A U.S.-Iran cease-fire means at least a temporary halt to most military action. But the consequences of the war in Iran will reverberate for some time — in prices at the gas pump and elsewhere, and also politically, with slumping approval ratings for President Trump.
But the president isn’t on the ballot in November. What do Republicans think about how this war has gone? And what are they thinking about their prospects in the midterms and beyond?
The Republican strategist Liam Donovan explored these questions in a written conversation with John Guida, an editor in Times Opinion.
John Guida: The war in Iran has not been popular among the American public (many Republicans excepted). Congressional Republicans gave the president a wide berth to conduct military operations. What is your sense of what these (and other) Republicans really think about the war?
Liam Donovan: The posture of the congressional G.O.P. reflects where their constituents are — instinctually wary of protracted involvement in the Middle East, uncertain as to exactly what our current objectives are in Iran and relieved by the cease-fire to the extent they are following closely. They’re eager to give this president the benefit of the doubt, and his willingness to speak out against previous misadventures gives him additional credibility in the near term even as it has confounded expectations.
Guida: So you think that the surveys showing a significant majority of Republicans are with the president on Iran is guiding most G.O.P. politicians in Washington?
Donovan: I don’t think congressional Republicans need to look at polls to tell them what they’ve lived through over the past decade: This president has a profound connection with his (and their) voters, and there has yet to be an example of public opposition to the president paying electoral dividends. In the Trump era, you’ve ended up with a model of representation who acts more like a delegate than a trustee — a proxy, not someone applying judgment.
Guida: Yet the Republican Party is, well, a political party. Do you think that “profound connection” to an individual is healthy for the full range of what a party should be?
Donovan: You have to remember that we got here precisely because the legacy G.O.P. was facially strong, winning enough elections for the establishment to maintain power, but rotting underneath in ways few could perceive other than Trump. His success has solved a number of Republicans’ problems, like winning the presidency, and his singular power has unified them in ways that have delivered major legislative victories, but the real answer won’t be clear until the party decides whom it should turn to next, and to what end.
Guida: Inside the White House decision-making, there seems to be little evidence of effective dissent. But the war in Iran has unleashed some intra-Republican divisions between “America first” adherents like Tucker Carlson who don’t like the war and neoconservatives like Ted Cruz and John Bolton who do. How deep is that division, and do you think it will have any impact on the future direction of the party?
Donovan: These are the sorts of pre-existing philosophical divisions within the party that Trump has managed to paper over. Both factions voted for him because elements of the MAGA message could be construed as supporting their own positions. But Trump doesn’t have a strong commitment to either worldview, and who has his ear at any given moment depends on the circumstances. The meaningful hinge point for the future of the G.O.P. lies in 2028.
Guida: Before 2028, we have the fall midterms. The war in Iran has taken another bite out of Trump’s popularity. Very little of what his administration has done appears resoundingly popular, and much of it seems rather unpopular.
Still, Democrats are mired in an unpopularity slump of their own. You mentioned “legislative victories” earlier. Is that what frontline Republican Senate or House candidates are running on?
Donovan: A couple of macro points are important context for understanding a midterm in 2026. A great presidential cycle like the one Republicans had in 2024 is a double-edged sword. It’s fun to win elections, it’s exhilarating to control the levers of power, but there’s inevitably an electoral hangover. And the silver lining to losing across the board as Democrats did is that the desperation of the experience is inherently motivating and mobilizing. It was always going to be a challenge for Republicans to reconstitute the coalition that elected the president without him on the ballot.
Guida: The common refrain is that the midterms are a referendum on the incumbent.
Donovan: To the extent voters were ever inclined to reward the party in power, we haven’t seen it for the past quarter-century. The idea of coming in and doing popular things and capitalizing on them in the next election has had a rough recent history — just ask Joe Biden. Realistically you need to use the power you have while you have it to achieve what you can.
For Republicans, that was extending many of the 2017 Trump tax cuts. There are a number of flourishes in that bill that are very popular in their own right, from no taxes on tips and overtime to government-seeded investment accounts for kids, so Republicans are working hard to remind voters of the tangible things they’ve done while they’ve held power in the White House and Congress.
They have an opportunity this coming week, when an additional estimated $100 billion in tax refunds means the average family is getting a bigger check than it did last year. But at the end of the day the midterm strategy will be oriented to bolstering coalition morale and persuading Republicans to turn out. Heading into November, the G.O.P. has three things going for it — a constrained House map, forgiving Senate terrain, and an unpopular Democratic Party going through an identity crisis of its own. The wild card is time; seven months is a political eternity, especially in the Trump era.
Guida: On the substance of G.O.P. domestic governance, you mentioned the One Big Beautiful Bill Act as the key legislative victory. Notwithstanding the flourishes (no taxes on tips, etc.), it strikes me as the sort of bill any Republican of the past 50 years might have achieved. It smacks of someone like Paul Ryan, the Reaganite House leader who helped shape the 2017 tax cuts.
