Well, it’s election season, and the routine embrace of mindless partisanship has commenced. We are again being told by Republican politicians that we must ignore monetary inflation, the disastrous war of choice with Iran, the ever-expanding surveillance state, and the rampant corruption of this administration, because the other side is composed of communists, Islamists, terrorists, and other such evildoers.
The pretense that the Republicans have accomplished anything to write home about has been tossed aside as well. In a particularly sad display, Vice President J.D. Vance begged voters to give the GOP “another chance” to govern. Unable to defend the war in Iran, he is asking disillusioned right-wingers to “not throw the baby out with the bathwater.” Hardly an inspiring message.
And it seems the polls are as deflating as Vance’s stump speech. An Emerson College poll has Democrats up 11% in the generic congressional ballot. Senate races in Texas, Alaska, Iowa, and Kansas—states which are generally Republican strongholds—look dangerously close, if not outright favorable to Democrats. Simply put, a wave of historic proportions could be on our hands.
Crises such as this don’t result from prosperity brought about by the party in power. Rather, the calamity is one of the GOP’s own making.
A disastrous war, launched on a set of transparent lies, has led to a rise in the price of fuel. The continued printing of paper money has predictably decreased the value of the dollar, leading to inflation. The administration’s gaslighting over the Epstein Files has turned off young voters. All of this, and so much more, has snowballed and resulted in a political nightmare for President Donald Trump.
To put the cherry on top, Trump has aligned himself with the most despised neoconservatives and warmongers he can find. Last month, he posted a clip of Mark Levin and Ben Shapiro on Truth Social, where they make the delusional case that the war in Iran isn’t a motivating factor for voters.
“When we look at the Fox survey, Iran is a four-percent issue with the American people,” Levin said. “Whatever happens in the midterms, it doesn’t appear that Iran’s going to drive anything one way or another.”
Levin appears to be citing a poll from Fox News, where they asked registered voters what their most important issue is going into the election. He is correct that “Iran/War” came in at 4%. However, what he didn’t bring up on his show was that “Cost of living / Inflation” was by far the biggest concern among voters, at 34%. Could the voter’s worries possibly be the result of the rise in the price of fuel, food, and other goods—a problem that is the direct result of the Iran war? Levin didn’t bother to consider this possibility.
Obviously, it is misleading and disingenuous to pretend that the war and its economic consequences will play no role in November’s midterms. The dishonesty is fitting, however, as it matches with the broader attempt from Republicans to do what President Joe Biden and the Democrats did in 2024: tell voters that the economy is good, and they’re just too dumb to realize it.
The president’s rhetoric has been no better. Equipped with thoroughly debunked talking points about the supposed imminence of an Iranian nuclear threat, Trump has chosen that his best bet is to double-down on his war in the Middle East. In an interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News, Trump was asked if he had any regrets about the conflict, and how it has impacted the GOP’s midterm prospects.
“If we hadn’t done Iran,” Ingraham told Trump, “you would be cruising to midterm victory. $2.25 gas, I mean you’d be cruising.”
“Well, you don’t know that,” Trump responded. “Supposing we were cruising, and all of a sudden Iran has a nuclear weapon, they would use it. They’re crazy.”
By now, nobody is buying the claim that Iran was just about to launch a nuclear attack on the United States, and thanks to Trump’s bravery, their plot was foiled. This claim hasn’t been substantiated in the slightest.
So why repeat it?
Well, if he were to move on from this claim, and in essence admit to having lied the country into a war of choice, he would have no way of rhetorically shielding himself from the populace’s anger over the economic pain this war has caused. The pain persists, however, and no amount of gaslighting or war propaganda is going to change how the masses feel about the rise in gas prices or food costs.
Amid this disastrous war, Trump seems to have accepted that the midterms are essentially a lost cause. The goal has shifted from maintaining majorities in the U.S. House and Senate, to now just attempting to soften the landing. Trump doesn’t even bother to tout the supposed “wins” the Republicans have secured, or the qualities of the various Republican candidates—a collection of, for the most part, thoroughly unimpressive people. Instead, when asked by a reporter, “what is your message for voters heading into the midterms,” the resident—appearing uninterested in the topic—ran down a shortlist of insults.
“We’re running against communists, lunatics, socialists,” Trump said.
I highly doubt that many undecided voters heard this pitch—one which they have likely heard repeated countless times in campaign ads on their television over the past several weeks—and said “Well, I was unsure the last fifty times the Republicans said this, but I guess those Democrats really are communists!”
To be clear, the Democratic Party is sinister. Particularly, the insurgent democratic-socialist movement is fundamentally anti-private property, anti-capitalist, and anti-liberty. The issue is that the Republican Party has no leg to stand on when claiming to defend these principles. They have spent the last year and a half supporting a war of choice in Iran and reckless government spending. In fact, Trump has personally embraced many socialist policies, including having the federal government take equity stakes in dozens of companies.
As has been the case throughout modern history, the so-called “conservative” movement is willingly ceding ground to the left. In the late twentieth century, it was William F. Buckley and National Review which claimed to be “Standing athwart history, yelling ‘Stop,’” while simultaneously embracing progressive economic and cultural reforms every step of the way. Today, we watch as the Republicans decry the danger of the insurgent socialist wing of the Democratic Party, while in the very next breath embracing big-government central planning. This is the pathetic history of movement conservatism in a nutshell.
This November, it seems that the next chapter in this history will be written. Plagued by hypocrisy and dishonesty, the Republican Party is facing what seems to be certain doom, and it was entirely avoidable.
