{"id":2704343,"date":"2026-11-14T00:30:39","date_gmt":"2026-11-14T05:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/for-republicans-the-war-is-a-political-gordian-knot\/"},"modified":"2026-11-14T00:37:33","modified_gmt":"2026-11-14T05:37:33","slug":"for-republicans-the-war-is-a-political-gordian-knot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/for-republicans-the-war-is-a-political-gordian-knot\/","title":{"rendered":"For Republicans, the War Is a Political Gordian Knot"},"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\">18<\/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%2Ffor-republicans-the-war-is-a-political-gordian-knot%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=2704343&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>In the weeks after Trump\u2019s Iran strike, questions remain about why hawks backed him adn whether he understood the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/gavin-newsoms-6-worst-policies-as-california-governor\/\" title=\"Gavin Newsom\u2019s 6 Worst Policies as California Governor\">long-term costs<\/a>. His approval was already weak, yet the military escalation deepened political and economic damage-raising fuel prices and hurting Republican midterm prospects. trump hadn\u2019t seemed prepared to sustain a protracted conflict or build a broad, enduring coalition. The war may not topple Iran and could spur nuclear proliferation, making its strategic payoff doubtful even to supporters. Ordinary voters, who bore higher energy costs, paid a steep price.  <\/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 class=\"c-blog-post__content s-wysiwyg s-wysiwyg--blog\">\n<div style=\"margin-bottom:30px;\" id=\"elevenlabs-audionative-widget\" data-height=\"90\" data-width=\"100%\" data-frameborder=\"no\" data-scrolling=\"no\" data-publicuserid=\"cb0d9922301244fcc1aeafd0610a8e90a36a320754121ee126557a7416405662\" data-playerurl=\"https:\/\/elevenlabs.io\/player\/index.html\" >Loading the <a href=\"https:\/\/elevenlabs.io\/text-to-speech\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Elevenlabs Text to Speech<\/a> AudioNative Player&#8230;<\/div>\n<p><script src=\"https:\/\/elevenlabs.io\/player\/audioNativeHelper.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script>                            <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the final weeks before Democrats officially replace the GOP \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/politics.georgetown.edu\/past-events\/what-to-expect-from-a-gop-trifecta\/\">trifecta<\/a>\u201d with majorities <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/projects\/elections-2026\/us-house-results\/\">so large<\/a> they <a href=\"https:\/\/history.house.gov\/Congressional-Overview\/Profiles\/103rd\/\">effectively repeal<\/a> the 1994 \u201cRepublican revolution,\u201d one of the most important questions in American politics is: What was President Donald Trump thinking when he listened to the Iran hawks?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of course, that question will be explored thoroughly in the coming decades, regardless of whether Trump\u2019s Oliver Hardy successfully extricates himself from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0020643\/movieconnections\/\">latest fine mess<\/a> the neoconservatives\u2019 Stan Laurel has gotten us into.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So perhaps a more interesting question is what the Iran hawks were thinking when they decided Trump would be the best vehicle for their aims. How could they expect him to see through to the end the war that even George W. Bush wouldn\u2019t\u2014and couldn\u2019t\u2014give them?<\/p>\n<p>                         <!-- \/22404337467,3946880\/theamericanconservative-Leaderboard-Top -->                         <\/p>\n<div id='div-gpt-ad-1742316429780-0' style='min-width: 300px; min-height: 50px; max-width: 100%; '>                         <\/div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theamericanconservative.com\/republicans-post-midterms-war-denialism-is-an-exercise-in-special-pleading\/\">trying to escape blame<\/a> for the midterm rout the war inflicted on Republicans, these hawks often point out that Trump\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/new-poll-finds-newsoms-job-approval-ratings-plunge-amid-looming-recall\/\" title=\"New Poll Finds Newsom\u2019s Job ... Ratings Plunge Amid Looming Recall\">job approval ratings<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/McCormackJohn\/status\/2119971881675530511\">were already low<\/a> before he attacked Iran.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Indeed, Trump\u2019s numbers would have been bad enough for a normal midterm election loss, assuming he didn\u2019t find ways to resuscitate them (such as by allowing inflation to continue to fall rather than by <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/consumer-prices-holiday-inflation-tariffs-trump-fcd3c7766d3cdb36057f6dab19ff3a8e\">causing it go back up<\/a>). But they weren\u2019t bad enough to lose Kansas or Mississippi, nor had the president yet <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/politics\/509476\/midterm-elections-2026-trump-democrats-david-shor-iran\">completely blown his credibility<\/a> on the economy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But the question Iran hawks ought to have pondered (and apparently didn\u2019t) is how a president who was already underwater in the polls, and who has usually been underwater for most of his decade in national politics, was going to sustain public support for a military venture likely to last longer than the Venezuela operation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Trump himself had never attempted an intervention with such obvious and long-lasting electoral and economic consequences. His decision not to make a real case to the voters or seek authorization from Congress are among the signs he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/daily-memo\/4500754\/trump-needs-short-war-iran\/\">did not expect<\/a> an engagement of this duration.