Analysis: ‘Hitting on all cylinders’: How Republicans failed to sell the economic boom 

The job market is “hitting on all cylinders,” economists and economic data show, but that story struggled to break through in a midterm campaign dominated by the war with Iran.

A string of strong economic reports this fall, including an October jobs number nearly triple what economists expected, points to a robust U.S. economy. But Republicans now acknowledge that those gains, which many see as central accomplishments of the administration, rarely got the spotlight on the campaign trail.

Strong economic indicators

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last week that 165,000 new jobs were created in October, with unemployment unchanged at 4.1%, even as the labor force participation rate ticked up from 61.6% in August to 61.9%.

CNBC reported that economists expected growth of just 59,000 jobs.

“We have a jobs report that was way more than double expectation and the upward revisions were ginormous,” said National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett in a statement issued by the White House in response to the numbers. “What we’ve got is a job market that’s hitting on all cylinders.”

Heartlander News reported in September that members of the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee felt the economy was so strong that it was approaching full employment at the same time that gross domestic product (GDP) was posting some of the best numbers since the post-COVID period. 

Through October, consumer sentiment was improving, while consumer spending continued to buoy the economy, as even The Washington Post was forced to admit.

The numbers have left critics asking why the administration wasn’t issuing more broadsides about its economic accomplishments as part of its midterm congressional campaigns.

“I don’t believe the Republican Party sold the economic boom that was generated by the One Big Beautiful Bill,” said Larry Kudlow, former Trump National Economic Council director and Fox Business host. “Tax cuts, lighter regulation of business, ‘drill baby, drill,’ trade reciprocity. Virtually every single data point over the last bunch of months spells economic boom.”

As early as December 2025, Heartlander News was reporting on the strength of the economy, which posted 3.8% GDP growth in Q2 2025 and 4.3% GDP growth in Q3 2025 while private payrolls showed underlying strength.

The growth happened even as the federal government shrank through layoffs and a partial government shutdown.

But somewhere along the line, the administration allowed the message of economic doom, not boom, to dominate.

Republicans struggled to sell the economy

“We’re having an economic boom that is the greatest economy that most voters have seen in their lifetime, and the Republicans couldn’t sell it,” Breitbart News economics and finance editor John Carney told Kudlow.

Carney said Vice President JD Vance should have been out attacking Democrats on the economy and affordability issues, while also reserving a portion of the blame for President Donald Trump.

“His message has been all over the place,” Carney said. “He hasn’t focused on it.”

Even the president agreed they fumbled the economic message.

“I think it was bad messaging, maybe by me,” Trump told 60 Minutes after the election. “But I would talk about it all the time. So I don’t know, how much can I talk about it? Look, the press doesn’t cover positive news for Republicans. They don’t cover certainly positive news for me. So I have to do it myself. I have to get it out there. We have historically good numbers.”

An analysis by Heartlander News in October showed that, much like the media repeatedly and unjustifiably used the word “recession” in the 1992 election – even as the economy grew by 3.5% – hurting the reelection chances of George H.W. Bush, the media used “inflation” as a talking point in 2026 even as inflation was coming down.

Still, complaining about an unfair press doesn’t absolve the administration of responsibility for not putting its best argument forward with its best spokespeople.

In the fall, the administration pushed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who presumably should have been talking only about the U.S. economy, as another public face for the war against Iran, rather than going with a more conventional pick such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

One former Treasury official previously complained that the choice of Bessent as a warfighter in the economic conflict against the Islamic Republic signaled dysfunction inside the administration’s messaging apparatus.

“Why are you putting your treasury secretary, who doesn’t have any kind of national security experience, as the face?” the former official told Semafor.

More importantly, why wasn’t Bessent simply talking about the strong U.S. economy at every opportunity?

Ultimately, the scapegoat for failing to deliver a strong economic message was White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.

Trump “couldn’t get it out of his head that she was to blame [for the midterm defeat], not him,” a White House source told Axios.

Wiles was fired on Friday after the Tuesday election.

Fair or not to Wiles, it’s hard to argue with the results.

The GOP suffered a historic defeat in the midterm elections, in which the administration featured Iran as a leading actor and the economy as the less appreciated understudy who never took the stage.

“Problem [was] there’s never any concerted marketing plan to make the economic sale,” Kudlow concluded. “It was never part of a comprehensive selling job for the economic boom, all right?”