Rep. Chip Roy: GOP will win big in 2022 if party goes on offense in school, healthcare debates

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) says Republicans will decisively win the 2022 midterm elections, if they go on offense on schools and healthcare.

"On the cultural fight, stop having Washington, D.C. telling you how to live your life," Roy told the John Solomon Reports podcast.

The American people "don't want to be told what to do," said Roy. "They don't want Washington coming in and telling you that some boy is going to run against your daughter in a track meet even though it's because that boy says he's a girl. They don't want to have a confusion about that there's two bathrooms, they don't — they just want common sense.

"They don't want their kids taught that America's evil in school — this critical race theory, once they learn it, they go, 'Wait, this is crazy.' And if there's one great thing that came out of the horrible year of government intrusion in our lives with respect to the coronavirus response, it's that the veil has been lifted on a corrupt, corrosive education system, where the American people can see what's been happening to their kids in ways they didn't before."

Citing the exodus from public schools to private schools and homeschooling over the past year, Roy said: "What we need to do is create the incentives so that parents can have true choice and be able to be free to educate their children the way they want to, create the kind of competition and the kind of accountability that needs to exist in our public school system. Because they're our kids and they're our future. I think the American people are seeing that.

"We're seeing action in bright blue — blueberry in the tomato soup, as my former boss, Rick Perry used to call it — Austin, Texas, crazy liberal … They want schools that work. They want their kids to learn reading, writing, arithmetic and be able to go out and compete in the world."

On healthcare, Roy said, "This is something that probably is, even though we haven't talked about it, might be my biggest passion as a cancer survivor, and watching what's happening to people unable to get the healthcare of their choosing, unable to go to the doctor of his or her choice.

"This is what we've done to our system: We've made it unaffordable, we've made getting the doctor of your choice too unattainable, and we've done it for stupid reasons, all enriching insurance companies and making insurance bureaucrats be the ones calling the shots about your healthcare and not you."

He explained Republican messaging on healthcare:

"So Republicans' message, and I head up the Republican Study Committee Healthcare Task Force, our message is going to be simple: personalized care for you, ensuring that you go to the doctor of your choice, no government or insurance bureaucrat gets to tell you what your healthcare is. We're going to make sure that you're able to have care and that absolutely, you've got the backstop to make sure that you can get that care. But we do that by allowing you to carry your insurance with you job to job, by empowering you and getting all of those people out of the way.

"If we talk about that the right way, and you go to a soccer mom, you go to a dad, a parent, and you say you're gonna be able to control your healthcare, you're gonna be able to go the doctor of your choice, and no, you're not going to be stuck without being able to get care. That's our Republican plan, and it's gonna be affordable. I think it sells, and I think we should go on offense on that, as well as education and stop pretending that's a Democrat issue."

Roy discussed his successful messaging in his district and how that can be applied across America.

"I always try to tell people about the two general election races that I've run, and, like I ran through a primary with 18 folks two years ago," he recalled. "And I have no concern about doing so. I mean, look, I think that when you go out with a message on offense, a strong conservative message, it sells. But I believe it sells in the general election, too. I didn't say anything different in my primary election or my general election.

"I think that's what American people want: They're tired of the BS, they're tired of people who go to DC and don't do what they said they were going to do. I don't ever pull punches on it — like I am who I am, I believe in limited government, I believe in government doing its very basic core duty. I believe in freedom. I believe in the Bill of Rights. I believe in the Lord Almighty, and I want to make sure that our government is working for the people in its limited capacity. And so I'd take that message anywhere, and it worked. And I ran on offense on healthcare against Wendy Davis."