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Our old friend George W. Bush spent down his <a href=\"https:\/\/news.gallup.com\/poll\/4924\/bush-job-approval-highest-gallup-history.aspx\">once <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-democrats-obama-dilemma-they-need-a-new-leader-but-no-one-has-stepped-up-washington-examiner\/\" title=\"The Democrats\u2019 Obama dilemma: They need a new leader, but no one has stepped up - Washington Examiner\">sky-high approval ratings<\/a><\/a> in the sands of Iraq, putting them near record lows well before the 2007-08 financial crisis. Even W\u2019s father, who received a tremendous boost from his shorter and more successful Persian Gulf adventure, couldn\u2019t <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/keithboykin\/status\/1243730458975887362\">sustain those numbers<\/a> once the 1990\u201391 recession hit and public perceptions of the economy soured.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This caper was like a combination of the type of war that annihilated Dubya\u2019s political capital and Poppy\u2019s \u201cread my lips\u201d campaign-promise violation. And just as the elder Bush\u2019s tax increase arguably worsened preexisting economic problems, Trump\u2019s Iran energy shock indisputably poured gasoline\u2014high-price gasoline at that\u2014on the embers of an inflationary fire that might otherwise have burnt itself out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Trump has never really agreed with the Iran hawks about what was necessary for success, even as he gave them their war. He has never been willing to pursue a military operation of that size. He did not lead a political coalition that would be unified in support of such a war, and was reliant on working-class voters who would not and could not absorb its domestic economic costs. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For the coalition necessary to keep Trump\u2019s party in power, the war and the economy cannot be so neatly separated as hawks like to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/opinion\/it-was-the-economy-not-the-war-a4029e99\">imagine<\/a>. And the war itself was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2026\/07\/20\/politics\/iran-war-unpopularity-iraq-vietnam\">unpopular<\/a> right from the beginning, before it produced the biggest costs for ordinary Americans.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Republicans who might have waged the Iran war in the way its supporters envisioned didn\u2019t, for three reasons. One is that Bush\u2014the likeliest champion of a drive to Tehran\u2014was already bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. The second is that Bush\u2019s conflicts did not go well enough to make the political case for another war, even if there had been the money or military capacity available to fight it. Third, Republicans who wanted new wars or continued to defend the old ones couldn\u2019t get elected president.<\/p>\n<section class=\"c-subscribe-email\" >\n<div class=\"l-container\">\n<div class=\"c-subscribe-email__wrap\">\n<div class=\"c-subscribe-email__head\">\n<h4 class=\"c-subscribe-email__heading\">Subscribe Today<\/h4>\n<h5 class=\"c-subscribe-email__subheading\">Get daily emails in your inbox<\/h5>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"c-subscribe-email__form-wrap\">      <!-- Begin Mailchimp Signup Form -->      <\/p>\n<div id=\"mc_embed_signup\">\n<form id=\"mc-embedded-subscribe-form\" class=\"validate\" action=\"https:\/\/theamericanconservative.us4.list-manage.com\/subscribe\/post?u=442e644c01f8e54e26e4ff3f8&#038;id=f7b67cac40\" method=\"post\" name=\"mc-embedded-subscribe-form\" novalidate target=\"_blank\">\n<div id=\"mc_embed_signup_scroll\">\n<div class=\"c-subscribe-email__fields\">              <label for=\"mce-EMAIL\" class=\"u-screenreader-text\">Email Address:<\/label>              <input id=\"mce-EMAIL\" class=\"c-subscribe-email__field\" name=\"EMAIL\" type=\"email\" value=\"\" placeholder=\"Your Email\" \/>              <input id=\"mc-embedded-subscribe\" class=\"c-subscribe-email__submit o-button o-button--red-500 o-button--solid\" name=\"subscribe\" type=\"submit\" value=\"Subscribe\" \/>            <\/div>\n<div id=\"mce-responses\" class=\"clear\">\n<div id=\"mce-error-response\" class=\"response\" style=\"display: none;\"><\/div>\n<div id=\"mce-success-response\" class=\"response\" style=\"display: none;\"><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>              <!-- real people should not fill this in and expect good things - do not remove this or risk form bot signups-->            <\/p>\n<div class=\"u-screenreader-text\" aria-hidden=\"true\">              <input tabindex=\"-1\" name=\"b_442e644c01f8e54e26e4ff3f8_f7b67cac40\" type=\"text\" value=\"\" \/>            <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/form>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>      <!--End mc_embed_signup-->          <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Trump solved all these problems for the Iran hawks. Convinced that the relative successes of his more <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/republicans-post-midterms-war-denialism-is-an-exercise-in-special-pleading\/\" title=\"Republicans\u2019 Post-Midterms ... Denialism Is an Exercise in Special Pleading\">limited military interventions<\/a> across two terms compared to Bush\u2019s more open-ended ones meant he had found the cheat code to avoiding forever wars, he stumbled into an entirely new problem.