Top Republican unloads on rise of 'anti-American' candidates
Progressive policy ambitions meet practical realities as Americans weigh costs and consequences.
Tom Emmer didn't travel to 56 districts just to raise the temperature. He went there to say something the Democratic Party refuses to process: the modern left has wandered so far from the American idea that "communist" and "Marxist" no longer sound like insults. It sounds like a damage report.
New Republican Times Editorial Board
Video ‘You got to be kidding:’ GOP Whip unloads on far-left candidates gaining steam nationwide Fox News Digital spoke to Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) in Maine as he travels the country rallying Republicans to vote in the midterm elections.
LEWISTON, MAINE - Rep. Tom Emmer, on the first stop of a 56 district blitz across the country rallying Republican voters, spoke to Fox News Digital about what he describes as an "anti-American" sentiment in the Democratic Party and his party’s message on the economy. "We're not talking about socialists, these are communists, Marxists and anarchists," Emmer, the Republican House majority whip, told Fox News Digital this week about the rise of far-left candidates in the Democratic Party. "You got to be kidding.
They want us to call them democratic socialists, there's nothing democratic about these people." Emmer, who was in Maine campaigning for Republican House candidate Paul LePage, specifically took issue with Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, a Republican from Minnesota, during a television interview at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 30, 2025. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images) "This guy says ridiculous things like U.S.
NFL football is an example of toxic masculinity, he supports a terrorist who believes that America deserved to lose 3,000 people on 9-11, and he's got this Piker guy who's just shooting his mouth off on everything anti-American," Emmer said. "These people are anti-American more than anything else.
It's time that we have great candidates like Paul LePage, which is why I'm here, who loves his state, loves this country and believes in the promise of America. We should be out there celebrating it and defending it, not tearing it down, that's why you vote for Paul." With six weeks to go until Election Day and early voting already underway in a handful of states, the conventional wisdom is that Republicans may be in for some setbacks in the midterms.
Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed poses for a portrait in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Feb. 21, 2026. (Evan Cobb for The Washington Post via Getty Images) As it defends its fragile House and Senate majorities, the GOP is fighting political history, which has traditionally seen the president's party lose congressional seats during the midterms.
It's also battling high costs at the grocery stores and gas pumps tied to what polls show is an unpopular war with Iran, as well as President Donald Trump 's underwater approval ratings. But Democrats are saddled with their own issues, from an ideological civil war between the party's left wing and the establishment that has handed Republicans plenty of political ammunition, to a brand image that's nothing to brag about.
Add to that the Democrats' major disadvantage as the GOP floods the airwaves with attack ads. Fox News Digital asked Emmer what he would say to Republican voters in the current political climate in terms of defending the administration’s record. "First off, remember, the Biden administration put this economy in the ditch, literally," Emmer said. "Inflation we hadn't seen in 40 years.
Donald Trump and Republicans in the House and the Senate have been putting this economy back on track. We can talk about all the investment and everything else, but we have to be very sensitive to the fact that $4 gas, $6 diesel is unacceptable, but I would argue it still isn't enough to vote for a communist." Andrew Mark Miller is a reporter at Fox News.
Find him on Twitter @andymarkmiller and email tips to AndrewMark.Miller@Fox.com.
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New Republican Times Editorial Board
Tom Emmer didn't travel to 56 districts just to raise the temperature. He went there to say something the Democratic Party refuses to process: the modern left has wandered so far from the American idea that "communist" and "Marxist" no longer sound like insults. It sounds like a damage report. When your own candidates call for abolishing police departments, defunding border enforcement, and treating private enterprise as a social experiment, you've left the lane of conventional liberalism. Emmer just called it what it is.
The media will clutch pearls at the label, but that's the tell. They don't argue that Democrats support patriotic civics or free enterprise or secure borders. They argue that the vocabulary is rude. The c-word is accurate, not extreme. The Democratic Party has stopped hiding this stuff. It's all over their primaries and their leadership. So when Emmer uses the political language of a crisis, he's responding to an actual crisis. The left moved first. He's just naming the destination.
And let's talk about Paul LePage, because that's the part the national press can't stomach. LePage doesn't apologize for putting his state first. He says things that would make a focus group wince, and that's precisely why he keeps winning the working class. Maine voters are tired of nice-sounding people destroying their livelihoods. Emmer bringing him in is a signal that Republicans are done ceding the "extremist" label to people whose idea of moderation is open borders and boys in girls' sports.
The point of the 56-district blitz isn't just to scare Democrats. It's to tell the base that the old playbook is dead. Nobody persuades anyone by saying "we respectfully disagree" with politicians who treat America as the problem. We're ready to call anti-American what it is. That's not an insult. It's a warning shot from a party that finally remembered whom it's fighting.
Commentary written with AI assistance by the New Republican Times Editorial Board.