The Republican-led congress is where to put the bullseye for November

TAT readers,

Today’s essay is something that we must understand sooner than later, if we are to have the midterm results that will make a difference. I have analyzed, strategized, planned, executed and assessed plenty of influence campaigns throughout my military career. Roughly two-thirds were focused on different native populations in combat zones. While that there are military processes for planning influence campaigns, I have long understand that successful influence operations are part art and part science, with the most important part being art, especially in the analysis, strategy and planning phases. The key is to collect intelligence and analyze everything about an environment, nation, region, specific people etc., with a clear, unbiased eye. This analysis is how we come to what is called the COG, or Center of Gravity of our adversaries or competitors. Please bear with me for just a couple more paragraphs and this won’t sound so much like, “military-speak.”

Since there have long been competing professional definitions for COG in doctrinal writing, I will add a simplified and inclusive definition of my own in the quote below which applies to the current assault on our republic by the administration and Republican Party. In its simplest form, the COG is what we have to break down more anything else, to cause our adversaries to be unable to reach their goals.”

Center of Gravity

A source of massed power—physical, ideological, and a source of leverage, whose degradation, neutralization, or destruction would have the most decisive impact on the adversary's ability to accomplish their organization's objectives. 

- Cobaugh
- May 2026

Okay my friends, no more military doctrine-speak. All you need to remember is that we must focus on the one thing that enables this corrupt and treasonous administration, and that is the Republican Party. I cannot make it any clearer, that we must have a powerful national narrative that shames and blames the Republican-led Congress and the Republican Party-at-large, for our affordability crisis, protecting pedophiles and a failed Iran war at a minimum. This requires the checkbook and network connections of the DNC. They have already proved themselves AWOL from leadership, so we’ll have to find the leadership ourselves. The rest we are capable of doing if we work together. Being a Republican that still supports the administration whether in congress or in our hometowns, must be made shameful. Nothing makes influence easier than having the truth on your side. Shameful is the truth in this case.

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What I’m talking about is Narrative Warfare or NW for short. I won’t do a deep dive on this as that I’ve written about it quite often in the past two and a half years, but will add a couple of links for those that wish for more in-depth background. The short answer though, is that NW is highly specialized and the most successful style of influence operations, with no close second. Professionally speaking, we cannot win at Narrative Warfare, so long as we are exclusively in a reactive mode. In the news, we often hear or read the term, “counternarratives,” but if all we have are counternarratives, it’s like playing great defense in a baseball game but having zero offense. You can’t win if you don’t score runs.

• Conned, the conversion of the GOP conservatives into right-wing extremists

• Without factoring "brainwashing" into the equation for 2024, we're doomed to another far-right, extremist administration, no matter what pollsters say.

For the past decade plus, the DNC has exclusively played defense. For example, during the 2024 election cycle, all we heard about in the media was immigration at the southern border and inflation. With the left having no narrative of their own about these two subjects, the media ran exclusively with the Republican narratives about both. When the media went looking for a story, the DNC had none, leaving the RNC to control what America was talking about. There are no narratives even now from the left alone or from the resistance altogether. No Kings demonstrations are great motivators but without their own narrative or narratives, lose their steam within 48 hours. NW requires sustained operations that include narratives being disseminated anywhere that voters live, work or play.

The GOP has an extensive narrative stable that they trot out on a daily They use code words, languages and in fact, coded narratives, often built onto their insane conspiracy theories they have absorbed since roughly 2012. Republicans that still vote for the party, have internalized all of their insane narratives, beginning largely with the Obama birth certificate conspiracy theory. Republicans believe these fairy tales fully, and most won’t change their opinions in our lifetime. This works exactly the same as radicalization of youth into cults or extremist organizations.

