Thomas Massie Lost the Battle, But Won the Future

I took a vacation from my day job at Free the People to help Thomas Massie’s reelection campaign in Kentucky’s 4th district, a beautiful sprawling rural district in the north of the Commonwealth. I don’t really do politics anymore, but this fight seemed important.

I spent time yesterday processing what all this means, because it’s still hard to believe that Thomas lost based on what I saw on the ground. Massie events were packed and spirited, with lots of joy, energy, and youthful diversity represented. At the same time, Thomas’s opponent Ed Gallrein was a nonentity on the ground. He hid from voters, dodged debates and interviews, and could barely scrounge up 100 people to listen to War Secretary Pete Hegseth, who airdropped in to launch yet another attack against Thomas.

But this pronounced enthusiasm gap didn’t matter enough in a closed Republican primary dominated by cable TV-watching Boomers over 70, who get their candidate information from Fox News and vote as they are told.

The attacks were relentless, vicious, and deeply dishonest, fueled by some $20 million in ads that blanketed cable TV, including one AI-generated ad which showed Thomas hooking up with AOC and Ilhan Omar. Seriously. Sometime later I might document these lies for posterity, but that’s not my purpose here.

You see, Thomas—who ran his campaign based on candid conversations with voters and podcasters of all stripes, actual policies, and big ideas informed by his homespun libertarian values—dominated with voters under 50. He won Millennials by 69 percent, and Gen Z by almost 82 percent.

His opponent didn’t run on ideas. He didn’t really run at all. He had no name ID. It was a sock puppet campaign based almost exclusively on a pledge of party fealty to President Trump. The only policy positions he articulated, that I’m aware of, were in defense of more wars, and reinstating the military draft of our sons and daughters, so that the government is fully prepared for… more wars.

So, think about the contrast between these two campaigns and how it informs our strategy moving forward. Not necessarily in the narrow sense of political campaigns, because politics is downstream of culture. I’m talking about the much bigger project of turning on the “Liberty Curious” and winning the hearts and minds of the next generation of Americans. Like the ones who voted for Thomas.

If Massie’s effort is a prototype, we can learn two things: It’s the message and the medium. The message is not about cults of personality; it’s about real ideas and values. Massie ran on a host of substantive ideas and policies: fiscal responsibility and an end to the inflation generated by run-away government spending, a less interventionist foreign policy, and stopping the surveillance of innocents and censorship of free speech. At the same time, he ran a positive campaign about personal liberty, healthy, honest living, the freedom to farm, and the power of local communities to solve problems.

In other words: Thomas ran on DOGE, peace instead of war, MAHA, and freedom of speech, all key elements of the 2024 Trump/MAGA coalition that made the difference between defeat and victory.

For Massie’s campaign, the medium was about all the decentralized media consumed by pretty much everyone under 50: influencers, videos, social media, and podcasts. Not scripted, not mandated. Individually curated and honest. Independent of corporate media capture. A beautifully chaotic marketplace of ideas, a marketplace where Thomas Massie—an important influencer in his own right—thrived. Indeed, it was in that open market where his campaign was able to raise an unprecedented $3,131,544 online from tens of thousands of donors, with an average gift of less than $100. That’s the power of ideas in a decentralized world, and it’s a game changer.

Ed Gallrein and Donald Trump, on the other hand, preached to their dwindling choir and pushed away former allies. Their campaign was totally dependent on Boomer cable news hosts and millions of dollars in attack ads.

So yes, the bad guys won with a dishonest and manipulative campaign, in the most expensive primary in history. I’m taking the loss.

But understand: they won the past. Thomas Massie won the future.

This was a generational proxy war over the future of America, and the darkness will turn to light soon enough.

CODA

Obviously, Ed Gallrein didn’t have tens of thousands of donors. He had three billionaires and all their superPAC money to buy attack ads. The agenda of those billionaires and their attack dogs was openly stated: to punish Massie for voting against foreign aid to Israel and for pushing a war powers resolution to stop their favored war with Iran. They said as much, repeatedly. They’re bragging about it now, having defeated the one remaining thorn in their policy agenda on Capitol Hill. (OK, they’re all also likely angry about Massie’s successful legislation to release the Epstein Files, but they would never admit that in public.)

Right out of the Left’s woke playbook, the winners now brag about their victory and their motives while simultaneously smearing Massie and his supporters as “antisemitic” for pointing out the very same thing. It’s laughable. But it’s also obscenely destructive if your real interest is curbing actual bigotry and true antisemitism. By calling anyone you disagree with on foreign policy an antisemite, you give cover to actual antisemites. And you are probably pushing people—people who harbor no ill will towards Jewish people or anyone else, people who resent American involvement in Israel’s wars—to start resenting the government of Israel, the people of Israel, and their American Jewish allies. It reminds me of the disgusting efforts by Obama and his attack dogs to smear Tea Partiers as “racist,” stoking racial tensions in hopes of cynical political gains in the process.

I know it’s out of fashion, but I still judge people based on the content of their character, and I can categorically vouch that Thomas Massie does the same.

Pulling back to an even wider view, the Trump-Republican dependence on Fox-addicted older Boomers could prove a serious liability in the midterms. They lucked out in Kentucky thanks to geography, being able to flood the Cincinnati and Louisville TV markets. In a differently-situated district, the Gallrein gambit may very well have gone down in flames in the face of the decentralized, organic campaigning of the Massie side.

What remains of MAGA won’t be so lucky to have two major TV markets to saturate in the vast majority of midterm races. And they won’t have the luxury of closed primaries where independent and centrist voices can be boxed out. If the GOP thinks silencing the only true Constitutionalist in the party is a winning strategy, they may have a rude awakening when faced with the broader electorate.