Vance Is Right: The Iran War Lost Republicans the Midterms

The morning after Republicans suffered the most devastating midterm loss in recent memory, Vice President JD Vance posted his response to the election results on X. Vance’s poignant diagnosis has garnered over 72 million views and widespread support from both the administration and voters on the right.

To riff off a famous line from President Bill Clinton’s strategist James Carville, Vance’s midterm manifesto basically boiled down to one thing: “It’s the war, stupid.”

And Vance is right. The Iran war was overwhelmingly unpopular, especially amongst young voters.

Predictably, pundits like Marc Thiessen and the Wall Street Journal editorial board were quick to blame the loss on anything but the war. Instead of owning up to their miscalculations, they doubled down on their stale warmongering and went straight for President Donald Trump’s most popular (and successful) policies: tariffs and immigration.

In their efforts to label Vance’s diagnosis as a break from the president, war-loving neoconservatives like Marc Thiessen themselves utterly betrayed President Trump and the American people.

Americans care about affordability, simple as that. President Trump’s tariffs and immigration crackdown opened up jobs right here at home and were largely popular with the American people.

The Iran war was not.

Anyone who seriously believes it was tariffs that lost us the midterms is trying to sell you beachfront property in Arizona, where, incidentally, Democrats took control of the state house and senate and retained the governor’s office, giving them this trifecta for the first time in six decades.

It was the war, not tariffs, that triggered a surge in inflation. Inflation between President Trump’s tariff rollout in April 2025 and Operation Epic Fury in February 2026 remained relatively steady, at an average rate of 2.6%—six and a half percentage points below the Biden administration’s peak.

Inflation didn’t spike in 2026 until Operation Epic Fury marked the beginning of the war in Iran. Polling of the issues that the American people consider most important also reflects that reality.

The president’s handling of Gasoline prices, for instance, initially one of his highest approval ratings, and they only tanked at the beginning of the war. Approval ratings notably improved throughout Vance’s memorandum of understanding negotiations.

It’s a tough pill to swallow for the warmongers, but Vance was right and Trump agrees. Vance’s assessment of the midterm massacre did not break from Trump; it simply put into words what many people already knew.

This week, the president backed Vance multiple times regarding his sound diagnosis: At his press conference the day after midterms, again on Nov. 8, and a third time during his recent “60 Minutes” interview, he said that the war and the heightened costs it caused were to blame.

In their efforts to throw Vance under the bus, warmongers have tipped their hand. Their loyalty to President Trump ends where their dedication to foreign wars and America-last policies begin. The American people deserve better than out-of-touch pundits who betray their nation’s interests.

Our leaders would do well to remember this in the years to come.

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