A long career in CT/ Counterterrorism has taught me that once someone is radicalized past a certain threshold, there is little chance of them fully recovering from their aberrant beliefs… ever. This is another hard data-point, that we must always keep in the back of our minds. Hardcore MAGA Republicans that have already voted for Trump three times, are most likely lost to family, friends and community forever. We may still break bread with them, but their political beliefs are now part of who they are or will become. I personally believe that this dynamic exists in roughly 25 - 30% of the American electorate.

In my analysis, the primary narratives that the DNC plus the resistance requires are; 1. Trump and his merry band of oligarchs and thugs, could not have done so much damage to us, unless the GOP-led congress, enabled it. 2. The GOP is responsible protecting pedophiles 3. The illegal Iran war is primarily about acquiring more oil and power for the 1% and while we the people suffer the costs.

All the DNC has to do, is to build narratives around these three points and deploy them at least as aggressively, as the Republican media machine disseminates their lies. This would give us an offense, where we once played only defense. What we must have for success, is to have America talking about what the resistance is focusing on, not what the Republicans are. If the resistance had a strategy, they could manage to acquire as much attention with their narratives as the right does with their conspiracy theories and outright lies. Think about small children competing for attention from a parent, teacher, coach or otherwise. The silent children receive only a fraction of the attention that the louder and more talkative children do.

Narratives do not need to be long or complicated. They simply need to be constructed by those who understand the principles of narrative. A well constructed narrative communicates meaning based on the identity of the audience and is not as is commonly understood, a story. A narrative is built on multiple stories that somewhat act as the chapters of a book. The plot tells us what the narrative is.

Let’s look for a moment at the three recommended narratives noted previously.

1. The Republicans in charge of congress have ignored their oaths to “protect and defend the constitution from all enemies and domestic. They instead have given the Executive Branch emergency powers and supported the administration exclusively, while they regularly violate our constitution. Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson have ensured that congress abdicated their role in our system of checks and balances. They are enablers of Project 2025, that is stripping the legislative and judicial branches of government of their constitutional powers and placing the preponderance of them into the Executive Branch. This allows the White House to pretty much do as it pleases, especially with Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts leading a SCOTUS right-wing super majority, that is bastardizing our constitution.

   

   Trump’s immunity decision, the allowance of racial profiling for Immigration operations, Citizens United and their persistent decisions that reward the billionaire class are just the tip of the iceberg in what I personally consider, professional or criminal malfeasance.

   1. Trump Is Violating the Constitution | American Civil Liberties Union

   2. Mazars and Vance, and President Trump’s Ongoing Assault on our Structural Constitution | ACS

   3. Breaking the Law | Brennan Center for Justice

   4. Trump’s 'Emergencies' Are Pretexts for Undermining the Constitution | Lawfare

   It was the Republicans in Congress that approved the Big Ugly Bill, that is doing so much harm to our nation and its working citizens while outrageously giving away our treasury to oligarchs and billionaires. Dramatic and senseless DOGE cuts, have dramatically denied or restricted us access to the very government services that our tax dollars pay for. Yes, the Republican Party has done all of this and so much more that imperils all of us. Again, we need to make enough noise about this version of the GOP if we want media to listen.

   With the constant government shutdowns, including the longest in our history plus the ongoing one regarding ICE and CBP, it is blatantly obvious that the Trump-era GOP cannot govern or more like, won’t govern. They control all three branches of government but still cannot manage to accomplish the basic requirements of governing. To make matters worse, we are knee-deep in the midterm election cycle and not one thing to relieve Americans from the affordability issues caused by the GOP-led congress, is being addressed. Besides groceries, housing costs and fuel, their willful destruction of the healthcare system, is a primary concern.

   "Health costs continue to top the public’s list of affordability worries, even as concerns about gas prices have risen in recent weeks. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of adults are worried about being able to afford health care costs, on par with the share who now worry about gas and transportation costs (64%) and outranking other economic concerns. In January 2026, prior to the start of the U.S. conflict with Iran, gasoline and transportation costs ranked at the bottom of household financial worries. Now, gas prices share the top spot with health care costs as the biggest financial worry adults face for themselves and their families."
   
