The Iran War Is Eating the GOP’s Midterm Message Alive
Mike Johnson and his colleagues would prefer to talk about literally anything else.
HOUSE REPUBLICAN LEADERS had a bullish plan for the August congressional recess. They would visit swing districts around the country, raising money for their candidates and delivering the party’s campaign message. They would crow about the economy and paint Democrats as Communists.
Unfortunately, the plan has run into a problem: the Iran war.
On their favorite national TV outlets, Fox News and Newsmax, the GOP leaders get free rein to spout their talking points. The anchors try not to mention the war or gas prices. But in swing districts, these topics keep coming up. The party’s leaders struggle for answers. And the more they talk, the more they tie themselves in knots.
TWO WEEKS AGO, Speaker Mike Johnson went to Arizona to help Republican congressional candidates. While he was there, he gave an interview to Politico’s Dasha Burns. She told him that his colleagues were freaking out:
I can’t tell you, Speaker, how many times I talk to Republicans . . . that are trying to win seats, that are tearing their hair out because they don’t know how to message this war. They don’t know how to talk to voters about what great achievements the president has made on the economy, when [voters] are unhappy with what they’re paying at the pump and what they’re paying at the grocery store. Like, how are Republicans supposed to contend with this?
Johnson argued that his colleagues could brag about “the return of American energy dominance and the return of peace through strength.” But that answer just raised more questions. If energy production is thriving, why are we paying so much for gas?1 And if we have peace through strength, why are Iranian drones and missiles still choking off tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz?
In January, House Republicans thought they had a good story to tell in the midterms. The story was that their tax-cut bill was creating jobs and putting money in people’s pockets. But then Trump launched the war. So now the Republicans have to amend their story. They have to explain why grocery prices and other economic indicators regressed after the war started.
On Friday, as Johnson was campaigning in Colorado, he and one of his endangered freshmen, Rep. Gabe Evans, gave a joint interview to Shaun Boyd, a reporter for CBS News Colorado. Boyd asked about surging gas and food prices. Johnson replied that the GOP’s tax cuts “had the desired effect. And in the first quarter this year, the economy was beginning to take off like a rocket. And then we got into the skirmish with Iran. That’s what the prices are related to.”
On Monday, as Johnson campaigned in Virginia with Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans, he was asked again about gas prices and the war. “The Iran conflict has been the cause, of course, of gas prices going up. It’s drug on,” he conceded.
Tom Emmer, the House Republican whip, has the same problem. Two weeks ago on Fox Business, he complained that Republicans weren’t getting credit for reducing egg and milk prices. He chastised the media for focusing instead on high gas prices, which he said were “related to something that has to get done in Iran.”
Was the war really necessary? In his interview in Colorado, Johnson pleaded, “We had to do it. They [Iran] were very close to nuclear capability.” In Virginia, he said Trump “understood their nuclear capability was almost there and that we had to act.” Steve Scalise, the House majority leader, made a similar pitch while visiting Michigan last week.
But as congressional Republicans parrot this Trumpian lie about an imminent threat, the president himself undercuts them. On Monday, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, he boasted that if Iran wanted to build a nuclear weapon, “after what we did previously with the B-2 bombers, it’s going to be a long time.”
In other words, we took out the Iranian nuclear threat last year. This year’s war was gratuitous.
House Republicans also have trouble explaining why Trump didn’t consult Congress. On Friday, when she spoke with Johnson and Evans in Colorado, Boyd pressed Evans: “Shouldn’t the president have come to Congress and asked them to approve [the] war?” Evans replied that Iran had supported al Qaeda, and therefore “the 2001 AUMF”—the authorization passed by Congress twenty-five years ago to use military force in response to 9/11—gave Trump sufficient approval to attack Iran this year. It’s hard to imagine a more dishonest abuse of a congressional resolution.
Johnson keeps trying, doggedly, to peddle Trump’s euphemisms for the war. “As soon as we get the Iran skirmish settled out, I think everybody’s going to have much more economic opportunity,” he told Burns. His use of the word skirmish to describe a six-month war made his prediction seem equally ridiculous.
Meanwhile, Republicans struggle to defend another Trumpian lie: that the United States fully controls the Strait of Hormuz. Last week, when Scalise went to Iowa, Local 5 News reporter Dana Searles pressed him about the war’s effects on gas and fertilizer prices. Scalise danced around the question, leaving it to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who was standing next to him. Bessent assured Searles that the United States and its partner countries would soon issue a statement “to call for the Iranians to let fertilizer out of the Gulf.” When you’re asking Iran to let ships out of the Gulf, that’s a confession that you don’t have control.
