Senate Republicans are getting swamped with voter complaints about Donald Trump’s interminable war on Iran less than 100 days out from November’s midterms.
Trump, now 80, launched the conflict on Feb. 28, saying that it would last a matter of weeks. GOP senators spent the spring betting on a fast, contained campaign, and that its impact on pump prices would resolve well before the midterms. Half a year on, there is no end in sight.
West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, who chairs the Senate Republican Policy Committee, said her phone has not stopped ringing. Constituents are most fed up with how long the conflict has now dragged on, she told NOTUS on Thursday. “They’re just wearing out on it,” she said.
“We’ve done this before where we’ve had very elongated engagements,” she went on. “People don’t want to see that. They don’t want to see boots on the ground. They don’t want to see our money going there. There’s a fatigue factor, for sure.”
Sen. John Cornyn of Texas wants the White House to spell out clearly what exactly it still thinks it’s doing in the Middle East. “I wish the president were more clear about what his objectives are,” he told the outlet. “This on-again, off-again is creating some confusion in people’s minds.”
Cornyn, who lost his primary runoff to Trump-backed MAGA candidate Ken Paxton in May, added that attaching a public deadline to the operation was a blunder from the start. “The enemy always gets a vote,” as he put it. “That’s the problem with providing timetables and deadlines in a military conflict.”
Iran’s repeated closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway through which up to a fifth of global oil supply passes, has pushed gas prices at the pump sharply higher. Pump prices are now hovering just above $4 a gallon ahead of a vote already set to be run and won on cost-of-living concerns. That’s roughly a dollar higher than when the shooting began, but lower than mid-May highs of up to $4.56.
Just 35 percent of Americans approve of the campaign, according to a July 29 to Aug. 3 poll by Ipsos. Roughly two-thirds expect gas to get more expensive.
The same pollster reported last month that 69 percent thought Trump had not properly laid out what he wants from the war.
The president’s rhetoric over the past several months suggests he doesn’t much know either. He has at times said the war was already over, and at others, that it could last “forever.” He has repeatedly insisted the conflict was necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, and then, in private, told aides he may well now walk away without securing non-proliferation guarantees.
“We are low-keying it” was his latest assessment in comments to Axios last week. “It will work out. It always works out.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment on this story.
