Karl Rove’s Extremism Claim: Why the GOP is in Trouble for 2026

Ultimize. Karl Rove says the Republican Party is being taken over by Nazis. Karl Rove, not a college sophomore with a nose ring, not a guy on public access with a ukulele, but the man George W. Bush called the architect. When the architect says Nazis have moved into the building, you don't argue, you check the basement. This week at the Texas Tribune Festival, Rove said his party is being infiltrated by bigots. He named Nick Fuentes, the far-right podcaster, and said, quote, this guy is a Nazi. He mocked Republicans on podcasts who say they're just asking questions about the Jews. And Rove said he'll vote for the Democrat for Texas railroad commissioner because the Republican, Beau French, is, in Rove's word, a bigot. For 30 years, Democrats have called every Republican a fascist. Bob Dole fascist, Mitt Romney fascist in mom jeans. You could tune that out. The boy who cried Nazi once too often. But you cannot tune out Karl Rove. This is the man who wrote the Republican playbook. Karl Rove calling your party too extreme is like the inventor of the flamethrower saying your barbecue's a bit much. And Rove wasn't done. He said Ted Cruz reached out to tell him we're losing. And Senate candidate Ken Paxton sent him several emails saying, I'm losing, I need your help. Several emails. That's not a campaign. That's a guy who got ghosted after the first date. Now, here's what drives me crazy. This is the greatest political ad of 2026, and it's free. 30 seconds. Karl Rove's face. Karl Rove's words. Run it on every newscast in America until Election Day. Before the weather, during the weather, it should be the weather. Sunny, high of 82, and the Bush guy says Nazis. Will Democrats do that? No. By Thursday, they'll be arguing about a font. Democrats don't have message discipline. They have message suggestions. They're a group chat where everyone has everyone else on mute. Flip it around. Imagine a former Democratic Party chairman announcing Democrats had been taken over by Stalinists. Fox News would never discuss another subject. It would be on the ticker, on the chyron, and the pillow commercials. Republicans would play that clip at your funeral. Democrats won't play Karl Rove at their convention. Would you like to be the sort of successful person who is dominating news, at least in your industry? Well, if so, it's time to up your skills. At ultimize.com, I've created online courses to help you do that. Now, here's the thing. No obligation. You can get a free course on communication skills, a free course on how to build better habits. All you have to do is go to ultimize.com. That's ultimize.com. No obligation. Go there now. Now, I've taught message discipline for decades. It's simple. Step 1, when your opponent's top strategist hands you the message, Repeat the message. Step two: There is no step two. Democrats keep asking for step two. Speaking of Ted Cruz, the man who calls Karl Rove "We're losing" did win something this week. Senator Ted Cruz just got the Senate to pass the Protect College Sports Act, 77 to 22. So yeah, there were a lot of Democrats in there. Here's what it does in plain English: It gives the NCAA new power to set rules on what. college athletes can earn from their name, image, and likeness. It lets the NCAA limit transfers and bring back its 5-years-to-play rule. And it gives the NCAA limited protection from antitrust lawsuits over those rules. Translation: you can't sue them for doing the thing they're about to do to you. Now, remember who Ted Cruz is. He's the free market guy. individual liberty, brought the yoke of socialism. He once read Green Eggs and Ham on the Senate floor to fight big government. And now Ted Cruz has discovered the beauties of central planning. Turns out he loves collectivism. He just wants it for 19-year-olds. Look at the system. Head coach? Free market, 8-figure salary, buyout big enough to fund a small navy. TV networks? Free market. Billions. Conference commissioner. Free market. The kid getting his skull rattled on third and two. Whoa, whoa! Let's not get greedy. It's capitalism for coaches and Soviet-style socialism for players. They even brought back the five-year plan. And the commercials promoting this bill feature Nick Saban, a coach. Nick Saban protecting college athletes from money is like a lion doing a public service announcement about the dangers of meat. Senator John Kennedy offered an amendment to limit ticket prices for fans. Rejected. So there are limits on what the players can make, but no limits on what you pay to watch the players. And please don't tell me they're student athletes. Fine, let's make it about students. Take away the TV money and pay the coach like a professor. $49,000 a year, adjunct, no health insurance. He shares an office with the lacrosse bags. Watch how fast Coach discovers that amateurism is sacred. Here's what actually matters. A football player gets maybe 4 or 5 peak earning years. For a lot of them, that's most of the money they'll ever make. Remember, 99% of these folks never make it to the pros. Their body is the business, and the business has an expiration date. I relate. In the late '90s and 2000s, I made online