The Bush dynasty cheered on the Democrats who just humiliated Republicans, and now it wants to run the cleanup.
Their cable news friends treat the comeback pitch like wisdom from the grown-ups.
And George P Bush just posted one list with a glaring hole in it.
The Bush Heir Read the Election Results and Wrote a Prescription
Democrats ran the table in Texas in November 2026. James Talarico knocked off Ken Paxton for the US Senate seat, the first Democrat Senate win in the state since 1988.
Gina Hinojosa sent Governor Greg Abbott packing and became the first Democrat to claim the governor’s mansion since Ann Richards in 1990.
The ballots had barely cooled before George P Bush, the former Texas Land Commissioner and grandson of one President and nephew of another, stepped up to explain what it all meant.
“Texas turning blue should be a wake-up call for Republicans,” Bush wrote on X. “Rebuilding the GOP will require new candidates, better messaging, and a renewed focus on the issues that matter to voters.”
He saved a swipe for the Left, too. “Democrats also need to recognize that overreach, including attacks on innovators like @elonmusk and policies that threaten the Texas Miracle, carries real consequences,” he added.
Then came the prescription. “As we look toward 2028, Republicans need to get back to basics: fiscal responsibility, economic opportunity, limited government, and delivering results for the American people.”
Bush carried the same message onto Fox News’ America Reports, where he warned that Democrat attacks on Musk’s companies could wreck the business climate that turned Texas into an economic powerhouse.
Sounds reasonable enough. Read the list again, though.
Count What the Bush Basics Leave Out
Border security doesn’t make the cut. Neither does deportation, illegal immigration, trade, or ending foreign wars.
Those happen to be the exact issues that broke the Bush family’s grip on the Republican Party in the first place. And they’re the same issues the family has fought the America First movement on ever since.
So the “basics” amount to a Republican Party with the populism surgically removed. A polite nod to markets, a wink at the donor class, and not one word about the millions of illegal aliens who poured across the border during the Biden years.
But the bigger problem is the brand name stamped on the box.
Fiscal responsibility? George W Bush took office with a national debt of roughly $5.7 trillion and handed his successor a tab north of $10 trillion. He signed the Medicare Part D drug entitlement in 2003 and capped his presidency with the $700 billion TARP bailout for Wall Street in 2008.
And the family’s idea of immigration policy never changed much. W pushed an amnesty bill in 2007 that died when supporters came up short on a 46-53 Senate cloture vote. Jeb Bush told an audience in April 2014 that crossing the border illegally wasn’t a felony but “an act of love.”
That’s the “back to basics” the dynasty has in mind. Same old amnesty, same old spending, with a fresh coat of Texas Miracle paint.
The Family That Wrote Checks to the Other Side
Here’s where George P’s diagnosis gets downright rich.
The Bushes didn’t sit this one out. His uncle Neil Bush announced on social media that he cast his early ballot for Talarico, insisting that “character matters more than party affiliation.” W’s daughter Barbara Bush sent Talarico’s campaign a donation, according to FEC records. And the former President himself headlined a Dallas-area fundraiser for Republican Senate candidates that left Paxton off the guest list.
Now a member of that same family wants to lecture Republicans on what went wrong.
Musk, meanwhile, actually put skin in the game. He steered roughly $160 million into a super PAC backing Paxton, according to one financial news report, and OpenSecrets data cited by NPR shows at least $225 million of his midterm money landed in Texas.
So one side of this story spent a fortune trying to hold Texas. The Bush side helped the Democrats take it. Guess which one now wants to borrow the other’s name.
Hinojosa wasted no time proving Musk right to worry. She has already declared that any relationship with Musk’s companies “has to be on our terms,” and she trashed a proposed sale of state beachfront to SpaceX as “unacceptable.” Investors dumped Tesla and SpaceX stock the day after the election, sending shares down 3.3 percent and 3.8 percent.
Fine. George P noticed. But his family handed those Democrats the keys and now wants applause for spotting the burglar.
The Old Guard Wants Its Party Back
Strip away the Musk talk and the post reads like a campaign memo for the restoration crowd.
