With the 2026 midterms on the horizon, an American Thinker op-ed by Robin M. Itzler frames the election in stark binary terms: “Republicans versus communists.” The argument, published September 30, 2026, is less about persuading swing voters than about shaming the conservative base into showing up — particularly the roughly 66 million Christians who, by the columnist’s account, did not vote in 2024.
Itzler’s claim is that the Democratic Socialists of America now effectively control the entire Democratic Party. Whether an individual Democratic candidate carries a DSA membership card, she writes, is beside the point: “the DSA owns every Democrat candidate” in 2026. She describes DSA as a minority organization propelled by “loud agitators” and “enthusiastic” but “ignorant” followers, and she draws a historical parallel to the early days of Lenin’s Bolsheviks, Hitler’s Nazis, and Castro’s Ortodoxos — movements that she says also began as small, noisy factions before seizing power.
From there the piece pivots to a question aimed squarely at readers: is a DSA agenda what they want “for your children and grandchildren?” The November ballot, in her telling, amounts to a single referendum — whether the United States remains a constitutional republic or “veers toward communism.” The only remedy she offers is Republican turnout. Those who stay home, she warns, “will be responsible for the destruction of our great nation.”
The turnout math at the center of the argument
To make that case, Itzler leans heavily on a cited piece by Peggy Tierney titled “66 Million Christians Stayed Home in 2024. Don’t Let It Happen Again in 2026.” According to the figures Itzler quotes, roughly two-thirds of American adults still identify as Christian — on the order of 166 million potential voters — yet large shares sit out elections. Some 66 million Christians and 32 million regular churchgoing Christians did not vote in 2024. The reasons Tierney lists include lack of interest, dislike of the candidates, and a belief that one’s vote doesn’t matter. The quoted passage calls that 66 million figure “disturbing,” noting that Christians still made up a majority of the 2024 electorate and delivered a decisive share of President Trump’s support.
Itzler then invokes Glenn Beck, pointing to a September 22, 2026 post on X as a call to action for people of faith. In the post, Beck contrasts a summer get-out-the-vote effort by CAIR aimed at 3 million Muslim voters — registering worshippers outside mosques in swing states after Friday prayers — with the 32 million Christians who attend church every Sunday but don’t vote. Beck stresses that the CAIR operation is entirely legal and that he isn’t alleging anything nefarious, but he turns the question back on Christian pastors: what are you doing about it?
Beck’s post urges clergy to stop hiding behind the Johnson Amendment, arguing the law has never barred a registration table in the lobby or sermons on biblical principles. A pastor who preaches cultural collapse 52 Sundays a year without ever telling the congregation to vote, he writes, is “not a shepherd” but “a weatherman.” His prescription is concrete: put a table in the lobby, staff it with one volunteer and a clipboard and a laptop, load up the church van, and drive people to the polls. “Stop complaining and start showing up.”
Itzler echoes that practical push. She urges readers to get out the vote however they can — distributing candidate material through local community sites, making calls, knocking on doors, since one-on-one conversations matter. For election integrity, she suggests serving as a poll watcher. Above all, she tells readers to talk to their priest, minister, or rabbi about mobilizing a get-out-the-vote program.
A pointed challenge to conservative clergy
A recurring theme in the piece is the asymmetry Itzler sees between conservative and progressive religious leaders. Many people tell her their clergy insist on keeping politics out of the church or synagogue. Her response: that restraint is fine in theory, but progressive ministers, priests, and rabbis have no qualms about preaching the leftist agenda — and many of them, she claims, partner with Islamists. Why, she asks, do conservative clergy separate politics and religion while their progressive counterparts are openly political? Her answer is a warning: under a DSA government, religion “would be the first to go.”
The op-ed closes by casting the administration as necessary but insufficient. President Trump and his team “cannot do it alone,” Itzler writes; they need help from America First Patriots. The whole contest, in her framing, reduces to Republican turnout — and the country that gets saved will be “our own.”
The column is a familiar genre of pre-election messaging: less an analysis of polling or district-level dynamics than a turnout sermon, built on the premise that the conservative coalition’s biggest obstacle is its own apathy. Whether the 66 million figure holds up as a turnout model or functions more as a rhetorical cudgel, it is doing the work the author intends — turning an abstract midterm into a personal accountability question for readers who stayed home last time.
Robin M. Itzler is a regular contributor to American Thinker and founded and edits Patriot Neighbors, a free weekly national newsletter.
Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/09/save-the-midterms-and-stop-communism/