Nor can Republicans explain how the ongoing deployment is both a gift to the world and a defense of America’s interests. Johnson told Burns that voters supported Trump because the president stood for “America First.” But in the same interview, the speaker predicted that other nations would step in to keep the Strait of Hormuz open “because most countries have a bigger stake in that than we do.”
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TRUMP’S PERSISTENT PROMISES that the war is about to end have become a joke. But Johnson keeps hyping them. “I think we’re getting close to resolution as we sit here today. There’s big developments,” the speaker told Burns. He added, “You’re hearing the White House and folks close to the administration say that we’re on the verge of something big.” A week later in Colorado, he professed, “I believe we’re about to take a turn on the issue in Iran.” On Monday in Virginia, he repeated the same forecast: “I believe we’ll be getting into a new phase of that where we can calm this down.” That was the day Trump’s “memorandum of understanding” with Iran expired.
Even if Iran were to sign another deal, Republican lawmakers know it would be a sham. Last week, during his visit to Michigan, Scalise said Trump was “working to try to get peace agreements” with Iran. But in his next breath, Scalise noted that Iran’s rulers had “never been truthful or honest with anybody that they’ve dealt with.” And if Iran holds out or reneges, the Republicans have no Plan B. Johnson told Burns: “If we’re disappointed by the Iranians again because they can’t be trusted at the negotiation table, then we’ll handle this as quickly and as steadily as we can”—but he didn’t even try to explain what that would entail.
The war has become such a mess that Republicans no longer express much confidence it will end before November. Standing next to Scalise in Iowa, Bessent said he hoped Iran might let normal shipping resume in the Persian Gulf “by October.” And Johnson told Burns that Republicans would win the midterms “whether we resolve the Iran situation before the election or not.”
IF ALL ELSE FAILS, the Republicans might just try to gaslight the public. Last week, when Scalise and several colleagues spoke at a forum in Michigan, a local resident asked what they were planning to do to lower costs. Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, told her, “We need to make sure we’re talking facts and the truth. Gas prices today are high, but it’s still lower than it ever was during the prior administration.”
False. The average price of gas on the day Joe Biden took office was $2.39 per gallon. On the day he left, it was $3.13. Today, it’s above $4.00.
Speaking to reporters after the forum, Scalise said energy prices were “heading in the right direction, meaning coming down at the pump.” False again. When Scalise made that statement, gas prices were up 28 cents since early July and more than a dollar since the start of the war.
I almost feel sorry for the House Republicans. Trump launched the war without consulting them, and he wrecked their plan for the midterms. But they’ve had several chances to try to rein him in, and they’ve spurned those opportunities. They bet the election on him. Now they’ll pay the price.
Also, if the United States has returned to “energy dominance,” when did we lose it? We’ve been the world’s leading exporter of combined crude oil and refined petroleum products throughout this decade.
So, the usual GOP dishonesty shines through with the planned midterm message of “In January, House Republicans thought they had a good story to tell in the midterms. The story was that their tax-cut bill was creating jobs…”
But even before the Iran war that message was a LIE!!!
In 2025 job growth reduced to a crawl, only 181,000 TOTAL jobs or 15,000 per month. 2026 is not much better with an average monthly growth of only 34,000.
Compared to President Biden’s term when the average MONTHLY job growth was about 360,000!! Yes, EACH AVERAGE MONTH saw about DOUBLE what Trump II had in his first YEAR!
In other words, Biden’s economy had more than TEN TIMES more new job growth during Trump II. The same economy that Trump demagogued as a “disaster” to get re-elected.
Trump I was even worse. He was the first modern president since Hoover to have a NET LOSS of jobs during his term, MINUS 3 MILLION. Of course, this was fueled by the pandemic, but even before that Trump lagged behind the jobs created during President Obama’s two terms.
This is nothing new. It is a fact that job growth is stagnant during Republican presidents and explodes under Democratic president.
As Michael Tomasky has the receipts…
https://newrepublic.com/article/214396/americans-starting-see-truth-gop
In the post Regan era
“From 1989 to 2026, we’ve had Democratic presidents for 20 years and Republicans for 17.4 years. Care to hazard a guess as to the number of jobs created under Democrats vs. Republicans?
Answer: It’s 49.8 million versus 1.9 million. That isn’t a typo. Fifty million to two, basically. Democratic presidents have also done far better than Republicans on median household incomes, GDP rates, the Dow Jones index, and even deficit reduction. Dramatically so on deficit reduction”
As usual the GOP’s only recourse is to lie.
Do the Republicans even have a midterm message beyond Democrats are scary and bad? Because everything else is lies.