Once You See the Political Vise, You Can't Unsee It
How the left captured the machinery that governs American life—and what it will take to reclaim it
Six years ago next month, the entire country shut down in a matter of days. Schools closed. Businesses shuttered. Millions lost their jobs. The decision wasn’t made by Congress. It wasn’t put to a vote. A handful of unelected public health officials—people whose names you’d never heard—issued recommendations, and within seventy-two hours, the world’s largest economy ground to a screeching halt.
I am sure you remember the confusion. I know I’ll never forget it. One week, everything was normal. The next, you couldn’t get a haircut. Your kids were home indefinitely, attempting to learn through a screen. The authorities told you this was temporary—two weeks to stop the spread. Two weeks became two months. In states governed by the left, it became two years.
COVID was when I realized most Americans don’t understand how power actually works in this country. I don’t blame them; it took me a long time to understand it myself. I spent twenty years inside the policy machinery before I saw it clearly. I watched as decisions that shaped millions of lives got made in rooms where no voter had a say. I saw good people—people who genuinely believed in limited government—get crushed by forces they couldn’t name. The few who resisted paid a brutal price. Almost without exception, they left public service in frustration and disgust.
What Is The Political Vise?
What I discovered was this: American politics operates through a mechanism I call the Political Vise. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it. I’ve written a book on the concept: The Political Vise: How the Radical Left Controls America and the Path to Regaining Our Liberty comes out on March 3. In it, I explain how we got here, how the mechanism works, and what it would take to reclaim the Vise for liberty.
Start by thinking of a three-sided vise, the kind machinists often use when a two-sided vise can’t hold a particular shape. In a three-sided vise, pressure comes from three directions at once, squeezing whatever sits in the middle. In American politics, those three sides are the media, the people, and the influencers—the elite institutions that shape what we think and what we’re permitted to say. Politicians sit in the middle, responding to demands from all three sides. What gets pushed out the top? Policy, regulations, and the actual decisions that govern our lives.
When the Vise Worked
The Vise is not a bad thing. Far from it: it is exactly what the Founders designed. They wanted politicians under constant pressure from a sovereign people. The Founders built the Vise to be an enduring mechanism by which free citizens could hold their government accountable.
For most of American history, that’s how it worked. When the Vise functioned properly, politicians felt genuine pressure from their constituents. That doesn’t mean every piece of legislation enacted or every policy produced was ideal. It did mean that government officials—whether elected or appointed—found it very difficult to thwart the will of the American people for long.
Then something changed.
The Progressive Vise
Over the past several decades, the left has systematically taken control of the Vise. They didn’t do this through elections. They did it by capturing two of the three sides: the media and the influencers. Universities that train elites, media organizations that shape the narrative, credentialing bodies that set rules for who gets to participate in public life, and a vast network of wealthy and unaccountable nonprofits.
By the time you step into the voting booth, the defaults are already set. The bureaucracies are entrenched. The acceptable range of debate has been established. Your elected representative – no matter how smart and idealistic—walks into an environment where every institutional force pushes left.
This is why conservatives keep losing even when they win. The pressure is relentless, and it works.
There’s an even more dangerous problem: the left hasn’t just captured the traditional Political Vise that the Founders designed. They’ve inverted it.
In the traditional Vise, politicians feel pressure from ordinary constituents. Once in office, elected officials remain keenly aware that they can and will be removed if they fail to deliver on the agenda of a sovereign people.
In the Progressive Vise, the people themselves are squeezed. Politicians, media, and elite influencers work together to force ordinary citizens into compliance. Challenge prevailing left-wing orthodoxy on climate, gender, race, or COVID, and watch what happens. You’ll be mocked in the press, fired from your job, and ostracized by former friends who fear being cancelled if they remain loyal to you.
Donald Trump’s 2024 reelection, as significant as it was, did not shut down the Progressive Vise. It remains a powerful and dangerous force in American life. What’s more, the left is determined to ensure that the president’s reforms do not endure long. They speak openly of the trials and tribunals and cancellations to come—just as soon as they have retooled and strengthened the Progressive Vise. The danger to ordinary conservatives, and to our republic, is existential.
How to Reclaim the Vise
The real work is unglamorous. It’s building alternative institutions. It’s showing up to school board meetings. (And running for school board!) It’s creating media that can compete. It’s understanding that power belongs to those who control the systems in which everyone else must operate.
The left figured this out decades ago. They didn’t just win elections. They captured the commanding heights of culture. They built the machinery that now governs American life—and they did it all while conservatives were still arguing about the next election cycle.
The Political Vise explains how the left executed their strategy—and what we must do to beat them at their own game. My book maps the institutional terrain, identifies the leverage points, and provides the strategic roadmap for rebuilding durable centers of power. You’ll learn how to recognize when you’re being squeezed, how to apply counter-pressure, and how to build the kind of institutional capacity that outlasts any single election. It’s drawn from decades of wins and losses in the policy trenches, from state capitols to the Supreme Court—and it will show you how we can reclaim the Vise.
In their genius, the Founders designed this system to be controlled by the American people. Somewhere along the way, we handed that control to unelected elites who despise our values and resent our interference.
It’s time to take it back.