MORNING GLORY: GOP's only path in November -- defend Trump and defeat radicals in Iran
Many predictions about the midterm elections in the United States are dire for the GOP: a wipeout in the House and perhaps losing the Senate majority as well. The GOP could weather the electoral storm that almost always chastens the party of a president finishing his sixth year in office.
But the GOP won’t avoid a "thumpin’" as George W. Bush put it after the 2006 rout of the GOP at the polls if today’s Republicans don’t step up and loudly proclaim the wisdom of beginning the battle with Iran, as well as the facts that we are not only winning the battle decisively but that the world will be a much better place when it is over, even if President Trump declares, as Gen. Ulysses S. Grant did in May 1864, that "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer."
Grant prevailed within the year, but it was indeed a long and hard slog through Northern Virginia to the encirclement and eventual capitulation of Richmond and the Confederacy and the surrender of General Lee’s Army, even as other Union armies won on other fronts.
There will be no "Appomattox" in the battle with Iran, but there will be victory, and the GOP has to preach that inevitability as well as the great wisdom and necessity of the battle.
AMB. GORDON SONDLAND: THE TRUTH ABOUT IRAN'S 'IMMINENT THREAT' THAT POLITICIANS HATE TO ADMIT
Every candidate in every partisan race has to make the case, which is easy to make: The Islamic Republic of Iran is an evil regime, one run by "lunatics," as Secretary Rubio declared as the battle began, one which has always terrorized its own people and the entire region (murdering tens of thousands of its own people in January), and one which has attacked 14 countries after America and Israel resumed their battle with it as it would have done so — with nukes! — had it been able to obtain such weapons, as the left in America and Europe refuses to see or admit, much less discuss.
It was not "a war of choice," which the ignorant opponents of the battle spout almost daily, but rather one of the necessary preemptions of an existential threat to the region and the world.
The blockade of Iran by the U.S. Navy and the probable return of combat operations will inevitably bring the radical junta atop the rump regime to heel, but it will take time.
MORNING GLORY: President Trump must reject a second Munich and hold firm against Iran
President Trump has correctly informed his advisers this week (and the news was reported by The Wall Street Journal Tuesday night) that he is resolved to see it through. Bravo.
Americans have lost the muscle memory of victory. It will quickly regain an appreciation for resolve once the conflict is over.
The prediction of electoral catastrophe for the GOP would mean losing statewide races at least in Maine (Sen. Collins), Ohio (Sen. Husted), North Carolina (open) and either Texas (Sen. Cornyn) or Alaska (Sen. Sullivan) — a result which seems so unlikely as to almost pass over without comment, but that extraordinary result is possible if the GOP stays in its crouch over the battle with Iran. Each senator facing challenges and every House member must repeatedly explain the "why" and the "how" of the battle. If they do, the electorate will agree.
WINNING THE BATTLES, LOSING THE WAR? AMERICA MUST DEFINE THE ENDGAME IN IRAN
The GOP’s candidates must loudly and persuasively argue that the battle with Iran was long past due, that while the cost of 13 American lives and scores of Americans wounded is incredibly high for the families who bear that burden and the nation that mourns that loss, the battle and the blockade are stunningly successful and will inevitably crush the remnants of the old regime if the president has resolve. It seems certain that President Trump is not about "to go wobbly."
The president understands the stakes and has made his resolute purpose known. Bravo.
The GOP must applaud and support him and explain that the cost felt at home at the gas pump is nothing compared to that borne by the families of the fallen and by the wounded, and the extraordinary benefit of a humbled Iran cannot be overstated.
That battle to stop Iran from gaining nuclear weapons is in its eighth week and is going very well (except in the eyes of Democratic activists and the legacy media, but of course I repeat myself).
It has crushed the Iranian military, and now the blockade ordered by President Trump is grinding Iran’s economy into dust.
Patience will see the U.S. emerge with complete victory, but don’t expect Democrats or anti-American Europeans to ever admit that.
Our allies around the Gulf and our closest ally, Israel, are very pleased to see Iran being brought to heel and the region made safe and stable for decades to come.
The anti-Trump forces have been unable or unwilling to see the extraordinary nature and success of the American military campaign, or the enormous boon to the region and the world that accompanies the humbling of the lunatic regime in Tehran.
The "Trump Distortion Effect" that operates on the left in America (which includes almost all of the legacy media), as well as in sclerotic Europe, automatically operates to condemn everything President Trump orders done, so the left has put aside a half-century of the abuse of the world and its own people by the Islamic Republic of Iran in order to blast Trump and Republicans.
LIZ PEEK: TRUMP IS PUTTING AMERICA FIRST BY BACKING IRAN INTO A CORNER
No matter. "Trust the people" was Winston Churchill’s famous advice. President Trump has frequently made the case for what he ordered the American military to do and continue doing. He has the resolve of Grant. Good.
The 1864-1865 campaigns by Union armies operating under Generals Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman cost tens of thousands of Union casualties but finally broke the back of the slave empire of the Confederacy. The men in blue overwhelmingly voted for Abraham Lincoln in the fall of 1864 over their former senior general, George McClellan, who ran on a "peace without victory" platform, which was in stark contrast to the GOP’s "peace with victory" stance.
The people who carry the greatest burden want nothing less than a commitment to winning. Trump has that, and everyone knows it.
The GOP needs to embrace "peace with victory" as its platform and argue the case every day from every stage and in every interview. It will take some months, and while the economy is very healthy overall, there is no escaping the temporary surge in gas prices. The GOP’s candidates must argue the necessity of that burden in the short term. Argue for winning. Argue for a free Iran and a stable and safe Middle East.
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There is no winning for the GOP in November without demanding and defending victory in this battle. Ignore the old "echo chamber" set up in the years of President Obama to defend the indefensible Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action ("JCPOA"), which attempted to enshrine in an executive order an Iranian glide path to nuclear weapons surrounded by a forest of ballistic missiles capable of hitting Europe and eventually the U.S.
President Trump and his administration understood the real danger. They refused the comfortable lies of the JCPOA.
President Trump correctly understands the threat from a nuclear Iran. So, he acted.
Serious Republicans must applaud Trump’s refusal to kick the can down the road. The GOP must make the same strategic argument that the president embraced. And they should start doing it now and never stop until November’s votes are counted.
Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor and host of "The Hugh Hewitt Show" heard weekday afternoons from 3 PM to 6 PM ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives Americans home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting. This column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.