In 2024, Trump was elected at least in part, and many would argue in large part, on a program of bringing inflation under control and exhibiting sound economic management of the kind he showed in his first term. He also of course ran on immigration policy and tariffs. Is there much evidence that the Trump-y elements — economic management, tariffs, immigration/deportation policy — have a strong appeal now to anyone beyond the MAGA base?
Donovan: It’s not bumper-sticker material, but remember that the chief imperative of that legislation was pre-empting a $4.6 trillion tax increase — one that was coming absent congressional action, and that the Biden-Harris plan would have almost certainly allowed families and businesses to absorb. So the reason it looks like Paul Ryan policy is that it was a Paul Ryan base line. But the new tax policy ideas were very much in Trump’s image.
As far as Trump’s signature issues, they were popular enough to get him elected — and have shown more political promise than stale G.O.P. policy tropes — but we’re seeing that execution is more complicated.
Guida: I’m wondering about the “political promise” part. Over 40 House Republicans have opted to resign, retire or run for another office instead of seeking re-election (lots of Democrats, too — over 20). What do you make of that number?
Donovan: There’s a tendency to point to retirements as proof of impending political doom — and I actually wrote a piece in 2018 about the exodus of committee chairs as a leading indicator — but the bipartisan nature of the phenomenon speaks to the fact that the House is not a fun place to be, and if you have a better offer, you avail yourself of it. The good news for Republicans is that their departures have been largely in safe territory and haven’t significantly changed the path to the majority, while a number of Democrats have left behind winnable seats.
Guida: Seven months out, what is your general sense of the state of play in the midterms? If you’re a Republican, how do you feel about holding the House? What about the Senate?
Donovan: As a historical matter, Republicans have no business holding the House with this sort of paper-thin margin. But the map has proved stubborn enough, and mid-decade redistricting has been active enough, that they should be able to hold down presumptive Democratic gains. The question is whether that looks like single digits, or something more in the realm of the dozens Democrats are gunning for.
The Senate is more complicated. A three-seat cushion is substantial, and the majority runs through states Trump won. In a neutral environment they would even be poised to pick up a number of seats. But if they can navigate a handful of messy primaries, Democrats at least have the pieces in place to make a run at 51. I’d much rather be in the Republicans’ position at this point, but they can’t take red states like Alaska and Iowa for granted.
Guida: What about the Texas Senate race, whether the G.O.P. nominee is John Cornyn or Ken Paxton?
Donovan: I feel confident that Republicans will hold that Senate seat, but the outcome of the Cornyn-Paxton runoff in May will determine how much it costs them. Having to undertake a rescue mission in the general election there would divert bandwidth and resources from other key races in ways that Republicans would come to regret. A lot will come down to how well Republicans are able to define the Democratic nominee, James Talarico — a talented pol who will have all the money in the world, but whose policies are way out of step with Texas voters.
Guida: Trump is an outsize political talent (for better or worse) and, as you emphasized, has been the glue that has held together the current G.O.P. He has also managed, in 2024 in particular, to attract a broad coalition of voters to the G.O.P. How big a difference does his absence from the ballot in the fall make in terms of G.O.P. turnout and the makeup of the electorate?
Donovan: The most striking aspect of the coalition realignment that Trump has accelerated is that Republicans are now the party most reliant on low-propensity voters. It’s the structural reason Democrats have had the kind of success we have seen in elections over the past 15 months. It’s not merely the presence of Trump, though obviously that matters, but it’s also the scale of the election. It’s a real concern for 2026, but it’s also a long-term issue that the party needs to grapple with and incorporate into its understanding of its interests, that the more people who vote, the better it is for the G.O.P.
Guida: Do low-propensity voters come out for the G.O.P. even when Trump isn’t on the ballot?
Donovan: I would turn the question around. The people crawling over broken glass to vote for a Democratic dogcatcher are doing so to vote against Republicans and Trump (even if they’re not thrilled with establishment Democrats). So to win elections, Republicans need the less engaged, less rabidly political voter to turn out more regularly.
Guida: Let’s look ahead to 2028. You mentioned that the Democratic Party is going through an identity crisis. Yet for the G.O.P., Trump has acted as a figurehead rather than the source of a party identity. When his second term is up, does the G.O.P. have an identity — or will the G.O.P. in 2028 also be engaged in an identity crisis?
Donovan: In my mind the binary is order versus disorder. An orderly 2028, which is what I would expect at this point, is the conventional path where the vice president takes the mantle from a popular, term-limited president and romps to victory in a primary where would-be challengers read the writing on the wall and stay out. It’s not about JD Vance versus any particular candidate — if it’s not JD Vance, it’s a free-for-all. People tend to project their preferred nominee, or whoever seems to be having a moment, but this all comes down to how the president chooses to approach 2028, and right now the vice president is the obvious choice.
Liam Donovan is the president at Targeted Victory, a Washington public affairs and digital marketing firm, and a former staff member on the National Republican Senatorial Committee. John Guida is a Times Opinion editor.
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