“New candidates.” “Better messaging.” In establishment-speak, those phrases mean one thing: herd the Trump voters back into line and put the old management back in charge.
Karl Rove, the Bush family’s longtime chief strategist and the top tactician for the establishment RINO wing, helped steer the party into the 2006 and 2008 disasters, when the Iraq War and the Wall Street collapse paved Barack Obama’s road to the White House. That same wing still wants amnesty for illegal aliens, free trade deals that shipped jobs overseas, and more foreign adventures. With President Trump term-limited, they smell their chance to reclaim the party.
And voters just reminded everybody what they think of foreign adventures. Echelon Insights asked Trump 2024 voters who have since soured on him what pushed them away, and wars and Iran beat tariffs five to one, 15 percent to 3. That number belongs to the neoconservatives who pushed the Iran war, and the Bush wing built the modern home those neoconservatives still live in.
Maybe George P simply wants Republicans to sharpen their economic pitch. Plenty of honest conservatives would sign that list. But the Bushes don’t toss out lists by accident, and an heir with no office on his calendar doesn’t book Fox News hits for his health.
Then there’s the demographic question nobody in the Bush orbit will touch. A FrontPage Magazine analysis found Texas added about 418,000 registered voters between 2024 and 2025, while the population grew by only about 391,000, with the surge feeding Democrat gains. Decades of mass migration reshaped the state, and the Bush answer has always been more of it.
The Last Time George P Asked Voters for a Promotion
George P knows how Republican voters feel about his family. He tested the question himself.
He challenged Paxton for attorney general in 2022. Trump endorsed Paxton, and GOP voters buried Bush by more than 35 points in the runoff, ending four decades with a Bush in elected office.
His tenure at the General Land Office left a few scars, too. Conservatives revolted when his office pushed an Alamo redesign that included moving the Cenotaph, the monument to the defenders who died there, and the Texas Historical Commission rejected the move in 2021.
That’s the résumé behind the call for “new candidates.”
The America First movement already has its next generation. Vice President JD Vance stands as the clear MAGA heir apparent for 2028, and the establishment can’t stand him for the simplest reason: he opposes the foreign wars and open-border policies that replace American workers with cheap foreign labor. A Bush “back to basics” platform with no border plank looks custom-built to fight him.
Even President Trump read the Texas results differently. He said Abbott lost because he became a “RINO” in the “last six months of his Political Life.” Trump blamed the drift away from the base. George P’s prescription drifts even further.
Back in August 2016, after Trump beat his father in the primary, George P told Texas Republicans how a loser ought to behave. “From Team Bush, it’s a bitter pill to swallow, but you know what? You get back up and you help the man that won, and you make sure that we stop Hillary Clinton,” he said.
Ten years later, Team Bush helped the Democrat.
Sources: George P Bush on X (via Campos Communications, “Good Win”); Fox News, America Reports, “Democrats set their sights on Elon Musk”; KUT News, “Texas election results: Democrats break decades-long losing streak in Texas as Talarico wins Senate race, Hinojosa unseats Abbott”; Newsweek, “What a blue Texas means for Elon Musk’s future”; Fortune, coverage of Musk’s Texas spending and Hinojosa; Business Standard/Bloomberg, “Tesla and SpaceX lose $130 billion as Democrats sweep Texas elections”; Freedom Bunker/ZeroHedge, “The Incoming Democrat Governor Of Texas Is Already Going After Elon Musk”; Deep News, “Musk Invests $225 Million in Texas as Democrats Target Special Treatment”; The Texas Tribune, Trump statement on Abbott and “The Brief: George P Bush Tells Texas GOP to Back Trump” (August 2016); FrontPage Magazine, “How They Stole Texas”; Daily Mail, coverage of the Bush family and the Texas Senate race; Echelon Insights polling of Trump 2024 voters
Note: The source material calls George P Bush the “Texas Land Commissioner,” but he left that office in January 2023, and Fox News identifies him as the former Land Commissioner. The article uses “former.”