(CNN) — Some Republicans are growing impatient with President Donald Trump’s war in Iran as it stretches to nearly six months and threatens to further imperil their chances in the midterms.
But in the most competitive House and Senate races, vulnerable Republicans are largely standing behind him, gambling that voters can stomach the economic pain of the war for national security.
“Let’s deal with this now, and let’s get it done,” Rep. Zach Nunn of Iowa, a combat veteran who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, told reporters Monday in his state, painting a contrast with Democrats who, he said, are advocating for “just giving up.”
It is a central tension in the midterms, when the GOP is defending a thin House majority and hoping to keep its Senate majority too. Poll after poll shows the war is unpopular, but Republicans are reluctant to publicly break with a president who remains popular inside their party.
“There is one person in this country who doesn’t care about gas prices — just one — and unfortunately that one person kind of controls our fate,” said Barrett Marson, a Republican strategist in Arizona. “For Republicans, it is a balancing act on the thinnest of wires to still support the president but also feel the pain that voters are going through.”
Sen. Jim Justice of West Virginia told reporters Monday in Washington that the war has become a “mess” and that Republicans need to do a better job addressing voter concerns about the economy.
“We’ve gone through months that everybody sat back and said, ‘Oh, it’ll be OK. It’ll be OK.’ And I’ve been the voice that’s been saying, ‘You people are living in a cave if you don’t see that the folks out there, the Toby and Ediths out there, are hurting,’” Justice said. “We need to absolutely be more in tune with them.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a close Trump ally, offered a matter-of-fact assessment while campaigning Monday in Virginia with swing-district Rep. Jen Kiggans, who will face former Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria in November.
“The Iran conflict has been the cause, of course, of gas prices going up. It’s drug on,” Johnson told reporters.
At the same time, Johnson struck an optimistic note, saying he believes “we’ll be getting into a new phase … that will hold gas prices down to planet Earth and that will also bring down grocery prices.”
Trump has not always been helpful to fellow Republicans who are concerned about the political consequences of the war. He has downplayed concerns about gas prices going up, saying he will “never apologize” for taking military action against Iran. And he has questioned the need to campaign during the midterms because he is not on the ballot in November, though he has green-lighted using millions from his personal PAC to help vulnerable GOP candidates.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Monday found that just 3 in 10 voters approved of Trump’s handling of Iran. Numbers like those have given Democrats an opening to make the war a staple of their campaigns.
During a rally Sunday in Atlanta, one of the most vulnerable Democratic lawmakers in the midterms, Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, tore into Trump as disengaged and distracted as Americans suffer from a war he started.
“There’s something uniquely despicable about lying a nation into war, treating citizens as fools and those who serve as pawns,” Ossoff said.
Attack ads are increasingly painting Republicans as the party of unending war and rising costs. VoteVets, a group that works to elect Democratic veterans, launched an ad campaign last week that targeted Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan over the war, blaming him for $9-per-gallon gas in Dillingham, Alaska, though rural parts of the state have long had prices well above the national average.
“Billions sent overseas and Alaskans get socked in the wallet,” a narrator says in the spot, which focuses on Sullivan’s votes against reining in Trump’s Iran war powers.
A Sullivan campaign spokesman, Nate Adams, said in a statement that the senator “supported decisive action to stop the world’s leading state sponsor of terror from acquiring a nuclear weapon which was a threat to the United States, American service members, our allies, and to global energy markets held hostage by Iran.”
Among vulnerable House Republicans, Reps. Tom Barrett of Michigan and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania have stood out for voting to limit Trump’s Iran war powers. But they remain outliers as most of their GOP colleagues argue that the war is worth seeing through.
Kiggans, during a podcast interview earlier this month, admitted she would like to see a “quick resolution” to the conflict but otherwise urged support for Trump’s approach.
“We need to continue to support (the military) and to support the objectives which the president has made clear, to make sure Iran, again, doesn’t have nuclear weapons and the Straits of Hormuz are kept open,” Kiggans said. “I support those military actions and I stand with our men and women in uniform and their families every day of the week.”
The National Republican Congressional Committee suggested the election was a choice between Republicans committed to disarming Iran and Democrats who “spent a decade bankrolling the regime.”
“That’s the record Republicans are running on: keep America safe, secure the border, lower costs, cut taxes, and restore common sense,” spokesman Mike Marinella said. “President Trump’s leadership has made America stronger abroad and safer at home.”
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee countered in a statement that Republicans were “blindly following Donald Trump’s ego.”
“They’d rather defend an endless war in Iran than stand up for their constituents,” DCCC spokesperson Aidan Johnson said, “and it will cost Republicans the majority.”
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.