courses and lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Visionary, I like to think, just too early, painfully early. Then starting around the pandemic, I made more money in 4 or 5 years than I've ever made before or since. If Congress had shown up in 2021 and said, TJ, we're capping your course sales to protect the integrity of amateur self-improvement, I'd have filibustered, and I'd have read Green Eggs and Ham. Now, someone who has absolutely maximized her peak earning years, Candace Owens. Candace Owens has a new problem. Her own family wants her to stop. A relative told the Daily Mail, I would like for her to get fully out of it. Don't talk anymore. Just disappear. That's not an intervention. That's a 1-star review. Don't talk anymore. My wife only says that to me in restaurants. Owens is a podcaster with more than 6 million YouTube subscribers. She's being sued for defamation by Charlie Kirk's former head of security and separately by the president of France and his wife over her claim that Brigitte Macron is a man. And she just did 3 episodes suggesting Charlie Kirk wasn't actually shot And that a decoy was involved. 3 episodes, nearly 4 million views. Getting sued by the president of France is a whole new level of achievement. Most of us can't get a French waiter to make eye contact. Here's what fascinates me. We're told the American right is hostile to Black women, and there's plenty of evidence for that. Racism, sexism abounds. Yet one of the biggest stars in right-wing media, Is a Black woman. The conspiracy industry achieved something corporate America spent millions on diversity consultants trying to do. And honestly, I guess it's a type of progress. 20 years ago, even 10 years ago, the face of American paranoia was Alex Jones, straight from central casting. Red-faced, bullhorn, veins popping out, yelling that the government was turning the frogs gay. Now it's Candace— calm, composed, beautifully lit. It's the same gas station burrito now sold at Whole Foods. The lesson is that in today's media economy, the reward goes to whoever says the wildest thing with the straightest face. The truth is the free sample. The conspiracy is the subscription. As a guy who sells courses, yeah, I'm a little jealous. For years I've taught build trust with your audience. Candace took the advanced class, build trust, then spent all of it at once on decoys. Her family says disappear. Her business model says never disappear, just keep asking questions. Nobody ever went broke asking questions. They just get sued by brands. Candace's family wants her to stop talking. Socrates, on the other hand, would have told everyone else to start. The New York Times has an opinion piece today on college AI and whether writing is instrumental to thinking, if it's all about really how we think. You know, the professor line, writing is thinking. If ChatGPT writes your essay, you didn't think. You outsourced your brain and kept the tuition bill. Socrates, 2,400 years ago, warned that writing would make people lazy. Yeah, he actually said that. He said it would weaken our memories and make people look wise without actually being wise. And he said a written page can't answer your questions. You ask it something and it just tells you the same thing forever. Socrates predicted my airline's customer service chatbot. Socrates never wrote a single book, so how do we know what he thought? His student Plato Wrote it all down. The greatest warning against writing survives only because someone ignored it. But Socrates was right about the big thing: the highest form of thinking isn't typing; it's standing in front of people, making your case, and defending it when somebody asks a question you didn't see coming. That's why show and tell was the most important class you ever took. You're six. You bring a rock. You tell 20 kids it's the greatest rock in history, and some kid asks, is it wet? At 6 years old, you learn to handle a hostile question. That's an MBA. And somewhere along the way, schools let show-and-tell fade and oral book reports disappear. Now a kid can go from kindergarten to college diploma without ever standing up and defending an idea out loud. Then we're shocked, shocked. when they answer a job offer with a thumbs-up emoji. AI can write your essay. AI cannot stand up in front of the room and get grilled about the wet rock. And that's the only skill that makes anybody successful. The job interview, the sales pitch, asking for the raise, the wedding toast after your brother-in-law's third drink. Now, full disclosure, I've spent decades coaching people to speak in public. So I have a financial interest in you being terrified of it. So here's where we are. Socrates said the spoken word is the ultimate form of thinking. Karl Rove proved him right. He stood on a stage in Austin and said the quiet part out loud. And Democrats proved the other half. You can hear the perfect argument spoken clearly by the least likely person on earth and still not think of a single thing to do with it. So I'm launching a new course, Show and Tell for Democrats. Lesson 1, show the Karl Rove clip. Lesson 2, tell everybody. There's no lesson 3. There's barely a lesson 2. I'm TJ Walker. See you tomorrow. Ultimize.