The GOP Didn't Lose - It Got Fired. Here’s The Harsh Truth About Why.

• They Protected the Epstein Crowd
• They Started the War They Swore Off
• They Sold Thomas Massie’s Seat
• They Turned on Their Own
• They Called Your Grocery Bill a Hoax
• They Earned It

I’m a libertarian, and in 2024 I was all-in on Donald Trump. I campaigned for him. I truly believed he was building a coalition that would finally be respected: libertarians, antiwar voters, working families, and independents who were done being ignored. He promised fewer wars, less government, and a real fight against the people who run Washington. On Tuesday, I watched his party pay for breaking every one of those promises. I didn’t enjoy it. Handing Democrats full control of Congress is no victory for anyone who wants a smaller government. But I’d be lying if I said Republicans didn’t earn every bit of it.

Democrats took the Senate with 54 seats, flipping Texas, Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Maine. They won at least 240 House seats, including districts Republicans had gerrymandered for their own protection. Republicans even lost Kansas, which hadn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate in nearly a century. That takes real effort.

This wasn’t bad luck, bad messaging, or the media. Voters fired them. Republicans spent two years showing the country exactly who they are, and the country believed them.

§They Protected the Epstein Crowd

For years, “release the Epstein files” was the right’s battle cry. It was supposed to prove this movement would finally go after the untouchables. Then Republicans got power and handled the files like radioactive waste.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, about as MAGA as anyone in Congress, signed the petition to force a vote. The president called her a “traitor” and pulled his endorsement. Her offense was wanting the public to know the names of men accused of trafficking teenage girls. Greene says Trump warned her that his “friends are going to get hurt.” He denies it. But a party with nothing to hide doesn’t brand its own loyalists traitors to keep a lid on documents.

When the files finally came out, the Justice Department botched them in the most disgusting way possible. It exposed survivors’ names and identifying details while blacking out the names of possible co-conspirators. The victims were exposed and the possible accomplices were shielded. Thomas Massie told Pam Bondi to her face, “Literally the worst thing you could do to the survivors, you did.” His Republican colleagues spent the hearing defending her and talking about sanctuary cities.

By October, a woman wearing a “Release the Epstein files” shirt was attacked by a group of men at a Trump rally in Youngstown. That’s how far the party fell. It went from demanding the truth to turning on the people who still wanted it.

§They Started the War They Swore Off

“No new wars” was a core promise, and it lasted 13 months. On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel started bombing Iran. Since then, 23 American service members have been killed. Taxpayers have spent about $47.1 billion, and our missile-defense stockpiles are badly drained. Nobody in charge can explain how this ends.

The day after the election, Trump admitted it was “largely true” that the war cost Republicans the midterms, and then said he’d “do it again.” Read that again. He knows what it cost in American lives, in taxpayer money, and in his own party’s majority, and he’d do it all over.

Republicans in Congress could have stopped him. They had the power to rein in the war, and most of them didn’t use it. A party that claims to want smaller government just ran up a $47 billion war tab on our dime. A party that sends other people’s kids into a war it promised to avoid doesn’t get to call itself the party of the working class.

§They Sold Thomas Massie’s Seat

If you want to know who really runs the GOP, look at what happened to Thomas Massie. He was the closest thing Congress had to a real libertarian. He voted against foreign aid for every country, co-wrote the Epstein transparency law, and opposed the Iran war. He did exactly what his voters sent him to do. So the party and its donors bought his seat out from under him.

His primary became the most expensive House primary in American history, at about $32 million. AIPAC’s super PAC and two other groups funded by pro-Israel donors spent more than $15.8 million against him. A Trump-built super PAC was created for one purpose: removing him. When it worked, AIPAC openly celebrated, saying it was “proud to support Gallrein and help ensure Massie’s defeat.”

The “America First” party let a lobby built around another country’s interests spend millions to remove an America First congressman. Then it stayed quiet while that lobby bragged about it. Massie put it best in his concession speech. He said it took a while to call his opponent because he had to find him “in Tel Aviv.”

§They Turned on Their Own

This party spent ten years complaining about cancel culture. Then it built a meaner version and used it on its own members.

Question the war, and you’re disloyal. Ask for the Epstein files, and you’re a traitor. Vote your conscience, and a billionaire-funded super PAC shows up in your district to end your career. Greene says that after the president’s attacks, her son received death threats, and Trump’s response was that it was her own fault. That’s not a political party. It’s a protection racket with a flag pin, run like a mob boss settling scores.

Their own voters saw it. In the AP Voter Poll, about 7 in 10 voters said Congress wasn’t doing enough to check the president. That included roughly 4 in 10 Republicans. Even the base got tired of watching its representatives kneel.

§They Called Your Grocery Bill a Hoax

This is where the contempt is easiest to see. Trump promised gas under $2 a gallon. Before his war, it averaged $2.98. On Election Day, it was about $4.15, and that same day he told Fox News, “The inflation is solved.”

He has called affordability a “hoax” and a “fake word,” and said higher gas prices were a “small price to pay” for his war. Small for whom? Not for him. At a rally in Montana, he said “we have very little inflation” hours after the government reported inflation had climbed to 3.7%, and then gave himself an A+.

Congressional Republicans went along with every word. About 6 in 10 voters said they were very concerned about grocery prices, and two-thirds said Trump’s policies had made the economy worse. The party looked at families choosing between filling the tank and filling the fridge, called them liars, and then asked for their votes. Voters said no.

§They Earned It

Here’s the Republican record in two years. They protected the Epstein crowd, started a war they swore they’d never start, and let a lobby buy a congressional seat and brag about it. They purged anyone who spoke up and mocked working Americans for not being able to afford groceries.

They promised to fight for the forgotten man, and forgot him the minute they won. I campaigned for that coalition. They threw it away.

I didn’t cheer on Tuesday. I don’t expect Democrats to shrink the government, stay out of foreign wars, or leave my wallet alone. But that doesn’t let Republicans off the hook. Every Republican who went down chose loyalty to one man’s ego over the people who sent them to Washington, and Tuesday was the bill. If what’s left of this party wants voters like me back, the to-do list is short. Release every file. End the war. Cut ties with the lobbyists. Stop punishing people for telling the truth. Admit that Americans are going broke.

They won’t do any of it, so they’ll keep losing, and they’ll deserve every loss.