts to secure the border, cut taxes, end red tape, and restore our military.

In fact, if Democrats in the United States Senate refuse to give the seven necessary votes to invoke cloture and move the latest Continuing Resolution forward, they will be the ones shutting down the government. The House passed a clean CR, with no extra gimmicks or cuts, to the Senate, so Democrats can’t complain about any more cuts to current federal largesse. To his credit, JD Vance complained about the clean CR, since more spending reductions are needed, but the government needs the funding to get through to the end of the year.

What is really striking, though, is that the Democrats are ready to shut down the government over some of the most perverse, misplaced priorities imaginable. They want to increase the Obamacare subsidies, but not just for Americans—for illegal aliens. They also want to restore funding for so-called “gender-affirming care,” i.e., the sexual mutilation of children under the guise of transgenderism.

What is this madness?! Thirty years ago, the Republicans got a lot of grief from the press because they wanted to cut spending across the board and get the federal government back to a lean budget, which it should. Today, we have the minority party prepared to shut down the government to give our money to anyone and everyone else but American interests. Shutdown Schumer has run to the usual suspects, blaming Trump for not negotiating with them. The problem is that it’s not working. Democrats in Washington are learning the hard way that their hardball tactics no longer work because Trump is willing to go harder and get his way, especially now that he has no reelection bids to consider.

Someone should ask the Democratic Party what their long-term plan is regarding their shutdown antics. Who are they trying to persuade? Republicans made no demands for further cuts (they scored a great deal of cultural wins with the Big Beautiful Bill), and Democrats want to cater to foreign nationals and child predators. It’s a clean CR, which they have often gotten in the past. Now they are complaining? Not a good look.

This is a lose-lose-lose strategy for the Democratic Party. Add to all of these basic developments the fact that President Trump is preparing to unleash unprecedented mass firings in the event of a government shutdown, workers who will not have to be rehired once the funding is restored! President Trump is in the win-win-win circuit, and there is nothing that the Democrats can do about it.

Will Dems cave on this latest budget fight? Probably. It’s not just about Congress but also the elections in Virginia and New Jersey. Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger is touting herself as a champion of federal workers, and the Democrats are about to throw the budget so that more will get fired. Ciattarelli is cruising towards victory in the Garden State, while Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill is trying to balance pretending to be balanced.

All the negative campaigning from public or corporate media cannot help the Democrats, either, since no one believes them or cares what they have to say. President Trump presided over the longest government shutdown in history in 2018, and the vast majority of Americans lived their lives without any trouble. Where federal bureaucrats failed to keep the basics going, American citizens stepped in and completed the tasks, all but demonstrating that the federal government spends too much, does too much (and does it poorly), and is still too much looming in our lives.

[H/T American Greatness]