JD Vance Blames Iran War for GOP Losses, but Trump’s Tariffs Were a Major Factor, Too

The emerging narrative, or rather excuse, from the right-populist wing is that last night’s across-the-board electoral disaster for Republicans was all about the , and only about the Iran war. That’s the message from Vice President , who ominously suggests as a major lesson that Republicans need to “change our relationship to .” Michael Brendan Dougherty argues that it’s “the war, stupid.” Many of these voices are (unlike Michael) ranting against the war without mentioning who decided to go to war and has been running the policy ever since.

Now, the Iran war is unpopular, and there’s no question that it contributed to the scale of the defeat. I’ve had more to say before, since the day the war started, and will again, about how Donald Trump failed to sell the war to the public or get the approval of Congress, how he never spelled out clear war aims or established visible victory conditions, and how he picked a worst-of-both-worlds halfway ground between a targeted strike on Iranian capabilities that would have been over much faster, and a regime change operation that would have had a clear objective and aimed at a permanent solution of the problem of the Iranian regime. He made things worse by trying to cut an ill-considered deal with the mullahs that had Vance written all over it and fell apart almost immediately. The war dragged on longer than projected — Americans aren’t anti-war, but they hate wars that are neither short nor showing visible progress toward a foreseeable end — it has impacts on the very visible metric of gas prices, and because of the nature of how Trump and Vance campaigned, it felt like a betrayal to a segment of their base of what they had promised.

About the Author

Dan McLaughlin

Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at National Review Institute.

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The emerging narrative, or rather excuse, from the right-populist wing is that last night’s across-the-board electoral disaster for Republicans was all about the , and only about the Iran war. That’s the message from Vice President , who ominously suggests as a major lesson that Republicans need to “change our relationship to .” Michael Brendan Dougherty argues that it’s “the war, stupid.” Many of these voices are (unlike Michael) ranting against the war without mentioning who decided to go to war and has been running the policy ever since.

Now, the Iran war is unpopular, and there’s no question that it contributed to the scale of the defeat. I’ve had more to say before, since the day the war started, and will again, about how Donald Trump failed to sell the war to the public or get the approval of Congress, how he never spelled out clear war aims or established visible victory conditions, and how he picked a worst-of-both-worlds halfway ground between a targeted strike on Iranian capabilities that would have been over much faster, and a regime change operation that would have had a clear objective and aimed at a permanent solution of the problem of the Iranian regime. He made things worse by trying to cut an ill-considered deal with the mullahs that had Vance written all over it and fell apart almost immediately. The war dragged on longer than projected — Americans aren’t anti-war, but they hate wars that are neither short nor showing visible progress toward a foreseeable end — it has impacts on the very visible metric of gas prices, and because of the nature of how Trump and Vance campaigned, it felt like a betrayal to a segment of their base of what they had promised.