Republicans face ticking clock on 'political catastrophe'

Over the past year, a number of issues have angered voters, from brutal ICE tactics to the mishandling of the Epstein investigation to President Donald Trump’s beef with the Pope. But now with gas prices skyrocketing due to the unpopular war with Iran, writes Politico, “GOP campaign veterans say time is running out if the party is going to avoid a disaster at the ballot box in November.”While the White House has done everything it can think of to bring oil prices down, costs at the pump have shot up by over a third in less than two months, with further increases forecasted even by Trump and his officials — just in time for summer road trip season. “I would say gas prices need to come down substantially before Memorial Day weekend,” said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean. “That is a political catastrophe waiting to happen.”Memorial Day is typically when fuel demands begin to soar, and with the situation in the Strait of Hormuz still anything but certain, it seems unlikely that prices will come down by Bonjean’s catastrophic deadline. While oil barrel prices are down somewhat from their recent high of $120, they are still at $93, which is roughly $30 higher than they were before the war. This has pushed national gas averages to over $4 per gallon, costing U.S. consumers over $24 billion since the conflict began. The White House has been desperate to characterize the price hike as “short-term, temporary disruptions,” but studies have shown that a 10-cent increase in gas prices drives a 0.6 percentage point drop in presidential approval. That’s bad news for the Republicans, who already see warning signals of midterm disasters to come. It has already been widely accepted that the GOP will likely lose its majority in the House, and many conservatives have begun to worry that they could even lose the Senate as the electorate doles out punishment for high gas prices and unpopular policies. “At a political level, if oil prices remain exorbitantly high, voters are going to blame the party in power,” said Alex Conant, a partner at Washington-based strategic communications firm and former communications director for Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign. “And there’s not much you can do from a comms perspective on that.”