Ted Cruz wrote nearly 2,000 words on the GOP's midterm collapse and still couldn't bring himself to say what every working American already knows: the Republican Party betrayed the people who elected them.
Cruz gets close. According to HuffPost, he noted that Americans are selling plasma just to buy groceries. "That is very real pain from real Americans, and too many Republican politicians seem like they didn't understand or they didn't care," he wrote. He called out high food, gas, diesel, and insurance costs. He even questioned the Iran war and tariffs: "Tariffs have made everything too expensive, and the Iran war has dragged on too long. It should have been brief, decisive, and over."
But he wouldn't name the president who started both. HuffPost called it a "diplomatic weasel" move to stay in Trump's good graces for a future run. They're right about the weasel part. Cruz would rather preserve his presidential ambitions than tell the truth.
Here's what Cruz won't say: the GOP establishment has failed its base on every count that matters. Spending is out of control. Foreign wars drag on with no end and no defined American interest. And the party sat silent while Big Tech censored the very voters who put them in office.
No tactical postmortem fixes this. TNW reported that Elon Musk poured at least $446 million into the midterms — the biggest donor of the cycle — and almost all of it went to Republicans who lost. His America PAC spent $87 million across 44 federal races. Republicans lost 29, won three. Over 93% of that money went to losers. Texas, Musk's adopted home and the base of Tesla and SpaceX, elected a Democratic senator and governor. Money can't save a party that won't fight.
Democrat James Talarico understood the dynamic better than Cruz does. As TNW reported, he told supporters his victory came against "the richest man in the world, the most powerful man in the world, and the entire Washington D.C. establishment."
And what does the bipartisan establishment agree on? TNW noted that the Texas law shielding company managers from shareholder lawsuits "has support from both parties" and is unlikely to change. When both parties agree, the public gets sold out.
Cruz can write all the words he wants. He can admire Trump's "instinctual genius" for political attacks. He can dance around naming the man whose tariffs and wars he quietly criticizes. None of it matters until someone in the GOP is willing to fight — actually fight — for the working Americans who keep showing up only to get stiffed on spending, lied into wars, and abandoned to Silicon Valley censors.
The base isn't asking for a 2,000-word diagnosis. They're asking for someone to stand up. The question is whether anyone in the Republican Party is willing to risk their own career to do it.
