Voters spoke. And it was about war, not just the economy.

When Republicans last lost control of both houses of Congress in 2006, the U.S. military was bogged down in Iraq. Then, as now, support for a president who started a war in the Middle East had cratered, amid questions about the war’s rationale and lack of a clear endgame.This week, if anything, the message from the electorate was even louder. Republicans across the country suffered one of their worst defeats at the ballot box in modern history in Tuesday’s midterms. And one clear cause was frustration over consumer prices driven up, at least in part, by the Iran conflict – a war of choice that struck many voters as the kind of conflict President Donald Trump had explicitly campaigned against.In an NBC exit poll Tuesday, 63% of voters said Mr. Trump had made the “wrong decision” to go to war with Iran alongside Israel. For many voters across the country, the war has become both a waste of American blood and treasure, and a cause of economic hardship via higher energy prices. “I think the war has hurt everybody,” says Jim Kehrte, a general contractor in Bryan County, Georgia, and a Republican who voted for Mr. Trump.The electoral rout has effectively fractured Mr. Trump’s already fragile coalition over the war, with Iran skeptics now openly clashing with GOP hawks, and Republican officials inside and outside the administration breaking ranks with Mr. Trump. It’s both a post-election blame game, as the party reels from the depth and breadth of its electoral defeat, and a starting gun in the race to lead a post-Trump GOP. Tom Brenner/APVice President JD Vance arrives at a campaign rally at Eugene F. Kranz Toledo Express Airport, Nov. 2, 2026, in Swanton, Ohio. On Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance blamed Iran as the root cause of the midterm meltdown. “The reason we lost is the war,” he wrote on the social platform X. “The president himself said so last night.” He added that “any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.” Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, shared Mr. Vance’s widely read post with a triple “100%” endorsement.Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who like Mr. Vance is seen as a possible 2028 GOP contender, also zeroed in on the war’s impact and chided Republicans who downplayed its impact on energy costs. “We’ve just got to be honest. Gas is higher. It hurts people, and it’s higher because of this conflict. If you can’t admit that to voters, then you’re gaslighting them, and they’re not going to listen to you on other things,” he told “Straight Shooter with Stephen A.,” a political podcast. While many saw Mr. Vance’s post as positioning for an expected presidential run in 2028, other Republicans have different motivations. Mr. Trump could face growing resistance from a Congress that has largely rubber-stamped his war policy but still holds the power of the purse.Outgoing Republican lawmakers will have little to lose in a lame-duck session by crossing a leader whom many see as the architect of their defeat, says Matt Wylie, a GOP strategist based in South Carolina.“You’re going to see a lot of Republicans coming back after this and ... exercise their constitutional duties,” he predicts. They will “make clear that the president needs to end this war.”Mr. Trump told reporters Wednesday that he had no regrets. “The Iran thing, we had to do it,” he said while inspecting construction of his ballroom at the White House, adding that Iran couldn’t be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. Still, he conceded that Mr. Vance’s reasoning was “largely true because it drove the gasoline up a little bit short term.”Last week, Mr. Trump had reportedly considered an escalation of U.S. attacks on Iran, with Israeli support, after the midterms. On Tuesday night, though, he told the Financial Times that he had no immediate plan to strike Iran. “We’re locked and loaded if we need to go, but there may be no need for it.” During the campaign, some GOP candidates in tough Senate races called for an end to the war, trying to staunch the political damage. (Similar criticisms were leveled at Mr. Trump’s tariffs, which voters also blamed for higher prices.)But a core of hawkish, pro-Israel Republicans in Congress, including some Senate committee chairs, still favors a hard line against Iran and would almost certainly resist anything that suggested a tacit acceptance of defeat. Further complicating the politics around the issue, polls show younger Republicans are more likely both to oppose foreign wars and to blame Israel for dragging the United States into this conflict.Mr. Kehrte, the Republican voter in Georgia, says that he believes Iran “would hit us if they had the opportunity, and we need to stay on top of them.” But he complains that Mr. Trump never fully explained to Americans the consequences and costs of the war.Tyson Jackson, a Democratic city councilor in Social Circle, Georgia, says Iran played a significant role in the large swing among independents and some Republicans toward Democratic candidates in deep-red areas like his.“How can you go out there and say, ‘Let’s make America great again,’ and then start a war without good explanation that makes the situation harder for people who are already struggling?” says Mr. Jackson, who also owns a painting company. “It’s not just Democrats, but people in general who are fed up with it. And what happens when voters are fed up? How do you stop that? You give someone else a chance.” Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP/FileIn this file photo from Nov. 30, 2006, U.S. President George W. Bush speaks during a joint press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Amman, Jordan. Even some of Mr. Trump’s strongest supporters turned against the war after he failed to deliver a quick victory, says Andrew Day, a senior editor at The American Conservative. He says Republicans need to remember the political lessons of previous conflicts. “The Iraq war destroyed the George W. Bush presidency. The Iran war is destroying the Trump presidency,” he warns. The flipping of Congress in 2006 teed up a Democratic presidential primary two years later in which the eventual nominee, Barack Obama, ran as an anti-war candidate and defeated a fellow senator, Hillary Clinton, who had voted to attack Iraq. Mr. Day predicts a similar dynamic in the GOP in 2028. “They’re [all] going to be running against the Iran war,” he says.After the 2006 midterms, Mr. Bush’s defense secretary and a prime mover in the march to war in Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld, resigned. Questions have been raised about the tenure of Pete Hegseth, the current defense secretary, and whether Mr. Trump might make him a scapegoat for an unpopular war that Mr. Hegseth prosecuted. Finding someone to replace him – who could win Senate confirmation – poses another challenge for the administration.Ari Fleischer, an official in the Bush White House and a longtime anti-Iran voice, pushed back on Mr. Vance’s post-election analysis, writing on X that it was the right decision to attack Iran, but the U.S. didn’t finish the job. He put the blame for the current stalemate directly at the vice president’s feet. “Once the decision was made, we should not have stopped until the regime fell. But instead, you [Mr. Vance] negotiated a cease fire that didn’t last, didn’t work and left us in no man’s land, with higher prices and our troops still deployed,” he wrote. Deepen your worldviewwith Monitor Highlights.Politics with respectGet political stories with respectful analysis.There‘s a world of new ideas in everyBooks newsletter.There‘s more to life, enrich yours withCulture & Learning weekly.Follow humanity‘s discoveries withScience & Nature stories in your inbox.Gain a spiritual perspectivefrom the stories in your inbox.Want to understand the deeper impact of critical events? Learn the Monitor‘s insight.Already a subscriber? Log in to hide ads. Among the biggest backers of the war was Lindsey Graham, the GOP senator from South Carolina. After he died in July, Mr. Trump insisted that Republicans install his sister, Darline Graham, as interim senator and that she run for a full term. Her loss on Tuesday to Democrat Annie Andrews was among the biggest upsets on a night of jaw-dropping GOP defeats.With reporting by Patrik Jonsson in Bryan County, Georgia. ALREADY A SUBSCRIBER? LoginReal news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.The Christian Science Monitor was founded in 1908 to lift the standard of journalism and uplift humanity. We aim to “speak the truth in love.” Our goal is not to tell you what to think, but to give you the essential knowledge and understanding to come to your own intelligent conclusions. Join us in this mission by subscribing.