Ted Cruz is locked in what he calls an “existential fight.”
The Republican senator, the conservative’s conservative, is not worried about his usual foes—the Democratic (or, as he says, “Democrat”) Party, the radical left—but what he sees as a dangerous, growing cohort of antisemitic right-wingers.
The battle is for control of the right, MAGA, and the Republican Party. If his side loses and the antisemites win, the Texas senator and likely 2028 presidential contender told me when we met last week in a Las Vegas hotel, “we will have lost our country.”
He had just wrapped up addressing the Republican Jewish Coalition at its convention, and we were in a conference room one floor below. It was nearly 10 at night.
Earlier that day, the internal squabbling on the right—about U.S.-Israel relations, the limits of acceptable speech, and anti-Jewish hate—had boiled over into the public square. It was uncontainable now.
