Don't have a plan: Republicans panic as Trump ramps up in Iran

The president’s inability to resolve the Iran War is spelling disaster for endangered Republican lawmakers this November.

The U.S. and Iran continued to exchange strikes this week, pushing the prospect of a potential peace deal further out of reach. The escalating conflict has killed four more U.S. service members and sent gas prices shooting back up.

That’s put incumbent Republicans in a bind: the party already had a short list of accomplishments to curry favor with voters ahead of the midterm elections. Now, even races once thought to be safe zones for the conservative party are in doubt. Battleground areas now include Iowa, Alaska, and Ohio, as well as House districts that Donald Trump carried by double digits in 2024.

“We’re preparing for the bottom to fall out,” one GOP operative working on midterm races told Politico Playbook Wednesday. “Republicans are running out of runway here to improve their political fortunes before November.”

The war has taken an enormous toll on American life, inflaming the cost of practically everything as shipping companies contend with rising oil costs. Iowa Democratic state Representative Josh Turek—who is running for the Hawkeye State’s Senate seat—told Politico that the war has become a touchstone for his campaign.

“Everywhere I’m going—it doesn’t matter, urban or rural areas—people are telling me they’re struggling just to keep food on the table, a roof above their head, and now with this unnecessary war in Iran, we’re looking at being able to afford gas,” Turek said.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly rejected the idea that Trump’s scoresheet was negatively impacting Republican races, contrasting his “record of success” on national security issues to an alleged Democratic interest in “transgender surgeries for children.”

But off the record, people around the president aren’t so confident that his influence on the upcoming races is a good thing. One unnamed person close to the White House told Politico that the administration had badly mismanaged the war, and that the conflict was largely driven by Trump’s inability to see that he’d lost.

“They don’t have a plan here,” the person told Politico.

The source warned that a ground invasion—which Trump has repeatedly floated and Tehran has welcomed—could spark another long and inconclusive Middle East war that “runs the risk of ruining his second term.”

“This is a classic escalation trap,” they said.