As they entered this midterm year, many Democratic and Republican politicians agreed on one central campaign theme. This would be an election about affordability, with both parties battling over who best addressed the high costs of housing, child care, groceries, health care, utilities and gas.
But President Trump’s decision to attack Iran has complicated the equation, and left Republicans pushing a different message: Please ignore the price at the pump.
From Congress to the campaign trail, Republican leaders, elected officials and candidates are promising that the increase in energy prices will be temporary, asking voters to bear short-term pain to their pocketbooks for what they promise will be long-term gains for their country.
“What we’re paying at the gas pump is a small price to pay in order to save millions of lives in the future,” Representative Buddy Carter, who is running for the Republican nomination for Senate in Georgia, where gas prices have increased nearly 40 percent over the past month, said in an interview on conservative television. “This is a painful experience at the pump right now, but that is going to stabilize.”
It’s a strategy that echoes that of the Biden administration, whose top officials promised the rise in inflation after the Covid-19 pandemic would be “transitory” and then spent years blaming culprits from President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to the Federal Reserve for continued high prices.
“I thought there was a chance it could be much worse,” Mr. Trump told reporters gathered in the Oval Office on Thursday, as oil prices spiked and stock markets gyrated. “It’s not bad. And it’s going to be over with pretty soon.”
Such comments mark a notable reversal from just a month ago, when Mr. Trump touted falling gas prices as a centerpiece of his economic success.
As the war enters a fourth week, some Republican strategists are privately worrying that high gas prices will undercut their economic message for the midterms. Still, with the election more than seven months away, costs could decline and foreign policy could fade as a concern among voters.
How much patience voters will give the administration to prosecute a war with no clear end in sight is unclear. Democrats have pounced, seeing an opportunity to drive their economic message for the midterms while also tying Mr. Trump to an unpopular overseas conflict.
“I love when billionaires that are sitting on mountains of cash tell Americans who can’t afford to pay their rent and their mortgage at the end of the month to just wait it out,” said Representative Jason Crow of Colorado, a former Army Ranger and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s candidate recruitment co-chairman.
“We are sick and tired of an endless cycle of conflict, dumping trillions of dollars into regime change and nation-building efforts in the Middle East, all of which have failed,” he said.
In private meetings, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, has summarized the Democratic line of attack against Mr. Trump and his Republican allies as the “three C’s” — chaos, costs and corruption — saying the war touches on all three.
Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House minority leader, has encouraged his members to prosecute the case against Republicans — and the war — with his own alliterative slogan: Accountability and affordability.
The party’s congressional committees and affiliated super PACs have attacked Republicans in battleground districts over high gas prices, tying the increased costs to their support of Mr. Trump and the war. House Democratic leaders have encouraged lawmakers to hold events in their districts on the theme of “health care, not warfare” on Monday, which is the 16th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act becoming law.
As Democrats press those attacks in television ads and online messaging, Republicans are supporting the war as necessary for national security, but many are largely trying to avoid discussion of higher costs at home.
The G.O.P.’s two major campaign committees have ceded messaging about the war to the White House, instead focusing on hitting Democrats on issues like border security and funding the government. In Congress, Senate Republicans spent much of this past week pushing a strict voter identification bill demanded by President Trump that is unlikely to pass. House Republicans passed legislation to deport noncitizens who assault federal law enforcement dogs and immediately attacked Democrats who voted against it.
In recent days, the White House has floated a slew of policies aimed at bringing down gas prices, including reversing years of sanctions on Iran for oil that was already being shipped. It also relaxed a maritime law that restricts the way oil is transported. But experts doubt those efforts will have a meaningful impact on prices consumers see at the pump, which are now inching toward $4 per gallon across the country.
Representative Zach Nunn, a combat veteran who is running for re-election in a swing district near Des Moines, Iowa, acknowledged the high price of gas but said voters in his district support the administration’s national security goals.
“The folks I hear from aren’t asking us to look the other way on a regime that’s been killing Americans and threatening the world with a nuclear weapon,” he said. “They want this mission done right, done fast, and they want their costs to come down.”
Still, while the U.S. economy remains resilient, many families are struggling with mounting debt, dwindling savings and a weakening labor market. And rising fuel prices also drive up the costs of everyday goods.
“A price spike in gas highlights the real reason I think the Republicans are in trouble for the midterms, which is Trump had one job and that was cost of living,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican operative based in California, where high gas prices are a perennial electoral issue. “He and Republicans have not been able to deliver on that.”
Already, there are signs that the war is costing Mr. Trump support among the independent, Latino and working-class voters who boosted him to victory in 2024. While surveys show that he still has the staunch support of Republicans, particularly those who identify as part of his MAGA movement, a majority of Democrats and independents oppose U.S. military action in Iran.
A handful of right-wing Republicans, including well-known MAGA influencers and politicians, have raised concerns that Mr. Trump will alienate his supporters and cause a “disastrous election” for Republicans in the midterms.
“I am tired of the industrial-war complex getting all of our hard-earned tax dollars,” Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado told CNN on Thursday. “I have folks in Colorado who can’t afford to live. We need America-first policies right now.”
Throughout his second term, Mr. Trump has repeatedly attempted to sell unpopular policies by asking Americans to bear personal economic pain for what he believes will help the country.
When he imposed sweeping tariffs, he promised that the higher costs for goods and groceries would be worth the price of rebalancing global trade. And after Republicans passed Mr. Trump’s sprawling domestic policy bill in July, they pushed back on concerns that the law helped the wealthy while raising health care costs for working-class people by telling voters that the policies would result in expansive economic growth for the country.
On Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance told supporters gathered at a manufacturing plant in Auburn Hills, Mich., that higher gas prices would not “last forever,” and neither would the war.
“We promise that when this conflict draws to a close, when this operation draws to a close, we’re going to see those energy prices come back down to reality,” he said.
Other Republicans have used language that Democrats believe will allow them to cast their opponents as unconcerned with costs — even if the war does end in the coming weeks.
“Maybe you take one less trip to Starbucks so that gas goes a little further,” Michele Tafoya, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Minnesota, said in a radio interview this week. “Let’s just try to be patriots about this.”
Presidents of both parties have looked to gas prices as a rough measure of national economic sentiment. Ron Klain, who served as chief of staff for President Joseph R. Biden Jr., was so concerned that he checked gas prices every day, pointing out in social media posts when they dipped.
But the war has added an even more unpredictable element. As Mr. Crow put it, citing an old military maxim: “The enemy always has a vote.”
A private document from Navigator Research, a liberal polling firm, that has been circulating among House Democrats encouraged them to focus less on criticizing Mr. Trump’s wartime partnership with Israel and his failure to get congressional approval for the assault on Iran and more on economic issues. The top-testing messages were arguments that Mr. Trump was raising gas prices and spending billions while ignoring cost-of-living concerns, increasing the price of health care and cutting food assistance programs.
Josh Turek, a Democratic legislator running for Senate in Iowa, says the issue is resonating in his state. Three soldiers from Iowa have been killed in the conflict, and shipping disruptions are driving fertilizer prices to near-record highs right before the spring planting season.
“All the doors that I’ve knocked, all the places that I’ve gone, I’ve never heard a single Iowan tell me that they want another forever war,” Mr. Turek said. “What they’re concerned about is just — its affordability.”
Lisa Lerer is a national political reporter for The Times, based in New York. She has covered American politics for nearly two decades.
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