Calling JD Vance Disloyal Worked Out Horribly as the Right Finally Turns on the Necon Party Establishment

JD Vance posted one line on November 4 blaming the Iran war for the midterm wipeout.

Within hours the same establishment RINOs who pushed that war turned their fire on him instead.

One Fox News regular went even further and used a word reserved for traitors.

The Eight Month War That Cost Republicans the Senate

Vance did not mince words after Democrats swept back into the majority in both chambers.

"The reason we lost is the war," he wrote.

He said a pollster had told him the party's economic messaging wasn't sharp enough, and he agreed that was true.

Then he said the obvious part everyone already knew.

Voters who backed Trump in 2024 and abandoned Republicans this year wanted the war ended, the cost of living addressed, and America put first again.

Trump himself did not dispute it.

He told reporters Vance's statement was "largely true," even while telling The New York Times that striking Iran had been a "very wise decision."

The numbers back up exactly what Vance said.

Exit polling found that roughly three in four voters called the Iran war a crucial or major factor in their vote.

A majority of voters separately said using military force against Iran had been the wrong decision.

The Pentagon says the eight month campaign has cost more than forty seven billion dollars, with at least twenty three American troops killed and hundreds more wounded.

Sean Davis of The Federalist put the scale of the damage bluntly, calling it "the biggest national wipeout for Republicans since 2006," the year Iraq cost George W. Bush both chambers of Congress too.

Back then Republicans held the House by a comfortable margin, and Democrats flipped it by thirty one seats once voters decided the war had gone on long enough.

Gas prices and a strong economy could not save the party once Iraq became the only issue anyone wanted to discuss at the ballot box.

Twenty years later Republicans walked into the same trap, this time in South Carolina, Texas, and Kansas, historically Republican states Democrats had not touched in years.

Daily Wire host Matt Walsh did not soften it either, calling the Iran campaign "unpopular and pointless" and accusing Trump of abandoning the America First message that won him the White House twice.

Marc Thiessen Called Vance Disloyal for Admitting the Obvious

Not everyone wanted to hear it, especially the people who talked Trump into the war in the first place.

Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen called Vance's post "an extraordinary act of disloyalty."

He accused Vance of "publicly distancing himself from the person who plucked him from political obscurity."

Thiessen even wrote the statement he thinks Vance should have made instead: "President Trump did the right thing, and I support him 100 percent."

There is just one problem with Thiessen playing loyalty police.

Back in January, before a single bomb dropped, Thiessen was the one telling readers there was "no downside to striking" Iran.

He was reportedly among the voices in Trump's ear pushing hardest for the war Vance is now getting blamed for criticizing.

Mark Levin piled on too, blaming the ceasefire memorandum of understanding as "utterly defective" and asking who had been advising the president on it.

None of this is new.

A Washington Examiner column back in August already accused Vance of getting "played like an Iranian flute" by Tehran over that same ceasefire deal and asked whether Trump would "allow himself to be fooled again."

The hawks were gunning for Vance months before a single vote got counted.

Sean Davis wasn't having any of it.

He fired back that Thiessen had been "peddling nonsense about the Iran war" for nine straight months and was now trying to pin the political fallout on the one man who told the truth about it.

Hawks Who Demanded the War Are Writing the Excuses Now

Here is the pattern worth remembering before the next foreign policy fight breaks out.

The same voices who promised Americans a quick, clean win in Iran are now the ones insisting the war had nothing to do with Republicans losing Congress.

Charitably, you can say Trump trusted the people around him when they told him striking Iran carried no real downside.

You can take that as a knock on Trump.

But it is a warning about who was whispering in his ear, because the same advisors who got this wrong are now demanding loyalty oaths from the vice president for saying so.

Vance did not attack the president.

He agreed with him, pointed at the polling, and told fellow Republicans an uncomfortable truth they needed to hear before 2028 arrives.

The hawks can keep calling that disloyalty if they want.

Most conservative voters will call it one of the few honest things anybody in Washington has said about this war since it started.

Sources:

• Joseph A. Wulfsohn, "Conservatives Stunned by 'Catastrophic' Midterm Blue Tsunami, Blame Trump's Iran War, High Gas Prices," Fox News, November 4, 2026.
• Eddie Scarry, "Neocon Marc Thiessen Denies Reality and Lies About J.D. Vance," The Federalist, November 6, 2026.
• John D. O'Connor, "Trump's Gift to Iran That Keeps on Giving, His Name Is JD Vance," Washington Examiner, August 7, 2026.