The Republican Party’s early messaging in advance of this year’s midterm elections seems to boil down roughly to: Work longer, don’t carry guns and, as Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche recently said of the many powerful men who appear in the Jeffrey Epstein files, “It is not a crime to party with Mr. Epstein.”

Way to go, guys! As a licensed political pundit, I’m here to tell you this is exactly what GOP voters want to hear, and you should run hard on those ideas.

The “work longer, you lazy sots” bit – I’m paraphrasing – came from Dr. Mehmet Oz, who, for some reason, is a government official we are forced to pretend is a serious person.

The administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said Feb. 2 that Americans need to get healthier so they can work harder and pay down the nation’s debt: “If we could get the average American ... to start working a year earlier, right out of high school, or work a year later – not retire – or work better during their lifetime because they're healthy, it would generate about $3 trillion ‒ $3 trillion ‒ to the U.S. economy. That would more than remove the debt.”

Let me workshop that idea for Republicans so it’s a more digestible campaign pitch: “Hey poors! Get to the gym and eat better so billionaires can........

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