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Will it be worth the cost, even by the Iran hawks\u2019 own standards? The war doesn\u2019t yet seem likely to end the regime, and over the longer term it could have the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chathamhouse.org\/2026\/03\/iran-war-risks-triggering-new-wave-nuclear-proliferation\">opposite<\/a> of its intended effect on Tehran\u2019s nuclear ambitions. Trump was a leader who was simultaneously supportive of Israel and skeptical of Middle Eastern wars. Now leaders who wish to signal the latter increasingly eschew the former. But maybe the damage inflicted on Iranian military capacity will be sufficient to justify this campaign in the minds of its supporters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The voters, at any rate, feel differently. And while some of the Republicans who lost their elections as a result may deserve it, the Trump 2024 voters enduring higher gas and diesel prices surely don\u2019t.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With Democrats closing in on power, a central question in U.S. politics is what motivated Trump to listen to the Iran hawks. In the years ahead, scholars will likely examine whether his receptivity to neocon advice explains the episode, and whether those hawks believed he could carry out a war they had long sought-one that even George W. Bush never fully delivered. A perhaps more telling question is what those hawks saw in Trump as the right vehicle for their aims, and how they expected him to pursue a conflict that could outlast his presidency.<\/p>\n<p>Hawks have sometimes attributed the Republicans\u2019 midterm losses to Trump\u2019s fragile popularity before the Iran strike. It\u2019s true his job ratings were weak enough to threaten a typical defeat unless he managed to revive them-perhaps by letting inflation ease rather than letting it rise again. But those ratings weren\u2019t the only obstacle: they weren\u2019t strong enough to cost Kansas or Mississippi, and the economy hadn\u2019t yet shattered the public\u2019s confidence. The bigger question hawks should have asked is how a president who was already deeply underwater in polls, and who had spent much of his national-political career in adverse public sentiment, could sustain support for a long, costly military venture.<\/p>\n<p>Trump himself had never overseen a confrontation with such obvious long-term electoral and economic consequences. He did not campaign on or seek congressional authorization for a prolonged war, suggesting he did not expect one. The episode resembled a blend of the kind of conflict that sapped George W. Bush\u2019s political capital and the era-defining pledge-break of George H. W. Bush, with the added factor that Trump\u2019s energy-price shock further fed inflationary pressures. Trump never fully aligned with the Iran hawks on what success would require, even as he let them pursue a war. He did not rally a political coalition prepared to back such a fight, and he depended on working-class voters who could not bear drastic domestic costs.<\/p>\n<p>For the coalition necessary to sustain a Republican government, the war and the economy could not be treated as separate problems, as hawks often imagine. The war was unpopular from the start, even before it imposed major burdens on ordinary people. Three reasons Republicans who might have pursued Iran differently did not: Bush was tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan; those conflicts did not build a winning political case for another war; and Republicans who advocated new or continuing wars could not secure the presidency.<\/p>\n<p>Trump, for his part, seemed to offer a workaround for the hawks. He appeared to be more favorable to limited military actions than to open-ended campaigns, drawing on some relative successes of his smaller interventions. Yet he also faced a new dilemma: was the price worthwhile by the hawks\u2019 own standards? The war did not look likely to topple Tehran, and over time it might even hinder Iran\u2019s nuclear ambitions. Trump was a leader who supported Israel but grew more wary of large-scale Middle East wars, and today\u2019s leaders who want to signal restraint in the region increasingly avoid signaling strong support for the other side. Regardless, the public saw harm: voters and especially those paying higher gas and diesel prices in 2024 bore the costs, and the alliance backing the Iran policy faced growing political risk<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2659,"featured_media":2704344,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/tac.imgix.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2263898051-scaled.jpg?auto=compress&#038;crop=faces%2Centropy&#038;fit=crop&#038;fm=jpg&#038;h=630&#038;ixlib=php-3.3.1&#038;q=80&#038;w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[548],"tags":[7428,87792,5894,3756,50434],"class_list":["post-2704343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-conservative-news-daily","tag-analysis","tag-gordian-knot","tag-politics","tag-republicans","tag-war-2"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/tac.imgix.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2263898051-scaled.jpg?auto=compress&#038;crop=faces%2Centropy&#038;fit=crop&#038;fm=jpg&#038;h=630&#038;ixlib=php-3.3.1&#038;q=80&#038;w=1200","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2704343","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\/2659"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2704343"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2704343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2704348,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2704343\/revisions\/2704348"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2704344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2704343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2704343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2704343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}