Ben Shapiro

Don't go for the party in power.

I will say that to me, the points of vulnerability for the Republicans in 2026 have very little to do with foreign policy and have a lot more to do with some of the candidates that are getting picked.

So I think that if the Republicans were to lose the Senate.

They're almost certainly going to lose North Carolina.

One of the reasons they're going to lose North Carolina is because the president decided to go to war with Tom Tillis.

The Republicans could win in Michigan where they normally would lose because the Democrats have picked a psycho over there.

Susan Collins is suddenly looking like a more robust candidate in Maine than she would have probably in this particular election cycle because the Democrats picked a psycho.

It's possible that the Republicans lose Iowa because it turns out that Republicans in Iowa in the primaries are selecting some candidates who are sort of not

The Joni Ernst traditionalist Republicans of Iowa, they're a little more out of the box and they could lose that.

So in the end, all these elections come down to sort of the sort of secular spirit of the election, the broad spirit of the election.

And then they come down to candidate quality always.

And I will say that there's some pretty differential candidate quality across the board here.

Republicans somehow lose the seat in Texas, for example.

That will be both of those factors coming into play.

I think that the Iran war, let's put it this way.

If the Iran war were happening and the oil prices were not up, it wouldn't be about the Iran war.

It's really about the oil prices.

And so if the oil prices are down by the time of the election, then I think everybody basically is going to attribute the loss to other factors.

If indeed there is an L for the Republicans.

I also think that when it comes to the Iran war, particularly, the president keeps saying that basically you're not going to experience pain.