{"id":2700044,"date":"2026-11-06T08:01:28","date_gmt":"2026-11-06T13:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignneocons-are-desperate-to-blame-the-gop-midterm-wipeout-on-everything-but-iran\/"},"modified":"2026-11-06T08:04:58","modified_gmt":"2026-11-06T13:04:58","slug":"utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignneocons-are-desperate-to-blame-the-gop-midterm-wipeout-on-everything-but-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignneocons-are-desperate-to-blame-the-gop-midterm-wipeout-on-everything-but-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"Neocons Blame Midterm Wipeout On Everything But Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Futm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignneocons-are-desperate-to-blame-the-gop-midterm-wipeout-on-everything-but-iran%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2700044&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>After the GOP\u2019s midterm losses, neocons blamed tariffs, corruption, candidate quality and immigration rather than the Iran war. Vice President J.D. Vance said the war was the main cause; the Wall Street Journal attacked him. Exit polls indicated many voters saw the iran war as a major factor, and higher gas and grocery prices-linked to the conflict-hurt the GOP. Critics say neocons promised an easy victory, failed to make an honest case for war, and should openly justify defending it despite the political cost.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Neocons sprang into action this week amid the fallout from Tuesday\u2019s historic Republican defeat in the midterms, pushing a theory of the election that\u2019s completely divorced from reality. Their basic argument is that it wasn\u2019t the costly and unpopular Iran War that turned voters against President Trump and the GOP, it was tariffs, corruption, candidate quality, ICE raids \u2014 nearly anything you can think of <em>besides<\/em> the war, which they are still defending amid the smoldering wreckage of the Republican Party.<\/p>\n<p>The Wall Street Journal editorial board, a champion of the war from the beginning, went after Vice President J.D. Vance this week for <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/JDVance\/status\/2118004988433641835?a=Yx4GHolVtdFssNaGQYI&#038;s=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">a lengthy X post on Wednesday<\/a> in which Vance rightly cited the war as the primary cause of the Republican midterm disaster.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night,\u201d Vance wrote. \u201cIf you\u2019d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that\u2019s at least honest.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The WSJ editors are not interested in an honest conversation. They criticized Vance for not mentioning corruption and tariffs as major reasons for Republican losses. Tariffs in particular is a familiar refrain among all those who pushed for the Iran war. The problem is, public opinion on tariffs doesn\u2019t show what the neocons say it shows. After Trump\u2019s \u201cliberation day\u201d tariffs were enacted on April 2 of last year, Trump\u2019s approval rating dropped from 47 percent down to about where it was during the best times of his first term, about 40 percent, which is Trump\u2019s baseline on economic management.<\/p>\n<p>The entire tariffs talking point is just a tactic to distract from the Iran War and its costs and shift the conversation to something else. Dana Loesch went even further than the WSJ and claimed that Iran and Israel <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/DLoesch\/status\/2118361266981122219?a=cOTt85DQqlpg9NJS1lU&#038;s=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">weren\u2019t even a top four concern for voters<\/a>, that instead it was the economy, cost of living, and tariffs. But that\u2019s not what exit polling shows. Loesch in particular was widely mocked on X for her inability to correctly read exit polls that showed <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2026\/11\/03\/exit-poll-iran-war-was-crucial-or-major-factor-for-3-in-4-voters\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">three out of four voters<\/a> said the Iran war was a \u201ccrucial or major factor\u201d in their vote for Congress. <\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s also a dim-witted sleight-of-hand being employed here. Loesch and other neocons keep citing \u201ccost of living\u201d as a major reason for voter discontent with the GOP. But of course the number one cost of living indicator is gas prices (because people are reminded of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/exclusive-tom-cotton-high-gas-prices-intended-effect-of-joe-bidens-energy-policy-it-is-not-some-accident\/\" title=\"Exclusive\u2014 Tom Cotton: High ... \u2018Intended Effect of Joe Biden...s Energy Policy,... It Is Not \u2018Some Accident...\">gas price hikes<\/a> every time they fill up). Ordinary people are not going to respond to a poll question about their major concerns by saying \u201cthe Strait of Hormuz is closed.\u201d But the closure of the strait, a direct result of the war, is of course the <em>cause<\/em> of the cost of living increase that they do cite.<\/p>\n<p>This entire debate is deeply dishonest. The war was never popular, was never sold to the American people, and nothing about it was ever going to be easy or clean. Neocons like Mark Levin and Marc Thiessen went out and argued that the regime in Tehran would collapse and that there would be no downsides to attacking Iran.<\/p>\n<p>What happened was what anyone could have predicted: gas prices spiked, the regime didn\u2019t fall, and the American public soured on the whole thing. Instead of acknowledging those realities, the neocons spent most of this last year arguing that we only need two more weeks of bombing Iran to win the war, like some sick parody of Anthony Fauci\u2019s \u201ctwo-weeks-to-stop-the-spread\u201d during Covid. <\/p>\n<p>Were there other factors that contributed to voter discontent with Trump and the GOP? Yes, of course. But the overwhelming factor, the thing that caused the president\u2019s approval to crater going into these midterms, wasn\u2019t tariffs or corruption or immigration enforcement. It was the war and the costs that the war imposed on the American people. They were especially angered by higher gas and grocery prices because no one in the Trump administration even tried to make a case for the war before they started dropping bombs on Iran. Moreover, they felt betrayed by a president who ran, in part, on a promise not to start new Mideast wars.<\/p>\n<p>Not that communist Democrats have flipped a bunch of states blue and taken control of Congress, it would be nice if we could have an honest conversation about what went wrong. But the people most responsible for this catastrophe insist on gaslighting the American people and trying to blame things that are, at best, secondary factors.<\/p>\n<p>As Vance said, if they think the war was worth an historic GOP midterm defeat, that it was worth losing control of the Senate for the next six years at least, then just come out and say that. Make a case for it. But they won\u2019t \u2014 just like they never really made a serious case for going to war against Iran in the first place.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. He is the author of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Pagan-America-Decline-Christianity-Dark\/dp\/1684514444\/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Pagan+America&#038;qid=1695306441&#038;sr=8-1\"><i>Pagan America: the Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come<\/i><\/a>. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Neocons blame tariffs, not Iran war, for GOP loss<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":518,"featured_media":2700045,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/Marc-Thiessen.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[87545,3823,7408,57534,5894],"class_list":["post-2700044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-blame-game-2","tag-iran","tag-midterms","tag-neocons-2","tag-politics"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/Marc-Thiessen.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2700044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/518"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2700044"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2700044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2700048,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2700044\/revisions\/2700048"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2700045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2700044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2700044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2700044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}