HUGH HEWITT: Trump chose resolve over retreat. The GOP must make that case every day
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Many predictions for the midterm elections in the United States are dire for the GOP: a wipeout of the House of Representatives and perhaps a loss of the Senate majority. The GOP can weather the electoral storm that almost always punishes the party of a president completing his sixth year in office.
But the GOP will not be able to avoid the “noise,” as George W. Bush said after the GOP’s defeat at the ballot box in 2006, unless today’s Republicans step up and loudly proclaim the fact that it is wise to go to war with Iran and not only win the war decisively, but that the world will be a much better place when it’s over, despite President Trump’s declaration, as General Ulysses S. Grant did in May. 1864, “I propose to fight on this line if it will take all summer.”
Grant emerged victorious within the year, but in reality it was a long, hard-fought fight across Northern Virginia that resulted in the encirclement and eventual surrender of Richmond and the Confederacy and the surrender of General Lee’s Army, even as other Union armies had won on other fronts.
There will be no “Appomattox” in the war with Iran, but there will be victory, and the GOP should preach that inevitability as well as the great wisdom and necessity of war.
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Every candidate of every partisan race needs to make this case, which is easy to do: The Islamic Republic of Iran is an evil regime run by “crazy people,” as Secretary Rubio declared at the start of the war, always terrorizing its own people and the entire region (murdering tens of thousands of its own people in January), and attacking 14 countries after America and Israel started fighting again with nuclear weapons! – If only he could obtain such weapons that the American and European left refuse to see or accept, or even discuss.
The GOP needs to embrace ‘peace through victory’ as its platform and discuss this issue every day, at every stage, and in every interview.
This was not “a war of choice”, as ignorant opponents of the war say almost every day, but one of the necessary preliminary measures of an existential threat to the region and the world.
The blockade of Iran by the US Navy and the possible return of combat operations will inevitably bring the radical junta at the top of the regime in the rear to its knees, but this will take time.
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President Trump correctly informed his advisers this week that he was determined to get this done (and the news was reported by The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday night). Bravo.
Americans have lost the muscle memory of victory. Once the conflict is over, appreciation of determination will quickly be regained.
Predicting electoral disaster for the GOP would mean losing statewide races at least in Maine (Sen. Collins), Ohio (Sen. Husted), North Carolina (open) and Texas (Sen. Cornyn) or Alaska (Sen. Sullivan); It’s an outcome that seems so unlikely that it can almost be passed over without comment, but if the GOP remains hunkered down in the war with Iran, this extraordinary outcome could be possible. Faced with challenges, every senator and every House member must repeatedly explain the “why” and “how” of war. If they do this, voters will agree.
WINNING WARS OR LOSING WAR? AMERICA SHOULD DEFINE THE END GAME IN IRAN
GOP candidates must argue loudly and convincingly that war with Iran is long overdue, that although the cost of 13 American lives and the wounding of scores more Americans is impossibly high for the families bearing the burden and the nation mourning this loss, the war and blockade have been astonishingly successful and will inevitably crush the remnants of the old regime if the president remains determined. It seems certain that President Trump does not intend to “go swinging.”
The President is aware of the danger and has stated his determined purpose. Bravo.
The GOP should applaud him, support him, and explain that the cost felt at home at the gas pump is nothing compared to the cost paid by the families of the martyrs and the wounded, and that the extraordinary benefit to a humbled Iran cannot be overstated.
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This fight to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons is in its eighth week and going pretty well (except for the eyes of Democratic activists and legacy media, but of course I’m repeating myself).
It crushed Iran’s military, and now the blockade ordered by President Trump is pulverizing Iran’s economy.
Be patient and you will see the United States emerge with a complete victory, but don’t expect the Democrats or the anti-American Europeans to accept it.
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Our allies around the Gulf and our closest ally, Israel, are delighted that Iran has been brought to its knees and the region has been made safe and stable for decades to come.
Anti-Trump forces were unable or unwilling to see the extraordinary nature and success of the American military campaign or the immense boon to the region and the world that accompanied the humility of the demented regime in Tehran.
The “Trump Distortion Effect” at work on the left in America (which includes almost all legacy media) and in sclerotic Europe works to automatically condemn anything President Trump orders done; so the left put aside half a century of abuse of the world and its own people by the Islamic Republic of Iran to blast Trump and the Republicans.
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It doesn’t matter. “Trust people” was Winston Churchill’s famous advice. President Trump has frequently stated what he has ordered the American military to do and continue to do. He has Grant’s determination. Good morning my baby.
This portrait of General Ulysses S. Grant was printed from original glass plate negatives by Mathew B. Brady. (AP Photo/Mathew Brady, File)
The 1864-1865 campaigns of Union armies operating under Generals Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman cost tens of thousands of Union casualties but ultimately broke the back of the Confederacy’s slave empire. The men in blue voted overwhelmingly for Abraham Lincoln in the fall of 1864 over their former senior general, George McClellan, who ran on a “peace without victory” platform, a stark contrast to the GOP’s “peace with victory” stance.
The people who carry the heaviest burdens want nothing less than the determination to win. Trump has this and everyone knows it.
The GOP needs to embrace “peace through victory” as its platform and discuss this issue every day, at every stage, and in every interview. This will last for several months, and while the economy is generally very healthy, there is no escaping the temporary increase in gas prices. GOP candidates need to discuss the necessity of this burden in the short term. Argue to win. Fight for a free Iran and a stable and secure Middle East.
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There is no way the GOP can win in November without claiming and defending victory in this battle. Ignore the old “echo chamber” set up during the President Obama years to defend the indefensible Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (“JCPOA”), which sought to sanctify with an executive order Iran’s glide path to nuclear weapons surrounded by a forest of ballistic missiles that could hit Europe and eventually the United States.
Americans have lost the muscle memory of victory. Once the conflict is over, appreciation of determination will quickly be regained.
President Trump and his administration understand the real danger. They rejected the comforting lies of the JCPOA.
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President Trump correctly understands the threat of a nuclear Iran. So he took action.
Serious Republicans should applaud Trump’s refusal to get the job done. The GOP should make the same strategic argument the president has espoused. And they should start doing that now and never stop until the November votes are counted.
Hugh Hewitt, Fox News contributor and “The Hugh Hewitt Show” weekday afternoons from 3 to 6 p.m. ET on the Salem Radio Network and simulcast on the Salem News Channel. Hugh takes Americans home to the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on more than 400 affiliates nationwide and on all streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest of Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier on weekdays at 6 p.m. ET A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996, where he started his eponymous radio show in Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has appeared frequently on all major national news television networks, hosted television programs for PBS and MSNBC, written for all major American newspapers, and authored a dozen books. He has moderated multiple Republican candidate debates, most recently the 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in 2015-16. Hewitt focuses his radio show and column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians Today Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests, from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush.
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