Opinion
As the average price for a gallon of petrol in the United States surged more than a dollar higher than last month, the pain of Donald Trump’s war on Iran has begun to set in.
Republicans in Georgia responded by passing an emergency tax break on petrol, cutting US33¢ (47¢) off the cost of each gallon. Other Republican-led states, including Utah and my home state of South Carolina, are considering the same option as voters grow increasingly upset at the rising cost of the war.
Not just the cost for the country, in a financial or geopolitical sense, but how much the war in the Middle East is making their everyday lives more expensive – the exact thing that Donald Trump said that he would spend his presidency focused on.
Those voters are growing increasingly anxious. They believe the war is going to last a long time, and that the economic impacts are going to settle in and hang over them like a drought in a hot summer.
These voters will decide the Republican Party’s fate later this year. The MAGA loyal have not fallen away, but independents and non-MAGA Republicans are quickly turning against the war, making worse an already daunting midterm landscape.
These elections were always going to be tough for Republicans. The party that holds the White House nearly always loses ground in the midterms, but the Republicans only have a handful of seats to lose before losing their majority – and the ability to appoint judges and pass budgets.
Trump is clearly aware of the spike in petrol prices. Just days ago, he invented imaginary talks with the Iranian regime that buoyed markets for a moment until the Iranians said that no such talks happened.
But even as this political crisis hits America, conservatives know that Trump demands loyalty. To question his instincts or motives or even his current analysis of the state of the war would mean finding oneself on the receiving end of a Truth Social post that can destroy any Republican’s career if they face a primary challenger – as many are right now.
In swing states especially, Republican representatives are trying to find the balance between alleviating the pain that their voters feel and not angering a president who demands domain over truth itself.
In Georgia, the calculus has already weighed out. The petrol tax cut is more interesting as a confession than a policy – an effective admission that the war was a choice made by a Republican president that has resulted in rising costs for Americans. By passing the tax cuts, they are acknowledging that the party which made a mess will have to do something about it to avoid political calamity.
This November, the state will play host to the most hotly contested Senate election in the country, where an incumbent Democratic senator will go up for re-election in a state won by Donald Trump in 2024. Republicans there are tacitly acknowledging that if voters in Georgia are still feeling the sharpest stings of Trump’s war, they may well lose the Senate entirely.
Democratic-led states have made the tactical decision to do nothing. To cynically let the cost of living rise and for Washington to take the blame.
It’s an easy way for the Democratic governors of California, New York, and Maryland – all of whom are rumoured to be setting up their own presidential campaigns – to highlight the failures of the Trump administration.
The state where this tension over oil will be tested most is Texas. Its economy is heavily dependent on oil, nearly as much as Republican political fortunes are dependent on Trump’s blessing and favour. Rising oil prices are not only frustrating car-dependant Texans, but will hurt their oil refinery and airline industries.
Democrats have already made significant inroads in this year’s Senate election in Texas, while Republicans have yet to choose between the incumbent and an ultra-MAGA challenger with all of Trump’s baggage and little of his charisma. In short, it is the first time in a generation that Republicans might actually lose this seat. If the stars align for the Democrats, with a weak Republican nominee, it would represent a ground shift in American politics – a self-defeat in the Republican heartlands.
Republicans in power across the US are now caught in a bind between alleviating the pain their voters feel or staying on the good side of the only figure in their party whose voice matters.
The party that promised to bring down the cost of living is now the party responsible for a war driving it up.
And the only people who can’t say that out loud are the people whose careers depend on doing so.
Cory Alpert is a PhD researcher at the University of Melbourne looking at the impact of AI on democracy. He served the Biden-Harris administration for three years.
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Cory Alpert is a PhD researcher at the University of Melbourne looking at the impact of AI on democracy. He previously served the Biden-Harris Administration for three years.