Beyond the War and Wallet: GOP Extremism is As Important a Reason As Any for Its Decimation in the Midterms
- Republicans still don’t fully comprehend the reasons for the rout, judging by the post-mortem analysis offered by leading GOP figures like JD Vance and Ted Cruz.
Commendably, or calculatingly, notable Republicans stepped up to the plate to admit their party stumbled badly in the midterms. That’s an understatement. The Bluenami, extending far into Red America, was such that we have to go back half a century for a similar clobbering of the Republican Party. Texas Senator Ted Cruz called this year’s outcome “a Watergate-level repudiation,” referring to the GOP debacle that followed Richard Nixon’s resignation from the presidency. Cruz, a Republican himself, would have been swept away if he had been up for re-election. Now, stunningly, he’s the only state-wide Republican lawmaker left in Blue Texas.
The dystopian “Civil War,” released in 2024, got at least one thing right, it’s been said. In the film, a rebel group called Western Forces is made up of California and Texas. Sounds improbable, but after the midterms, an alliance between the two states seems believable.
Cruz correctly identified “cost of living, corruption, the Iran war, and tariffs” as reasons why the GOP lost both the House and Senate so decisively. Another factor is data centers (only Virginia has more data centers than Texas), which have become unpopular all over the country. However, the reason that Cruz, like many others in his party, can’t seem to acknowledge is a reason that will continue to haunt his party until it is de-MAGA-fied. Simply put, extremism in the GOP is as important as any other reason for their decimation in the midterms.
As a Texan, Cruz should know that extremism, directed against immigrants and racial minorities under Trump 2.0, played a big role in his state’s transformation from solidly Republican to solidly Democratic. The cruelty ranged from ugly rhetoric to violent physical attacks.
The Whole World Paid Attention
Like many foreign media outlets, the BBC weighed in on the midterms as well. According to the Beeb, the top five reasons why the GOP suffered such a devastating loss are the (1) soaring cost of living, (2) unpopular Iran war, (3) disciplined message from the Democrats, (4) Trump’s unpopularity a drag on Republicans, and (5) Hispanic and Black voters shift again.
It’s the last point that gets to the heart of what Cruz and other Republicans — such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Vice President JD Vance — completely miss. And unless they and their party are willing to tackle that, immigrants and racial minorities are unlikely to return to their fold. The GOP will continue to be seen as a party for White Christians.
Why did so many Hispanics and Blacks who had supported Trump in 2024 move back to the Democratic Party in 2026? “The shift,” the BBC explains, “comes amid widespread anger at immigration enforcement, with a majority (56%) of Americans saying they have an unfavorable opinion of ICE, according to the Pew Research Center.”
Then there was Vance’s unstinting support for Vivek Ramaswamy’s vicious, disastrous gubernatorial campaign in Ohio. Vance is hardly likely to regain the support of White Americans, let alone the support of racial minorities
The shift of Hispanics in this election, according to the Times Voter Trends, was as much as 29%, the highest among all racial groups. Indian Americans, meanwhile, are now overwhelmingly Democratic. Nothing brought it into focus more than the Bo French incident, which is also connected to Texas. French’s bigoted attacks on students of South Asian descent at a UT Austin football game backfired spectacularly. French, once heavily favored to become the next Texas Railroad Commissioner, lost the election to his Democratic opponent by a substantial margin.
Are They for Inclusion or Exclusion?
Vance, no doubt eyeing the 2028 presidential election, also missed the boat in his analysis. Distancing himself from the Iran war now makes him look like a craven hypocrite. His take that the GOP, in order to win back the support of voters, should end the war, address inflation and cost of living, put America first, and change the U.S.-Israel relationship, elicited this retort from Jim Geraghty in The Washington Post: “That interpretation — that the electorate opted for Democrats because they wanted more of the vice president’s agenda — is almost as delusional as Trump’s shtick that if he had been on the ballot, the GOP would’ve won in a landslide.”
Then there was Vance’s unstinting support for Vivek Ramaswamy’s vicious, disastrous gubernatorial campaign in Ohio. Vance is hardly likely to regain the support of White Americans, let alone the support of racial minorities, who remain a target for his arrogant tirades. His only chance for becoming POTUS will be if Trump is unable to complete his second term.
The Republican Party, unless it makes a course correction after this wipeout, will have a hard time regaining the trust of minorities, especially racial minorities. The Democratic Party has pulled far ahead, making it a party of inclusion. The GOP, on the other hand, has become a party of exclusion, despite exceptions like the newly elected Black governor of Florida. As for the Democrats, think of the astonishing breakthroughs — first female Black governor, first Muslim senator, first Native American governor and senator, first openly gay man elected as a senator, and first Latina governor of Texas — their party has made in the midterms this year.
Georgia Democratic Senator Rev. Raphael Warnock wasn’t up for re-election in 2026. He nevertheless said, “The four most powerful words in democracy are ‘the people have spoken’.”
Top photo by Laura-Rotolo, courtesy of ACLU Massachusetts.
Murali Kamma is the managing editor of Khabar, an Indian-American magazine based in Atlanta, and a contributor to The Quint. His debut book, “Not Native: Short Stories of Immigrant Life in an In-Between World,” won an Independent Publisher Book Award.