On Thursday, the U.S. Senate yet again surrendered one of its core constitutional powers. The chamber voted 49-50 on a war powers resolution directing President Donald Trump to halt the war with Iran. This was the 12th time a war powers resolution failed in the Senate, but the political climate was unlike any previous vote. The midterm outlook for the GOP has gone from tough to downright awful. Gas is nearly $4.50 a gallon; diesel is $6.50. Yet with one exception, vulnerable Republicans sided with the president. To the question, “Can any midterms result shake Trump’s hold on the GOP?,” we now have our answer.
In the spring, I wrote about the similarities between Trump’s second term and former President George W. Bush’s second term. Once again, a president, his party and many in the press have misread a narrow election victory as something more definitive (a windfall of “political capital” in Bush’s case, a “vibe shift” in Trump’s). Once again, the president’s political fortunes have fallen sharply. And once again, the fallout is endangering Republicans in seats that a year ago would have been considered rock solid for the GOP.
Sen. Jon Husted voted against the resolution, two days after he told Politico, “The war needs to come to an end as quickly as possible.”
If anything, in fact, Trump’s pre-midterm prognosis is even worse than Bush. Polling averages put the president’s net approval rating more than 20 points underwater. In the past week, he hit new lows for this term in a half-dozen polls, including CNN/SSRS, NBC News, Reuters/Ipsos, Strength in Numbers/Verasight and American Research Group. Various gimmicks — beef imports, a midterm convention, promises of $5000 checks — have flopped. As polling expert G. Elliott Morris wrote Thursday, “No president has gone into a midterm election this unpopular” — not Trump in 2018, nor former President t Barack Obama before the 2010 Tea Party wipeout, nor Bush in 2006.
No wonder then that in the congressional generic ballot, Democrats’ average lead is now in the high single-digits. On Thursday, the White House announced the president will hold election rallies in deep-red Oklahoma and Alabama. Republicans are pulling money from Senate races in North Carolina and Georgia. Democrat James Talarico has led in each of the last 10 public polls taken in Texas’ Senate race. Republicans in Florida and Iowa are sounding alarms. And in Kansas, which hasn’t had a Democratic senator since the 1930s, GOP incumbent Roger Marshall may be in trouble.
There’s still more than a month to Election Day. Republicans and donors like Elon Musk are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on an ad tsunami. And polls, even in the most accurate years, usually miss by a couple points in one direction or the other. A few points in favor of the GOP, and Democrats would take the House, yet fall well short in the Senate.
A few points the other way, however, and it’s a historic blowout.
It’s true that some Republicans are distancing themselves rhetorically from the president in the final weeks of the campaign. But if ever there were a hint that such a blowout would lead Republicans to rethink their MAGA loyalties after Election Day, we would have seen it Thursday.
More broadly, though, should Republicans wish to go in a new direction, to whom do they turn?
The war with Iran is incredibly unpopular, and the latest spikes in fuel prices have made the conflict even more politically toxic. Ohio Sen. John Husted, Iowa Rep. Ashley Hinson and former Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers — all in close Senate races — have all called for the conflict to cease. And Trump has made clear he will effectively ignore any war powers resolution. That’s a terrible sign for our constitutional order, but it made any Republican vote for the resolution an easy gesture that you feel voters’ pain.
Yet Husted voted against the resolution, two days after he told Politico, “The war needs to come to an end as quickly as possible.” So did 48 other GOP senators, including Alaska’s Dan Sullivan and Kansas’ Roger Marshall. The only vulnerable Republican to vote for the resolution was Maine Sen. Susan Collins. Considering that Collins remains competitive (and, in some polls, leading) in a state Trump has lost three times, one would think more Republicans would have taken a page from her playbook.
But Collins’ Senate colleagues aren’t interested in her favorite escape hatch. As political scientist Seth Masket wrote, “There are still several things preventing the party from pivoting away” from Trump. Most immediately, the president retains the support of most Republican voters and will likely intervene in 2028 primaries, much the same way he did in past cycles.
More broadly, though, should Republicans wish to go in a new direction, to whom do they turn?
A decade of bowing and scraping has emptied the party of alternatives to MAGA. Some left the party; others decided that they loved Trump after all. Just this year, Vice President JD Vance cast aside his antiwar stances to tie himself to the Iran war. As for Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the next new idea he has will be his first. The party in lockstep with the president has nowhere else to go, no matter how bad it gets.
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