Gas prices are above $4 a gallon nationally. Diesel prices are pennies away from $6. Oil is back over $100 a barrel. There is no end in sight for the Iran war. And the midterm elections are less than two months away.
Gas prices have been elevated ever since the beginning of the Iran war in February, but costs at the pump had eased somewhat as the United States negotiated a peace deal with Iran over the summer.
Now, with that peace deal looking more like a distant dream, prices are on the rise again — $4.27 a gallon nationally — crossing an important psychological threshold at the very moment that voters begin to cast their ballots.
For Republicans, the timing couldn’t be worse.
Privately, GOP lawmakers acknowledge that the high gas prices are a huge challenge. House Republicans note that President Donald Trump and the GOP campaigned on relieving pain at the pump, with one telling MS NOW, “Lowering fuel prices was a big campaign promise.”
Now, those gas prices are crossing $4 throughout the U.S., and there is a new economic issue for Republicans to defend just as voters see the issue getting worse, not better.
“Across the country, it’s going to be a problem,” the GOP lawmaker said.
Another House Republican, who requested anonymity, said the recent rise in fuel costs is “challenging” and “concerning,” noting that it has become a “topic of discussion” among Republicans. A third GOP lawmaker, also speaking anonymously about private fears, said the threat posed by a recent spike in fuel costs is “real.”
“People still vote with their pocketbook and it’s gonna be in the back of people’s mind,” the lawmaker said.
And one Republican lawmaker, Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee, was transparent about the political potency of gas prices: “If the Democrats were in power, I would use it on them.”
The concern for the GOP is that high gas prices are here to stay, and that prices could actually climb higher as voting begins.
Lawmakers and operatives from both parties say the balance of power in the House and Senate could very likely hinge on gas prices. If Trump and Republicans can get prices back below $4 a gallon, there’s a much better chance the issue fades into the background and voters return to their traditional partisan fox holes. But if gas prices start with a $4 — and if diesel moves above $6 — Democrats see an opportunity to reach voters who haven’t traditionally sided with them, or to simply discourage some key Trump voters from coming out in November.
On Wednesday, as he departed for the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas, Trump insisted gas prices would come “tumbling down.”
“I think for gasoline, we’ll get them below $2 a gallon,” he said.
But he acknowledged that it would likely take “a little bit longer than the midterms” for prices to come down.
That is little comfort to Republicans running for re-election now. As GasBuddy petroleum analyst Patrick De Haan said, even if oil started coming down today, “It might take a few weeks to a couple months because prices have gone up so high.”
“The higher they go, the longer it takes them to come back down to normal,” De Haan told MS NOW.
And inconveniently for Republicans, oil prices are headed in the opposite direction.
Brent crude oil exceeded $100 a barrel on Wednesday as fighting between the U.S. and Iran escalated and Ukraine struck Russian oil refineries. Gas prices rose to a national average of $4.27 a gallon, and diesel prices hit a record-high of $5.97 this week. Diesel is on track to pass $6 a gallon for the first time in history.
Because Trump tried to soften the blow earlier in the year by releasing barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the U.S. SPR is near its lowest level since 1982. The Trump administration doesn’t have as many levers to lower prices.
On top of it all, the high diesel costs have a “disproportional impact on rural households and businesses,” Adie Tomer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told MS NOW.
“It’s hard to see how communities rooted deeply in farming and agriculture and heavy industry will not have this economic news top of mind,” Tomer said.
Farmers and cattle ranchers are already struggling from the impacts of Trump’s tariff war and his decision to import foreign beef. (Trump’s support among rural Americans dropped to a near record low of 44%, according to a July Fox News poll.)
One of the vulnerable Republicans who spoke to MS NOW noted that farmers tend to lean toward Republicans.
“But is there a lot of frustration? Yes,” the lawmaker said.
Another GOP lawmaker recalled a recent conversation with a farmer who was “complaining about the diesel fuel prices.”
And Burchett agreed that the recent rise in prices has hit farmers particularly hard.
“It’s tough on them,” he said.
The actual impact of rising gas prices is a key question. Some Republicans worry it could be the ballgame, while others don’t “think” it will cost the GOP the election.
“I pray that our voters don’t use this as the only thing that they care about when determining the future of the country,” another GOP lawmaker said.
Another one of the previously quoted Republicans said they wished the White House “would do a better job of messaging and explaining to the American people the challenges of making sure that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon.”
Rhetorical challenges aside, Republicans have little time to turn back the tide — and there’s no real indication that things are getting better.
One of the House Republicans who spoke to MS NOW said that “if things were to stay calm” from now until November, the current gas prices may be “baked in at this point.”
But the Republican warned that if Trump “continues to go after other countries” — like with the recent Canada tariffs — it will be “a problem.”
“Because now you’re making the situation worse, and voters are gonna see that,” they said.
“He can defend his situation in Iran, the war there, and his reasoning. And they might not agree with it, but at least he’s doing this,” the lawmaker continued. “But at this point, trying to drag other countries into a conflict and then basically punishing our consumers along the way is not gonna go over well. And I think that’ll go beyond anything that is baked in.”
“I think it’ll make it worse,” the battleground lawmaker said. “For voters and for consumers in general.”
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