When I was a child, and just getting interested in politics, my union activist mother told me that Republicans were the party of big business. Later, in high school, I saw that Democrats were the party of big government. The fundamental question for anyone outside of the moneyed elite or the bureaucratic class was this:
Which one do you fear most: big government or big business?
And then we voted for the other party to protect us from the group we feared most. If we feared for the economy, which suffered from government intervention, we turned to the Republicans. If we feared for the environment, or the quality of life for the working class, we turned to the Democrats.
But now, just in the last 10 years, an amazing realignment has happened.
Democrats have become the party of both big government and big business. Wall Street and Silicon Valley and Hollywood overwhelmingly supported Kamala Harris. Even in Bedford, a town which 20 years ago was the most Republican in the entire state — the wealthiest town, too — a town so ruby-red that it went seven decades without sending a Democrat to Concord, Harris won by 481 votes.
So, who’s left for the GOP? Everyone else.
Small business owners like me, and those who work for us. Union members who are tired of seeing their jobs go overseas. Parents who worry about feeding their kids when the grocery bill skyrockets. People who can’t tolerate having teachers brainwashing their kids into believing that some men can get pregnant, or try to transition their kids while lying to their parents about it. People who worry about open air drug use and petty crime in their neighborhoods.
That’s why the Democratic stronghold of Manchester kicked the four-term Democratic Senate Minority leader Donna Soucy to the curb and elected a freshman Republican to replace her. It’s why that city has the first Republican majority on the Board of Mayor and Aldermen in over 30 years. And now steadily joining the GOP, African Americans and Hispanics who are tired of their kids being sentenced to terrible schools and violent neighborhoods while the elites hoard the actual opportunities for themselves.
And that’s a pretty big pie. I’ll take it.
The silent majority is alive and well. We’ve given up the Wall Street donations but gained so, so many votes in the process. It will be interesting to see if the Democrats wake up, retool, and learn this lesson. If 90 percent of the ads in 2026 are more false claims that the Republicans are going to ban abortion, they will clearly not have learned a damn thing.
Clearly, the voters are smart enough to see through the smoke.
