A growing faction on the right is embracing something that looks increasingly like socialism, or, at minimum, has become far too comfortable wielding federal power in ways that should be off-limits to a movement committed to shrinking government and limiting its reach. 

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz called out that faction Tuesday, officially labeling its members RINOs, who offer voters little beyond the same government benefits and economic intervention long associated with the left, only redirected toward a different set of favored constituents. Cruz went on to argue that populism need not collapse into socialism. A conservative can speak for ordinary Americans, defend their interests, and still believe in limited government, free markets, and individual responsibility. But the right’s embrace of Bernie Sanders-style economics, he warned, is not a path to renewal. It is a path to losing, and to becoming the very thing conservatism was meant to oppose.

"Instead of a socialism under the banner of Islamism, they're advocating for a socialism under the banner of red, white, and blue as a means to win elections. And the Trojan horse of this entire thing is the affordability conversation," Fox News' Will Cain said. "How do you combat that argument?"

"Look, I agree with you. There are people that are selling this siren sign, and it's an interesting beast. We used to have a couple of decades ago what would be called RINOs," the Texas Senator said. "It's essentially weak Republicans, Republicans in name only, that would say, we're going to spend money too, we just won't give away as much as the Democrats. Today, instead of coming from the moderate, mushy middle, where that urge is coming from is the self-declared populist."

"Look, I'll be clear, I consider myself very much a populist. The base that has elected me every time has been blue-collar workers. Here's the difference. The way to be a populist is not get in the Bernie Sanders game of giving away free stuff. The way to be a populist is fight for the jobs of working men and women, fight for small businesses," Sen. Cruz said. "Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris's tax policy and economic policy does not work. And you are right, there are some misguided voices in MAGA saying, let's embrace socialism lite. You know what? If we campaign and say we'll be just like the Democrats, except not as a generous Santa Claus, that's a path to losing."

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For all our talk of limited government and free markets, too many on the right are flirting with redistribution, anti-market policy, and outright socialism. Earlier this week, a self-proclaimed Christian-nationalist pastor, still on the fringe, but unusually candid, argued that Republicans must embrace socialism. 

The broader trend extends well beyond him. Conservatives have defended government stipends, expanded welfare entitlements for stay-at-home parents, federal ownership stakes in private companies, heavy handed regulation of data centers and artificial intelligence, price controls, and accusations of “price gouging.” They have even embraced the fixed-pie fallacy and called for the rejection of Milton Friedman.

In an age when the right measures itself largely by its opposition to the left, cultural resistance alone is not enough. Culture matters, but so does affordability. Free markets, competition, entrepreneurship, and economic growth remain the best answers, not Republican-led redistribution. Republicans must do more than invoke those principles nostalgically. They must understand them, defend them, and make a serious case to voters that prosperity does not come from choosing different recipients for government favors. It comes from economic freedom.