Opinion: Mehek Cooke Says Republicans Failed the Affordability Test and Should Run a 'Competence Revolution,' Starting With Health Care Prices and Trump's Veto Pen
The Fox News columnist argues voters graded the GOP on groceries, gas, housing and health care, and found it lacking. She urges price transparency, scorecards and audits, and says Trump can use his veto to demand affordability. The views are hers.
This is a Fox News opinion column by Mehek Cooke. The views are hers, not ours.
Her diagnosis. Cooke writes that Republicans lost because they forgot "it is the economy, stupid." In her view Americans did not embrace socialism or bigger government. They graded the GOP on groceries, gasoline, housing and health care and punished it for failing to deliver relief they could feel. She calls the election "a performance review," not the product of media bias, poor turnout or an ideological shift. She cites a Fox News poll in which 60 percent of voters named the cost of living as their greatest economic concern, 74 percent rated the economy negatively and 18 percent said their families were better off than two years ago.
What she says still works. Cooke says voters still trusted Republicans more on crime, border security and immigration, but those advantages did not close the affordability gap. She warns that dropping conservative principles would hand Democrats more wins, and that blaming anti-Trump anger alone would ignore what voters said.
Her prescription. She calls for a "competence revolution" that lowers the cost of living and enforces the law. She says health care is the clearest chance: a post-election KFF analysis, as she cites it, found voters trusted Democrats over Republicans on the issue by 19 points, and more than half said Trump administration policies had raised their own costs, against 10 percent who said they had fallen. She proposes price transparency, exposure of middleman markups, more competition and timely explanations of coverage denials. She also wants the administration and Republican governors to publish scorecards on permit times and fraud, and an audit before any more money goes to a failing program.
The veto. Cooke notes Trump keeps his veto pen with Democrats in control of Congress, and argues that gives him leverage to reject bills that raise costs and to demand "measurable relief for families." She says Democrats have "failed to offer a coherent governing strategy beyond blaming President Trump" and are mistaking Tuesday for "an endorsement of socialism."
Why it matters here. Her piece joins a run of Republican columns, including Hugh Hewitt's, on how to respond to the loss. Hers puts the blame on prices and delivery rather than on the war or on candidates. We also carried her earlier column on the Trump record.
What we could not check. We read the column. We did not verify the Fox News poll or the KFF figures she cites. She does not say what her health care proposals would cost or whether Congress could pass them.