By Jeffrey A. Rendall
Recent suggestion that Republicans may not be set on Vance or Rubio has people talking
Coming out of the Labor Day weekend holiday, Americans will be in the mood to get back to politics.
Whether they’re ready or not, the fall campaign season is upon us. Both parties have dug in for the two-month push to the federal midterm elections that will decide how much resistance – or help — President Donald Trump would encounter in his final two years in the White House.
Voters will do this while keeping an eye on the future. Politics never stops, and one name from the not-so-distant past stirred the pot recently in the 2028 Republican horserace. Or did he?
In an article titled, “Ted Cruz fires 2028 warning shot against JD Vance, but his lane is uncertain”, Mabinty Quarshie reported at the Washington Examiner recently:
“Sen. Ted Cruz escalated the 2028 Republican presidential primary … after he implied that Vice President JD Vance doesn’t have a widespread lock on the nomination and suggested he could be a White House contender.
“The Texas senator told MS Now that regarding the 2028 race: ‘I’ll certainly be part of the discussion.’ Cruz’s comments were the closest he’s come so far to admitting he is waiting in the wings to launch a presidential campaign. Trump is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term, leaving the field wide open for ambitious Republicans.
“But just what lane Cruz could occupy in a likely crowded field is uncertain, Republican operators say. Cruz’s comments come as many Republicans believe the primary belongs to Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio, both of whom President Donald Trump has praised in public but stopped short of endorsing.”
Ah, yes, it’s the question conservatives and Republicans will haggle over from now until… the campaign is well into the 2028 primary voting season, when the field – if there is one – will whittle itself down to a frontrunner and whoever else is stuck clinging to the dream.
In his subjective mind, Ted Cruz probably surmises the elements are in his favor. The similarities between 2028 and 2015 are many. First, just like back then, Cruz would start the campaign well behind the frontrunners and hope to fuel his rise in the polls – and in the estimations of voters across the country – by his uncanny gift for political gab.
That’s right. Cruz is a talker. He knows it, supporters from last decade remember his passion and many, many Trump backers have long since forgotten the personal issues that weighted the Texas senator down all those years ago.
For his part, Ted recently admitted that “It’s no secret that I want to be president” on a podcast.
Therefore, since Ted has been in the background for so long, he wouldn’t be regarded as a major challenger to the polling leaders (JD Vance and fellow 2016 competitor, Marco Rubio) and would gain an opportunity to “lurk” as a candidate and pick up support as the months drag on in the ’28 campaign, just like he worked it in 2016.
After having navigated the highs and lows of the Trump years, conservative Americans will have forgotten – or merely placed to the side – the abilities and finer points of Cruz the politician. Without a doubt, Ted is one of the smartest people in any room he occupies, and his talent for pulling facts from his datacenter-like mind hasn’t subsided during this period of isolation in the political wilderness.
Ted Cruz’s brain was like artificial intelligence before AI was even developed. If he seems like he knows a lot about each subject, it’s probably because he does. Or at least he remembers everything. His extemporaneous speaking talent is renowned, and his ability to pull passages from historic writings and recite them verbatim is unmatched.
Cruz was politically bludgeoned by Trump in 2016 because the New York outsider, first-time pol (at that time) understood marketing and political pitches much better than Ted did. Trump knew he could get a leg-up on his competitors/rivals by pinning disparaging nicknames on them, a novel approach that paid dividends big-time. Who would ever forget that Trump’s name for Cruz was – “Lyin’ Ted”?
Or, “Low-energy Jeb” for Jeb Bush, or “Little Marco” for Marco Rubio? The Republican hopefuls weren’t able to escape Trump’s reach. Trump won. Not by a lot, but by enough to consolidate a substantial share of the conservative/Republican/anti-Crooked Hillary vote to comprise a winning coalition. There’s never been a politician like Donald Trump before 2016, and there probably won’t ever be again.
So, Cruz may suppose he’ll be able to reintroduce himself to the Republican electorate. Is he right?
