After a notable absence, an anti-war movement has emerged to finally challenge a president over the unpopular conflict in Iran. Not in the streets so much, but in ads and statements from Republicans trying to salvage their doomed election campaigns.
“The war with Iran needs to end and end quickly,” said Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers in a digital ad. Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) made almost the same verbatim statement to Politico, suggesting some coordination among this new iteration of the National Mobilization Committee. Even Michael Whatley, the former Republican National Committee chair currently being left for dead in North Carolina’s Senate race against former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, tentatively conceded that farmers were being hurt from the conflict due to fuel and fertilizer prices.
“I just believe we should be exiting Iran, that it’s time to move on,” agreed Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Rep. Tom Tiffany, who incidentally wasn’t present for a vote to end the war when he had an opportunity last week. Two of Tiffany’s Republican colleagues in the neighboring state of Iowa, Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn, did vote for the war powers resolution to end the war, making a total of seven Republicans helping to pass that resolution through the House. Rep. Ashley Hinson, running for Senate in Iowa, said Monday that “the war needs to be brought to a successful and immediate end,” despite voting against that war powers resolution just days earlier, the sixth time she has done so this year. The Senate version of that war powers vote, held on Thursday, failed, with Husted and all other Republicans fretting about re-election (except Susan Collins, who has voted for war powers resolutions before) voting against stopping the war.
The key here is that on everything that matters, Trump and Republicans in Congress are fully aligned.
The national media loves itself some good intraparty conflict. Stories about the Republican “fever breaking,” egged on by Democratic leaders, have been a perennial since before Donald Trump descended the golden escalator. Now, with less than 40 days to an election that is shaping up to be an epochal disaster for the GOP, that long-anticipated distancing from the most unpopular president headed into a midterm since Harry Truman in 1946 is upon us. Not just the war, but a growing number of Trump’s policies are being condemned, debated, and rejected, at rapid speed.
As a policy and even a political matter, this shift is almost 700 days late and about $3 trillion short. For 99.9 percent of the past two years, Republicans have fallen in line with every insane maneuver and utterance from this administration; at best, they would pretend not to have heard them. Only when accountability from the voters is imminent have we seen the emergence of “independent” thought and behavior—that is, evasive action induced solely by panicked self-interest, like an amoeba shrinking away from a sharp object.
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Opposition... to themselves?
They're hoping we'll forget, and blame it all on Trump.
We won't.