The problem is laid out early in the Wall Street Journal article:

Republicans are playing defense in Ohio and a growing number of other red states….

No. Republicans should not be playing defense anywhere, but especially not in the so-called battleground constituencies. That’s a purely reactive mindset and behavior, and it meekly surrenders the initiative to the Progressive-Democrats.

Republican candidates should be out among their constituents and among heretofore Progressive-Democrat Party constituencies and among areas where voters are typically undecided or are uncommitted to one party or the other. They should be talking about their own policies in concrete, measurable terms, and they should be talking similarly about their particular Progressive-Democrat opponent’s policies, where that one has any, and about the utter lack of policy beyond Never Trump ideology where that Progressive-Democrat candidate has nothing else on offer. In talking about those two sets of policies or about policy vs Never Trump, Republicans should be emphasizing both those differences and the failures of those Progressive-Democrat positions.

In particular, Ohio Republican Senate candidate Jon Husted should be talking about his specific policy successes and comparing those to what Progressive-Democrat candidate Sherrod Brown has on offer—a prior three-term record of progressive taxing and spending with nothing accomplished for the benefit of Ohio’s workers, steelworkers included. Just money taken out of Ohio citizens’ pockets and wasted.

But that’s not enough by itself. Mid-term elections are characterized by Progressive-Democratic Party voters coming out in droves while Republican voters sit on their couches in the supposed comfort of their homes. Republican candidates need to be encouraging those voters to get out and vote. They can best do this by explicitly and repeatedly urging them to go vote and by showing how their own policies best support the needs and wants of those voters.

There’s more required, though. Those Republican voters need actually to bestir themselves to vote. They shouldn’t be waiting to be told; they should be acting on their own initiative. Republican voters need to understand that every decision to not bother to vote is an active decision to favor the Progressive-Democrat candidate with their non-vote.

In the end, Republicans need to be forcing Progressive-Democrat candidates to react to their initiatives, always and everywhere. If they don’t, they’ll lose this election in both houses of Congress, the Presidential election in ’28, and for elections to come for generations.