'Major wipeout' of 2006 proportions could force a new GOP reckoning

Republicans could be looking at a major wipeout in the midterm elections. Their tiny House majority was always going to be difficult to maintain, but the Senate should not be in play at all. Yet it surely is, with Democrats leading in nearly all the toss-up races, including in the reddest states, and competitive in at least a dozen of the contests that will determine which party controls the upper chamber.The Iran war is a big reason this has come to pass. It has demoralized the least indefatigably partisan part of President Donald Trump’s coalition by abandoning his promise to avoid new forever wars in the Middle East. The conflict has not only distracted from the affordability focus that many voters were expecting when they threw out the Democrats in 2024, but also directly cuts against it by spiking energy prices and increasing inflation overall at a time when it might have otherwise continued to come down.Among voters, this war has virtually no Democratic support. It is overwhelmingly opposed by independents. A critical mass of Republicans never were in favor of the war, and many of its GOP supporters wanted it to be over quickly, as Trump repeatedly promised. Trump himself was seemingly ready to end the war by June, but has been unable to restore the Strait of Hormuz to the pre-war status quo despite attempting a series of escalations, ceasefires, and negotiations, including the failed memorandum of understanding signed by both Iran and the United States on June 17.Trump never really tried to persuade the general public to support the war, at least not in any sustained way. He ignored Iran in a pre-Christmas primetime address last year that was supposed to represent his pivot to the economy. He barely mentioned the Islamic Republic in his State of the Union address. He delivered his first primetime address on the war more than a month after it started. And he never sought congressional authorization for the use of force, even though Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. Republicans were probably always going to lose congressional seats this year. History since 1938 favors the party that doesn’t hold the White House in these elections, and elements of Trump’s coalition are low-propensity voters, especially when he isn’t on the ballot himself, while Never Trumpers will turn out to cast anti-Trump protest votes against Republicans no matter what.Yet before the war there was still a good chance that the actual election-day result for Democrats would be underwhelming, just as it was for Republicans in President Joe Biden’s midterm election in 2022. The blue wave, like the red wave before it, could have been limited to a trickle. Eighty-six percent of House Republicans represent districts that went for Trump by at least 10 points, a structural advantage they sought to buttress through mid-decade redistricting in red states. The path to control of the Senate similarly ran through states Trump had won in 2024, often by double digits.But thanks to the Iran war and its fallout, there is a potential for a midterm election more like 2006. Twenty years ago, as Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter pointed out earlier this year, we had an unpopular president waging an unpopular war while Republican congressional incumbents were beset by assorted scandals. Today, the public has even less patience for the current war than in 2006.Just look how quickly Republicans in tight races have equivocated in their support for the Iran war compared to Iraq 20 years ago. And Iraq had been going on longer with more American casualties by the time of the 2006 midterm elections. Hawkish Michigan Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers, the sort of candidate who held onto the fiction that victory was always around the corner in Iraq two decades ago, is already singing a different tune. “The war with Iran needs to end, and end quickly,” Rogers, who is running in one of the country’s most competitive races, said in an ad back in September. “Michigan families can’t afford to wait.”The economic costs of the war are undeniable even to its remaining supporters, and are being inflicted on an electorate that has been angry about the high cost of living for at least five years. It took the combination of Iraq and the 2007-08 economic meltdown for Bush’s popularity to finally wane among congressional Republicans late in his second term. Thanks to the preexisting economic conditions, as well as Trump’s fraught relationship with the remnants of the old GOP establishment, we are running ahead of schedule with Iran.But if the worst happens to Republicans in November, many will be eager to blame the tariffs rather than the war. The tariffs can be more squarely pinned on Trump and MAGA, and the people and policy assumptions behind them can be more easily excised from the party than the long-entrenched interventionism that Trump was supposed to excise and didn’t.The tariffs, and their haphazard implementation, are surely a big part of the equation. But the war raised prices beyond imported goods, illustrated Trump’s lack of interest in domestic issues during his second term, and made the tariffs’ bite worse. The war has also complicated things for Vice President JD Vance, who by many accounts was the senior administration official most skeptical of starting the war in the first place. Trump was able to unite Republicans with disparate foreign-policy views because he seemed to appreciate the futility of much of what the U.S. has attempted to accomplish in the Middle East over the past quarter-century without appearing hostile to Israel or fearful of potential adversaries in the region. After Iran, less interventionist Republicans may want to hear Vance make stronger criticisms of neoconservatives or Israel that could divide the party. Hawks will still take aim at Vance, sensing he is not one of them. Doves may be reluctant to come to his aid, fearing he is not one of them either. There is also an opening for one of two Republican Kentuckians, Sen. Rand Paul or soon-to-be-former Congressman Thomas Massie, to run an antiwar primary campaign, though probably not both. Paul and Massie both owe their congressional careers to the movement-building GOP presidential candidacies of former Congressman Ron Paul, the senator’s father. Massie in particular would have little chance of winning the nomination for the same reasons he lost his congressional primary earlier this year, but one of them could conceivably help rebuild the libertarian wing of the party, currently in disrepair.It’s possible that being attacked by neoconservatives as too dovish and by libertarians as too hawkish will help Vance convince ordinary Republicans that he is just right. He has shown great political skill in managing his relationship with Trump. His most touted potential rival, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is just as closely associated with the administration and much more associated with the assumptions behind the Iran war, if not the decision to go to war itself.There’s a chance that the war will be over by 2028 and seen as a chastening experience by Republicans. They might have reached their limit with the party’s pro-war posture after Trump and George W. Bush threw away their tremendous political opportunities to wage wars in the Middle East that ended up costing the party its congressional majorities. But there is no guarantee on either front. And the Republicans' structural electoral advantages could still mitigate the electoral reckoning that appears to be headed their way this year.