Photo: Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0
Ron DeSantis says the Republican Party has a math problem: if it can’t win in places like Texas, Kansas and Iowa, it is “not viable nationally.”
“If we can’t win in places like Texas or Kansas or Iowa, we are not viable nationally,” the Florida governor said at a news conference Wednesday, a day after Democrats seized both chambers of Congress and won in longtime Republican strongholds. He pointed to Texas in particular – the “crown jewel of Republican politics” – where Democrat James Talarico won a U.S. Senate seat and Democrat Gina Hinojosa defeated Governor Greg Abbott.
DeSantis described the midterms as “close to an extinction-level event” for his party and said the damage could last. “Let’s just be clear that that is going to hurt,” he said. “Not just for the next two years, that’s something that can reverberate for the next decade or more.”
He argued the result was less an embrace of Democrats than a verdict on his own party. “We knew it could be worse, but I don’t think most of us thought it would be quite this bad,” he said. “This was a rejection of Republicans in Washington, and Democrats just happened to be the beneficiary. Now it’s going to take a lot of time and effort to rebuild,” The Hill reported. After the new Congress is seated, only Florida among the 10 largest states will have Republican control, he noted, Fox News reported.
DeSantis’s warning is his argument about where the party goes next – and it landed as he openly weighs a 2028 presidential run. For voters, his point is a blunt one: if reliably red states start flipping, everything Republicans want from Washington, from tax policy to judges, gets harder to deliver.
JBizNews Desk | Washington
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