With the midterm elections just weeks away, conservatives are once again asking why so many Republicans campaign as fighters only to govern like cowards. But perhaps we’re asking the wrong question.
Before demanding courage from our elected officials, we should ask how much we’re willing to show ourselves.
Conservatives love to complain that politicians have no backbone. Why won’t they fight? Why do they fold the second the media turns up the heat?
The truth is, elected officials are thermometers, not thermostats.
They measure how much heat their voters can take. That’s it. You cannot demand that a politician say, “Close the border and deport all illegal aliens,” if the average voter in his district is too terrified to say it at a dinner party. If the electorate flinches at being called a “racist” or a “bigot,” its representatives will flinch twice as hard.
Politicians don’t set the boundaries of courage. You do.
Nobody Yells at the Thermometer
Think about the thermostat on your living room wall. On a freezing January morning, you walk downstairs and the reading says 58 degrees. You don’t yell at the little number on the wall. You get up and turn the dial.
The thermometer only tells you the temperature of the room. Somebody has to change it.
Riley Gaines did. At the 2022 NCAA championships, she tied Lia Thomas, a biological male, for fifth place. But Thomas got the trophy, while Gaines was told hers would come in the mail. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis defended another swimmer who lost to Thomas, but Gaines took her fight beyond the pool. She faced public criticism, refused to back down, and built a national platform defending women’s sports. Soon, more politicians joined the fight.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill alongside her. President Donald Trump handed her a pen after signing his executive order. Georgia named a law after her. Gaines didn’t wait for politicians to lead. She led.
A politician reads the room. It’s your job to change the temperature.
Parents Already Proved It
We don’t have to guess how this works. Parents ran the experiment in 2021.
That fall, moms and dads packed school board meetings across the country over masks, closed schools, and what was being taught to their children.
The establishment’s response was to turn up the pressure. The National School Boards Association sent a letter to then-President Joe Biden asking for federal law enforcement help, writing that threats against school officials “could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”
The message to normal parents was clear: Sit down, or be treated like a threat.
Many parent groups like mine didn’t sit down. We stood up harder and we stood up more often. We kept showing up.
Weeks later, the National School Boards Association backpedaled in a letter to its own members: “We regret and apologize for the letter,” adding that “there was no justification for some of the language included in the letter.”
Then came Virginia. In a September 2021 debate, Democrat Terry McAuliffe said, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” Glenn Youngkin made that line a centerpiece of his campaign and won the governor’s race.
Politicians didn’t find the courage to defend parental rights and then invited parents along. Parents took the heat first. They took the smears and the threat of federal scrutiny. Candidates ran on it only after the temperature in the room changed.
It’s never the other way around.
Your Fear Is Their Ceiling
Radical Democrats understand this dynamic fully. That’s why they lean so hard on manufactured guilt. “Racist.” “Bigot.” “Transphobe.” “White privilege.” These words aren’t screamed in good faith. They’re dishonest emotional blackmail, built to make you flinch. Every time a voter cowers, the ceiling drops for every elected official who depends on that voter.
My team and I learned this firsthand. When the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled my organization a “hate group,” we refused to back down. I said publicly that we are absolutely a hate group because we hate what’s happening to children. We didn’t apologize for standing up for them, and we didn’t ask anyone’s permission to speak the truth; we never will.
You don’t need a platform to do the same. You need a spine at the dinner table and at the school board podium. Say the true thing out loud. The sky won’t fall. The people around you will hear it, and so will every officeholder within earshot.
Turn the Dial
Stop begging officials to save you when you won’t even speak the truth in your own community.
Here’s where to start: Start where you live. Speak at school board meetings. Write the letter to the editor. Put your name behind what you believe, even when it’s unpopular. And when someone tries to silence you with a label, don’t retreat or apologize for something you didn’t say. State your position clearly and keep going. When elected officials take a stand, thank them publicly. When they back down, hold them accountable. But don’t demand courage from politicians that you’re unwilling to demonstrate in your own community.
Courage is contagious, but that isn’t enough. It has to be a habit, built through small, consistent choices to speak the truth even when it’s hard. Practice it where you live. Your responsibility is to your own children, not to strangers with titles. Do that, and the people who represent you will feel the heat.
Courage isn’t something we can outsource to Washington. It has to begin in our homes, churches, schools, and communities.
Politicians will never be braver than the people who elect them, especially as midterms loom. Make courage a habit.
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