Second, Ted is probably counting on there being significant Trump fatigue by the time the next set of primaries rolls around. Lots of voters will be tired of Trump as he nears the completion of his time as president.
No, Americans – the ones who pay attention to policy victories – won’t be weary of “winning” as Trump once hinted they’d be if he got to be president. But many of them will nonetheless be ready for a new leader of the Republican party. For reasons everyone knows, Trump has been at the forefront of national politics for well over a decade.
By 2028, a child who started preschool when Trump first entered the American political scene would have graduated from high school and possibly entered college by the time he exits it. A good number of Republican voters will have little, if any, institutional memory of what politics was like before the brash New Yorker launched his MAGA effort.
Here’s thinking there will be a significant reservoir of goodwill for new faces in the next Republican nomination cycle. Whether Ted Cruz’s now-bearded mug qualifies as a “new face” is open to debate.
Third, there’s a significant slice of the conservative Republican electorate who will gravitate towards a more ideologically conservative candidacy, and Cruz will attract a portion of this bloc. Maybe even get most of them, depending on if someone like Governor Ron DeSantis decides to run in 2028. The “lane” for the conservative crowd will be open, if only temporarily.
Neither JD Vance nor Marco Rubio is regarded as a full-spectrum conservative. Vance is thought to be more conservative/populist in the Trump MAGA mold. This group isn’t against using government power as much as they favor employing the decision-making and implementation for what they view as the “greater good”. This sums up JD Vance well.
Rubio is seen as more ideologically conservative than he was over a decade ago, though conservative primary voters will likely view anything Marco says or does with a degree of skepticism given his former impassioned advocacy for wishy-washy immigration policy and less-than-stellar personal money management.
This isn’t to mention Rubio has always been a proponent of using American military might to combat world threats. Some might label it neoconservative or militaristic. This reputation will not have softened during his tenure as Trump’s chief foreign policy advisor.
Put it this way – Tucker Carlson’s adherents won’t be drawn to Rubio’s philosophies.
Are these things disqualifying? No. But to the conservative voter presented with a series of reasonably good alternatives, they’re factors in the whole. You only get one primary vote, and the choices won’t force you to “hold your nose” in order to pick one.
Lastly, Ted Cruz likely reasons there’s room for a market-oriented fiscal champion in the next Republican presidential field. In a day and age when hardly anyone talks about the federal deficit any longer, the issue isn’t about to go away anytime soon.
The extravagant and budget-busting COVID-era federal spending merely exacerbated an already enormous problem at the federal level. President Trump has been successful in deflecting attention from the matter as he effectively convinced Americans that the country’s illegal immigration problem was a bigger threat than were the gallons of red ink inscribed on the ledgers, but the debt plague won’t be cured by continuing to burst through the borrowing limit.
Trump has said hiking tariffs, eliminating fraud and waste and economic growth will eventually solve the deficit issue, but the government still runs gigantic shortfalls regardless of how much additional revenue is coming to the Treasury.
We all know the Democrats won’t have an answer, other than proposing massive confiscatory taxes on all Americans. Can a man like Ted Cruz win over the fiscal hawks in 2028?
Be prepared to look on as potential 2028 presidential candidates “test the waters” as the rest of 2026 plays out. It’s the game within a game for politics watchers as ambitious politicians vie for an issue or set of issues that sets them apart from the others.
Ted Cruz has been around for a while but could still fly under the radar. Will Republicans be open to him starting next year?
Jeff Rendall is editor and publisher of GolfintheUSA.com and has written about golf and politics for over a quarter of a century. A non-practicing attorney from California, he moved to the east coast three decades ago to pursue and combine his interests in all things American history and culture. Jeff has worked as an intern on Capitol Hill and in various capacities in grassroots organizing and conservative organizations and publications, including a nearly two-decade stint at ConservativeHQ.com. Column republishing or other inquiries: Rendall@msn.com .