Remember the guy who tried to kill a spider with a blowtorch and burned his house down? (The correct answer is: Which one? Yes, it’s happened multiple times.) That will be today’s theme.

Our most urgent task after the midterms is to create a list of everyone who supported the Iran War so we’ll know who to never, ever, ever, ever trust again. Pending a full accounting, here are the top two: Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, and Rupert Murdoch—still alive as of this writing—patriarch of Fox News and the New York Post.

It may be unfair to blame Netanyahu, since it obviously doesn’t matter who that country’s premier is. Israelis overwhelmingly support the war and worship President Donald Trump for pursuing it.

But let’s see how much they love this: About 70 percent of the party that’s about to control Congress has an unfavorable view of Israel. (And presumably the other 30 percent is fanatically anti-Israel.)

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the closely affiliated United Democracy Project (UDP) spent in the neighborhood of an estimated $45 million to defeat Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan—who famously refused to answer whether Israel or Iran was a bigger threat to the U.S. That money became toxic, driving support for El-Sayed. He will now be America’s first Muslim senator.

As some of us warned you from the beginning, the war was going to be very bad for our country, bad for the GOP—and bad for Israel. That’s why a lot of people who appreciate Israel’s core values were among those issuing this warning. But the pro-war crowd apparently felt its strongest counter-argument was to scream about antisemitism.

Mark Levin, to whom Murdoch has given a show for some reason, called opponents of the war the “Woke Reich” driven by a “hatred of Jews” who are “ok with Iran and Putin” and act as “the modern-day appeasers of Hitler in the 1930s.”

Even Ben Shapiro, who, unlike Levin, was never kicked in the head by a horse, denounced the libertarian Rep. Thomas Massie for opposing both the war and foreign aid to Israel—or to any other country, for that matter—accusing the Kentucky congressman of harboring a “not particularly subtle antisemitism.” (Sorry, Ben! You’re almost always right, but this is a really annoying argument.)

And look what happened. Previously, most Americans never thought about Israel, and those who did—evangelicals and neoconservatives—unreservedly supported it. A Pew poll this spring found that 60 percent of Americans now hold an unfavorable view of the country. In a Quinnipiac University survey, 60 percent of voters said they disapproved of the U.S. sending military aid to Israel. This matched other surveys, such as one by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

Today—for the first time since 2001—more Americans sympathize with the Palestinians than with Israel, according to Gallup polls. Support for Israel used to run in the double digits.

On Election Day, in a desperate attempt to stave off looming devastation, Trump went on Fox News and promised to end American aid to Israel by the end of the year. He is, of course, lying, but we’ll leave this aside. The president may ignore the room, but he can read the room.

Iran War zealots used a blowtorch to kill a spider and burned the house down. Unfortunately, it was our house, too.

The only question now is: “Did the Iran War hurt Republicans, or did it really, really, really hurt Republicans?”

While the media are determined to convince us the blue tsunami was about the public’s hatred of ICE, Elon Musk, tariffs, “voter suppression,” Jan. 6, and that monkey business at Bonwit Teller, voters have consistently said it’s the Iran War and its consequences.

October polls:

• AP-NORC poll: Over 80 percent want the next Congress to make “cost of living” a top priority; over 70 percent say the Iran war is the top priority.
• NYT/Siena poll: Voters trust Democrats more than Republicans on two issues: gas prices and “foreign wars.” Trump’s worst issue was gas prices, with 73 percent disapproving.
• Fox News poll: 75 percent “extremely” or “very” concerned about the Iran war.
• Gallup poll: 47 percent called the Iran War “extremely important,” and 42 percent named “gas prices.” Only the economy and healthcare narrowly edged out Iran as extremely important at 50 percent each.

And so on. Virtually every poll shows that the top election issues were the Iran War, gas prices, and the cost of living. And the reason gas prices are high is because of the war; the reason the cost of living is high is because of gas prices.

Thus, the month after Trump started bombing girls’ schools in Iran, the seasonally adjusted Consumer Price Index (CPI) spiked 0.9 percent. There are few historic precedents for an increase of that magnitude. Recent examples are: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (1 percent); the EU agreeing to ban 90 percent of Russian crude oil imports (1.2 percent); and Hurricane Katrina knocking out a massive portion of U.S. oil refining capacity (0.9 percent).

We can rebuild oil refineries and resume oil imports from Russia. This time, there’s no end in sight. When Vice President J.D. Vance tried to end the war in June, the warmongers went ballistic.

Cut the crap about “tariffs” causing the surging price of gas and diesel. The seasonally adjusted CPI for non-energy-sensitive goods throughout 2026 was nonexistent compared to that for energy-sensitive goods.

This year, the Iowa Farmers Union endorsed every Democrat running for Congress for the first time in its history—because of diesel prices doubling. Not tariffs. Not ICE. Not the ballroom. On Tuesday, Iowa Democrats swept the board, winning the U.S. Senate, the governorship, the attorney general, and three of four House seats.

The Swing Voter Project has been conducting focus groups with “Biden-to-Trump” voters since the beginning of the war, and they have been unfailingly, overwhelmingly against the war. Sample quotes:

• “We got this stupid war in Iran… all we got was $4 gas.”
• “It’s hurt our economy and increased expenses for the everyday American, and it accomplished the square root of nothing.”
• “I’m very antiwar. And initially, I was led on to believe that [Trump] was also very antiwar.”

I haven’t left as much room as I’d like for recriminations, so I’ll just list a few of the biggest fanboys for the war that has failed in every way possible, making Iran stronger, the U.S. weaker, and—for the cherry on top—delivering a generational blow to the GOP and driving support for Israel to historic, previously unimaginable lows.

Cheerleaders: Do more of the same, but harder!

• The New York Post: “There is only one way to remove this threat once and for all: overthrow the regime in Iran.”
• Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen: “We should go back to war and we should finish the job.”
• Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade: “finish the job,” “finish them off,” “after the midterms, the gloves come off.”

And who, specifically, put the kibosh on Vance’s attempt to end the war five months ago with a “Memorandum of Understanding” (MOU), thereby killing any hope that Tuesday night would not be a catastrophe?

• The New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin: “Vance talks in ways that would make jihadists proud.”
• The New York Post editorial: Vance cares “more about the stock market and online optics than Iran’s threat to the world.”
• The New York Post columnist Lee Smith: Vance “has been trying to convince Trump that MAGA is definitely dumb enough to be suckered into believing that the Iran deal his loyal deputy has captained is a historic win.”
• Fox News’ Mark Levin (again): “Stop bullying our ally and cozying up to our enemy!”
• NewsNation’s Batya Ungar-Sargon: “disgusting, it is the complete Tucker Carlsonification of the vice president of the United States, and it is utterly deplorable.”
• Ben Shapiro: The MOU is “a disaster” and “This is JD’s deal… It does not have support.”

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