Republicans lost ground in Tuesday’s elections because voters were grading the party on pocketbook issues rather than rejecting conservative ideas outright, according to a new opinion piece by Fox News contributor Mehek Cooke.
Cooke’s analysis comes after Democrats captured both chambers of Congress, flipped governor’s offices and won statewide races across the country — including in Ohio, a state President Donald Trump carried by double digits two years earlier.
Citing a Fox News poll taken before the election, Cooke notes that 60% of voters named the cost of living as their greatest economic concern, 74% rated the economy negatively, and only 18% said their families were financially better off than two years earlier.
Despite those numbers, Cooke writes that voters still trusted Republicans more than Democrats on crime, border security and immigration — but says those advantages weren’t enough to offset frustration over affordability.
Health Care Named as a Key Weak Spot
Cooke points to health care as the clearest example of where Republicans lost ground. A post-election analysis by KFF of the national Voter Poll found voters trusted Democrats over Republicans on health care by 19 percentage points. More than half of respondents said policies under the Trump administration had made their own health care costs worse, while only 10% said those costs had improved.
Cooke argues that rebuilding trust on the issue will require concrete action rather than promises — specifically, enforcing price transparency, exposing hidden markups by middlemen, increasing competition, and requiring insurers to give timely explanations when they deny coverage.
Leverage Through the Veto
With Democrats now controlling both chambers of Congress, Cooke notes that President Trump retains veto power, which gives him leverage in negotiations even as he has pledged to work with the opposition. Because Democrats would need two-thirds support in both chambers to override a veto, Cooke argues Trump can use the threat of a veto to block legislation he views as making life more expensive while pushing for affordability measures that produce measurable results for families.
Cooke’s piece also calls on congressional Republicans and the Trump administration to adopt scorecards tracking metrics such as permit processing times and dollars protected from fraud, and to require audits of underperforming government programs before additional funding is approved.
The column frames the 2025 election results not as a broad ideological shift toward Democrats but as a performance review of Republican governance, arguing that the party’s path back to winning elections runs through demonstrating it can lower everyday costs for American families.
