Moving On

I am not sure conservatives - including many readers of this website - quite grasp the scale of what happened on Tuesday.

Outgoing Florida governor Ron DeSantis called it "an extinction-level event", and pointed out that of America's ten most populous states his was now the only one with a Republican government. At the federal level, as JD Vance observed en passant, the GOP has no realistic expectation of recovering the Senate until the mid-2030s.

Intraparty disputes between soi-disant rock-ribbed conservatives and jelly-spined RINO squishes are irrelevant: whether you're Susan Collins or Vivek Ramaswamy, Greg Abbott or Darline Graham - and ultimately Donald Trump or, say, Nikki Haley - you're a loser. Sixty per cent of Michigan Jews plumped for a Muslim Brotherhood fanboy running ads about all the benjamins the Zionists fleece from you rube taxpayers for killing photogenic Palestinian moppets. Why would they vote like that? Because at least the Muzzie hasn't got an R after his name. In Alabama, of all places, a GOP incumbent was taken out by a tranny. Not "taken out by a tranny" in the Lindsey Graham sense of a romantic evening à deux, but a state rep in a district Trump won three times whose political career got totalled by a fetching young lady who shattered the Alabammy-tranny ceiling to become the state's first trans legislator. Why? Because, Muzzie or tranny or Somali "learing center" entrepreneur, anyone's preferable to a Republican.

That's the state of the brand in 2026. The Democrats will wind up with their biggest majority since their four-decade domination of the House ended in 1994. Me back in April:

Right now, American 'conservatives' are self-bollocksing. It is said by his closest advisors that the President is prepared to lose the midterms over Iran. Well, that's pretty much baked in. But the redrawn state maps and the inertia on 'SAVE America' are putting a more fundamental question-mark over the GOP's future.

That was a "niche Canadian" making a long-distance aside from the front lines in eastern Ukraine. And here we are seven months later. The most ambitious Iranian suicide-bomber has just been effortlessly outpaced by Mark Levin and the President foolish enough to have him over for dinner: they've managed to undo the Gingrich Revolution that brought two-party politics to Congress.

Yes, yes, for those few remaining readers who dislike hearing this sort of thing, I refer you to the Vice President of the United States:

To the people who are pissed off and want to say, "I told you so": you're right, you did tell us so.

To those thinking JD Vance is starting to play Charles Gates Dawes to Trump's Calvin Coolidge, that doesn't deny the reality of his admission: the President who said he could shoot a guy on Fifth Avenue "and I wouldn't lose any voters" has learned that shooting a mullah on Sword of the Infidel-Slayer Boulevard is a trickier proposition. Following the dramatic ejection of Susie Wiles, the new chief of staff is reported to have made Trump ¨winding down" the Iran war a condition of taking the job. (The President responded by ordering "limited strikes" last night. Good luck with that.)

Both JD "You did tell us so" Vance and Ron "Extinction-level" DeSantis are saying what they're saying because they're positioning themselves for the '28 nomination. In my Fleet Street days, I was always told by editors that it takes three to make a trend. So herewith the now lone star of the Lone Star State, Ted Cruz:

The Iran war has dragged on too long. It should have been brief, decisive and over. It needs to end.

Now you tell us! It has taken eight months for Senator Cruz to reach the same conclusion I did way back on the second day of the war. Perhaps that's merely the difference between having a copy of The Big Bumper Boys' Book of Basic Facts and not. Nevertheless, in a not so subtle way, the Vice President of the United States, the Governor of Florida and the Susan Collins of the new Texas are letting us know that they regard Wednesday as the first day of the post-Trump era.

You can disagree with them, but you should at least grasp the significance of their distancing. Republicans are world-class straw-clutchers: All the polls are wrong!!! (They were: they undercounted Democrats.) The GOP is "going to win all of these races". Now they're assuring us that, with a majority this earth-shatteringly colossal, the Dems are bound to overplay their hand. Maybe, but, as with Obamacare and all the rest, Republicans can be relied upon to underplay their response to all the Dem overplaying. I see Senator Cruz writes the following:

Take the state of Kansas, for example, a state that has not elected a Democrat senator since 1932. It just did. Here's what exit polling showed were the top issues in Kansas.

Number one, cost of living, energy, and groceries. That was listed as number one by 30.6 percent of voters.

Corruption. Number two, 18.5%.

The cost of the Iran war, 10.1%.

The candidates are terrible, 7.9%.

The Canada trade war, 7.6%.

The GOP didn't do enough to support Trump, 6.6%.

Republicans didn't pass the Save America Act, 5.6%.

Trump's focus on monuments, 5.5%,

and data centers and AI, 3.8%.

Can it really be true that Kansans regard Canada (the nearest bits of which are a thousand miles away) as more of an issue than the GOP's lack of support for Trump? Well, the last Republican in Texas evidently thinks so, which is why Cruz is recalibrating himself accordingly. As for Kansans' Number Two issue, "corruption" is a bit of a generalised catch-all: it might include the remarkable good fortune that seems to befall the kids of Commerce Secretary and creepy Epstein perv Howard Lutnick, but it could just as easily be a more amorphous sense that voters feel they're on the outside of the candy store looking in. The President didn't help his party when he told a Georgia rally a week before the election that, à propos the soaring price of oil, "we're making a freakin' fortune". The "we" in that sentence doesn't include anybody in his audience. If you're part of the vast non-we, the GOP might as well have run under the campaign slogan "I don't feel your pain":

"Pick another senator"? In Mississippi that line appears to have worked.

No amount of superPAC money can overcome that level of self-bollocksing, so ignore the entreaties of your in-box to send money now to SendMoneyNow.com. In Texas, Elon Musk tossed half-a-billion into the Rio Grande and watched it float out to the "Gulf of America". As that list of voter concerns makes plain, even Kansans are tired of winning. No one as detached from the rhythms of American life as Trump revealed himself to be in Georgia is going to win the presidency in 2028.

As to Dem overplaying, it is said that the new masters of the Congressional universe are anxious to investigate the Trump family's "crypto deals". Having spent much of 2026 in Ukraine and then in a coma, I can't honestly say I have a clue about whether crypto-wise there's any there there, or whether any laws were broken - although, in the new America, the breaking of laws you never knew existed is generally the way to bet, on anything. But it's more basic than that: if Dems headfake Republicans into digging in and spending the next two years defending, oh, Kimberly Guilfoyle using her boyfriend's "crypto deals" to pay off her AmEx, the GOP will be making the same mistake as it has these last eight months: they will be on TV night after night not talking about anything that matters to their (remaining) voters. See Kharg Island, Pickaxe Mountain and the "reflecting pool". What's it all about - algae? The citizenry answered that question definitively on Tuesday.

I am doubtful that either Cruz, DeSantis or Vance will be the '28 nominee, but they are all declaring that the curtain has come down on the Trump show. It is not the grand finale many of us would have wanted. But we are in a new world, and it is time to focus on what comes next.

Mark's international bestseller America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It. If you haven't read the book during its first seventeen years, well, you're missing a treat. It's still in print in hardback and paperback. (Buy it at a 77% discount by clicking here or order in KINDLE edition at a 47% discount by clicking here. Sales help fund JWR)

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Mark Steyn is an international bestselling author, a Top 41 recording artist, and a leading Canadian human rights activist. Among his books is "The Undocumented Mark Steyn: Don't Say You Weren't Warned". (Buy it at a 49% discount by clicking here or order in KINDLE edition at a 67% discount by clicking here. Sales help fund JWR)