It’s never too soon for some people to start eyeing the next Presidential Election.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz is one of those people.

And Ted Cruz threw down one challenge to JD Vance that you’ll need to buckle up for.

Cruz Sounds Ready to Challenge JD Vance in 2028

President Trump has reportedly settled on endorsing Vice President JD Vance in 2028 as the heir to the MAGA movement.

But that doesn’t mean the pre-Trump establishment is going to stand down.

Rather, Cruz is making it no secret that he intends to run for President in 2028 as the candidate for the neoconservative establishment that seeks to return the Republican Party to its pre-Trump roots.

In an interview with MS NOW, Cruz framed the 2028 GOP Presidential primary as a fork in the road for the party and framed the Trump/Vance agenda as an unacceptable deviation from what Cruz claimed was true conservatism.

“Going forward, we’re in the midst of a debate about who our party is and what we believe, and I think economically we’ve got to debate, ‘Are we a small-government, free-market conservative party? Are we a big-government, nanny-state party?” Cruz wondered.

Cruz argued the 2028 primary would be about what comes after Trump, even though Trump is ready to make it clear he believes that should be Vance.

“[Trump] is a unique historical figure. There’s never been anyone like him; I don’t think there will be anyone like him going forward,” Cruz added. “And we’re going to have over the next several years a conversation among Republicans about what comes next.”

Cruz Attacks the Trump Economic and Foreign Policy Agenda

Cruz opposed President Trump’s tariffs and began attacking Vance’s “common good conservatism,” which holds that a people have shared political goals and that the market should exist to serve the people as opposed to the people existing to serve the market.

Vance supports Trump’s tariffs and opposes so-called “free trade” deals.

The Vice President also took shots at the Wall Street Editorial Board, the avatar for the economic conservatism that Cruz is calling for, over the Journal’s support for open borders.

Cruz implied that Vance wanted to make the GOP a leftist economic party.

“Economically, I think we should be a conservative party,” Cruz stated.

The biggest difference between Cruz and Vance is on foreign policy.

Cruz is an unapologetic neoconservative who called for Trump to fight a regime-change war against Iran and opposed negotiations to end the war.

Vance opposed the war and led peace talks at Trump’s direction.

Cruz claimed Vance was an “isolationist” and that the GOP needed to debate if it wanted to continue down the America First path or revert to the Bush/Romeny/McCain/Cheney neoconservatism that ruled the party prior to Trump.

“And on foreign policy, we’ve got to debate, ‘Are we an isolationist party that withdraws from the world, or do we believe in American leadership?” Cruz wondered.

Vance Supporters Dismiss Cruz

Polls of GOP voters show that Vance is the second most popular Republican, only to President Trump, and that he leads the GOP primary field by a wide margin.

One Vance supporter told Semafor that they welcomed this doomed effort.

“The more, the merrier. We encourage them to split the single-digit anti-JD vote among all the dinosaurs of the Republican Party, none of whom will win a single primary,” the supporter stated.

A Trump aide mocked Cruz’s low poll numbers and rejected the idea he would have any role

“Unfortunately for [Cruz], has-beens polling at 1% won’t be part of that conversation,” the aide stated.

The same Never Trumpers are making the same arguments from 2016, but are now grafting them on to a Never Vance movement.

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