JD Vance Blames Israel for Republican Midterm Losses

In his broadside on X following heavy Republican losses in Tuesday's midterm elections, Vice-President JD Vance stated, "In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting."

And the gaslighting was started by none other than Vance himself:

But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone. Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were: 1) End the war 2) Focus on cost of living/inflation 3) Put America First 4) Change our relationship to Israel

Somehow, I doubt this particular pollster even exists. Frankly, Vance is expressing his own longstanding grievances.

It is curious that Vance writes "End the war" rather than "End the war with Iran" while explicitly stating "Change our relationship to Israel."

It is also no accident that Vance wrote "Change our relationship to Israel" right after "Put America First."

Never mind that Trump just announced the end of military aid to Israel. But that only emboldens more demands upon Israel whether it's from the Far Left or from Vance.

Vance makes no mention of Russia, NATO, Greenland or Canada becoming the 51st state. As Jonathan Tobin just pointed out, Trump's polling problems began not with the War in Iran but rather with his tariff regime which has led to rising prices on a broad range of goods and services. As with Abdul El-Sayed, everything is Israel's fault. There is no difference between the two.

This isn't to say Trump's military excursion into Iran hasn't been foolish. I questioned Trump's commitment to regime change in Iran and my misgivings have been borne out again and again. Trump has gone from calling upon the Iranian people to take back their government to claiming regime change had been achieved to claiming he never cared about regime change in Iran at all. With such utter incoherence, no wonder the Iranian regime remains in power more than 8 months after this military campaign began.

If Vance genuinely believes Trump was wrong to initiate military action with Israel against the Iranian regime, then he ought to have resigned his office. But he won't because this isn't a matter of principle, it is a matter of power. Vance is a heartbeat away from the Oval Office and is trying to demagogue his way into office when Trump and Republicans are at their weakest. 

And what better way to demagogue than to blame the Jews?