Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said on X that Republicans lost the House and the Senate in the 2026 midterms, in what he called a blue tsunami and a Watergate-level repudiation.
Cruz said voters did turn out. In his account, Republicans, Libertarians and independents showed up and rejected Republican candidates, voting for Democrats instead.
“It was not simply a blue wave; it was a blue tsunami. It was an ass kicking.”
He said Republicans will have lost eight to 10 Senate seats when all the votes are counted.
Cruz said his party lost in historically red states such as South Carolina, North Carolina, Kansas and Iowa. It also lost, he said, in purple states such as Michigan, New Hampshire and Georgia.
In bright red Florida and Louisiana, he added, Republicans won by just a single point.
Nowhere were the consequences greater than in Texas, Cruz said. Republicans lost every statewide election there, he said.
For weeks, he said, he had warned publicly on his podcast that Republicans were in very real danger of losing everything in Texas. Too few people believed it was possible, he added.
Texas has not had a Democratic governor since 1994 and has not had a Democratic senator since 1993, Cruz noted. Now, he said, it will have both.
“Texas is blue. That is a hard sentence to utter,” Cruz said. “But Texas, today at least, is blue.”
He said he is now the only statewide elected Republican who remains in Texas.
Cruz pointed to Kansas, which he said had not elected a Democratic senator since 1932 and just did so.
Exit polling there put cost of living, energy and groceries first, cited by 30.6% of voters, he said. Corruption was second at 18.5%, followed by the cost of the Iran war at 10.1%.
Lower down the list, he said, were terrible candidates at 7.9%, the Canada trade war at 7.6% and the view that the GOP did not do enough to support Trump at 6.6%.
Republicans not passing the Save America Act drew 5.6%, he said. Trump’s focus on monuments drew 5.5%, and data centers and AI drew 3.8%.
The top issue is very real, Cruz said, and too many in politics dismissed it. He said leaders pointed to soaring stock markets, record median income and record low poverty, but those figures did not tell the whole story.
Spam broke record sales last year, selling 113 million cans, he said. That was nearly as much Spam as was sold during the entirety of World War II, he added.
He said 29% of Americans have used buy now, pay later for groceries this year, double the share from two years ago.
In August, he said, banks repossessed 42% more homes than they did last year. Car repossessions topped 2.3 million in 2024, above the 2009 peak, he added.
In 2025, he said, 6% of 401(k) holders took hardship withdrawals, a record and triple the norm.
Americans made more than 75 million paid plasma donations in 2026, another record, he said. That meant 200,000 people a day, in his words, with a needle in their arm just to pay for groceries.
Food, gas, diesel, insurance and life itself cost too much, Cruz said. Tariffs, he added, have made everything too expensive.
The Iran war has dragged on too long, he said. It should have been brief and decisive, it needs to end, and the United States should never give the Ayatollah billions of dollars, he added.
He also described a K-shaped economy. The world saw its first trillionaire last year, he said, while millions struggled to feed their families, and the average electricity bill rose 30% in the last five years.
Cruz said the key groups his party lost included blue-collar voters and Evangelical Christians. Evangelicals, he said, did not show up with the same numbers and fervor as in prior elections.
Farmers and ranchers were on his list too. Republicans, he said, alienated rural America.
Young people shifted hard blue this cycle after voting Republican in 2024, he said. Hispanic voters, who overlap with young and blue-collar voters, overwhelmingly went back to the Democrats, he added.
In 2024, Cruz said, he carried Hispanic voters statewide in Texas by six points and Republicans swung the Rio Grande Valley red for the first time in a century. That, he said, has to be turned around.
He pointed to two laws he said he authored, Trump Accounts and the school choice tax credit. Too few candidates ran on that record, he said, and too few voters knew about it.
Cruz said Republicans now need to listen and respond, fight policies that hurt Texas, and rebuild around policies that help the voters they lost.
He said he called James Talarico on election night and congratulated him on what he called a very impressive victory. The conversation was pleasant, he added.
Cruz said he and Talarico could work together on flood relief for the Hill Country and on trying to get the space academy to Texas. He said he would work with Democrats when they were willing to be reasonable.
But he said he would fight if newly elected officials raised taxes, destroyed jobs, opened the border or undermined constitutional rights.
Cruz predicted Democrats in Texas would try to raise taxes dramatically, shut down the energy industry and pursue other policies he opposed. In Washington, he said, they would attack Trump every day, with impeachment hearings and subpoenas.
More than $700 billion in new projects are scheduled to start in the next year, he said. If Democrats shut them all down, he added, the country will very likely go into a recession.
He closed on a pledge to bring Texas back.
“We will rebuild as a true blue-collar party, not by embracing socialism, but by being real free-market conservatives,” Cruz said.
“It is dark right now, but it is always darkest before the dawn, and morning is coming.”
Have something to promote?
Bring your business, services or event to our readers.