Republican campaigns and operatives have reached the fifth stage of grief over President Donald Trump’s Iran war: acceptance.
With two months until Election Day, diesel prices at record highs and the conflict showing no signs of abating, party officials and operatives are resigned to a war that will last beyond Election Day.
It’s the outcome many Republicans said they feared when the war began six months ago. But they’ve grudgingly come to accept as it became apparent that Trump would be unable to negotiate a quick settlement.
“In the spring, I was like, look, I think we need gas prices coming down starting in August, like in a significant way. I think voters need some time to kind of get over their frustrations, and I think we’ve run out of time,” said a Republican operative working on several races across the country.
The person, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, said the war is “baked in” to the election now, and the only way the administration can help candidates is to “find Doc Brown and see if he has access to that time machine.”
The dour mood comes as Republicans contend with stubbornly high gasoline and grocery prices ahead of an election where voters say they are concerned with cost-of-living issues. Polls show Trump’s approval ratings are near record lows and a majority of voters think the president has not handled the war in Iran well.
Still, the White House isn’t telling candidates to expect anything else before Election Day.
“I don’t think we need to explicitly say that” the war will carry on through November, said a senior White House official, granted anonymity to discuss internal thinking. “Most candidates and campaigns know that, look, Iran is just going to be the thing that bubbles in the background.”
Iran on Thursday claimed it attacked bases in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, two American allies — part of an intense new phase of the war that has seen the U.S. attack Iranian rocket launchers on an island in the Strait of Hormuz. At least five ships were attacked crossing the Strait of Hormuz in the last week.
This recent tit-for-tat has driven the price of oil up about 10 percent this week. The average price for a gallon of gas has increased to $4.14, according to AAA. And the average price of diesel hit $5.82 per gallon, a record, according to the pricing service GasBuddy.
But most candidates have realized that their pleas and protestations for relief are falling on deaf ears.
“I don’t think incumbent members of Congress and challengers and incumbent members of the Senate and Senate challengers are freaking out today like they might have been a few months ago,” said Matt Mackowiak, former Travis County Republican Party chair and a former campaign adviser to three GOP senators. “Either way, you can freak out or not. Your freakout is probably not going to affect Trump’s decision, and so it’s a little bit like, you need to make peace with the world we live in and not the world you want to live in for the next 60 days.”
White House spokesperson Olivia Wales said while Trump has “destroyed Iran’s military capabilities” and is crippling its economy, he is also working on improving affordability at home.
“While President Trump ensures that Iran will never possess a nuclear weapon, the President has also been laser-focused on unleashing prosperity for working American families at home: from creating Trump Accounts to slashing job-killing regulations and cutting taxes,” Wales said. “For the Trump administration, economic prosperity is not possible without national security, and national security is not possible without economic prosperity.”
On Thursday, Vice President JD Vance said he “wouldn’t call it a war” nor could he say when the conflict would end.
“The reality is I don’t know the answer to that question,” he said during a briefing at the White House. “You would have to ask the Iranians.”
Vance’s statement is an implicit recognition of what many have feared since the war began. Trump, for all the military might and economic pressure he can bring to bear, can’t control the pace of the war or dictate its terms. And the Iranian regime, facing what it sees as an existential threat, has so far shown little desire to surrender on the president’s terms.
Trump often says he is in no hurry to negotiate with Iran, though he continues to insist — as he has for months — that the war will end soon.
“It’s very simple, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. As soon as it’s over — which I don’t think will be very much longer, I don’t know how much more they can take. But you know, whatever it is, it doesn’t matter,” he said on Wednesday. “And I’m not affected by the election. Number one, I’m not running, my party’s running and I’m going to help my party. But I think my party respects the fact that we’re not allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”
But while Trump publicly brushes off electoral concerns — and habitually dismisses affordability as a political attack line from Democrats — recent moves from the White House underscore the concern inside the West Wing over the war’s impact on prices.
The administration has made a series of policy announcements in recent weeks designed to show it is taking consumer concerns seriously, including the expansion of U.S. access to Venezuelan oil. It’s a last-ditch effort to ease costs, and a shift from earlier this year when the White House was banking on tax cuts and other GOP policies to deliver relief ahead of midterms.
“We went into Iran on Feb. 28, and right after that was when people were filing their taxes, getting their refunds,” said a person close to the White House, who was granted anonymity so speak candidly. “And then they saw the price of gas going up, and perceptually, it wiped out a lot of that.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent toldCBS News in July that he was hopeful gas prices would come down to $3 a gallon by Labor Day. Heading into the holiday weekend, Vance during the briefing was asked when Americans might see relief at the pump.
“We’re talking about things that are inherently unpredictable,” he said.
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