   - KFF Health Tracking Poll: Health Care Costs and the Midterms
   - Audrey Kearney, Mardet Mulugeta, Alex Montero, Isabelle Valdes, Lunna        Lopes, and Ashley Kirzinger
   - April 29th, 2026

   

2. The issue of the Epstein files and how nearly all Republicans in congress are protecting them, is stomach churning to any and all decent human beings. It is an issue that is no longer a matter of guilty or not guilty but an issue of whether or not Republican voters will hold their noses and continue to support those guilty of some of the most heinous of crimes and most often against children. We must pin this issue to the lapels of every elected Republican until they are willing to support impeachment for Trump, Todd Blanche, Kash Patel and several other administration officials.

3. If we don’t hold them accountable, we will have failed as Americans and as moral human beings. If the Republicans in the administration won’t do their part, let the world know loudly, the names of every single one of them. Go straight to their social media accounts and do as I have been doing for a while now, ask them “why they are protecting pedophiles.” When they give a press conference, ask the question again. Hang signs in front of their home offices with the question painted in loud colors on signs. I believe that every single Republican congressional district should have billboards with these legislator’s faces and names alongside this question.

   

3. As if things weren’t bad enough between the US and our allies, the Iran War has made the situation far worse with Trump just yesterday announcing that he was withdrawing 5,000 of our troops from Germany, with far more being removed from Europe in the near future. From a national security perspective, we are now mostly alone in a very dangerous world. As that I’ve written to date, an eight-part series on the war in the past three weeks or so, I will not belabor the rest of the points here in this already, too long essay. The bottom-line though is that at the moment, we are not winning. We are also far away from achieving anything remotely close to what we already had with the Obama administration’s, Iran Deal.

3. For those looking for the full details of the war from the eight-part series, the links are below.

   Part I: The coming war with Iran - by Paul Cobaugh

   Part II: It’s just always about the oil - by Paul Cobaugh

   Part III: The Iran War: Criminal Malfeasance

   Part 4: the War with Iran leads to grave consequences on a local and global scale

   Part V: The Iran quagmire is becoming quicksand

   Part VI, the Iran War: Never say it cannot get worse.

   Part 7: The Iran War, Trump surrenders - by Paul Cobaugh

   The Iran War, Part VIII: The liars, cowards and thieves, looting our household budgets.

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Today’s summary is relatively short and sweet. The overall point is that we must pointedly and perpetually do the work to make Americans see the truth, that the Republican Party cannot or will not govern and they are failing at doing anything at all to relieve the affordability issues straining American households. In order to do this, we must now pull out all of the stops to make ourselves heard across the spectrum of US media, and do it before the Republicans. We must also sustain our voices in media and never again return to the reactive only posture of the DNC.

What this comes down to is that we need all of those apathetic voters who tend to sit out elections. We will need every possible vote in order to overcome the variety of election “rigging” planned by the current administration. The other salient point is that if we put in the work to turn voters out and for the resistance, there is the potential to recover the House of Representatives and the Senate. If we can achieve this, we should have relative safety from the administration for Trump’s last two years in office. If we don’t, American democracy may not survive that long. There is no time to sit back and relax, no matter how positive the polls are.

At the end of the day, a Republican-led congress and the party itself should in my opinion, be our COG. Without control of congress, the administration will struggle to achieve any more debilitating structural devastation to our constitutional republic. Taking back both houses of congress is our insurance policy for safety and ultimately, our trump-card (pun intended) against any more significant harm from this administration. It’s also our ticket to getting some of the administration’s worst of the worst held accountable. Such success may not be the end of this corrupt and treasonous administration but, it sure will be the beginning of the end of this most un-American and dangerous administration.

After this is all over, it will still take a decade or more to put this phase of our history behind us. The sooner we get at it, the sooner we’ll be living an American life again.

Onward,

Paul