This article is made possible through Spotlight PA’s partnership with NOTUS, a nonpartisan news organization that covers government and politics with the fresh eyes of early career journalists and the expertise of veteran reporters.
The same party that spent years pinning every penny increase at the pump on former President Joe Biden is now scrambling to explain why prices have surged to their highest level in years.
The Republican attacks were everywhere in 2022. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, gas prices surged to a record high of an average of $5 per gallon that June. It’s a familiar strategy for the party, using rising gas prices as a political weapon against Democratic candidates. From the moment Biden took office, GOP leaders lined up at microphones, held press conferences on Capitol Hill, and plastered “I Did That” stickers of Biden’s face on gas pumps across the country. Every rise in fuel costs was, in their telling, a direct consequence of Democratic leadership.
Then came February 28, 2026 — and a new war started by President Donald Trump.
Gas prices have surged nearly 50% amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran. The response from congressional Republicans has been a study in spin.
Some Republicans pivoted to argue this wasn’t as high as under the previous administration. “People will remember, you go back two years ago, we were paying almost $6 a gallon for gasoline,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said on CNBC late last month. Even conservative CNBC host Joe Kernen pointed out that Scalise was making up numbers.
The price for a gallon of gas is one of the most visible ways that many Americans feel the cost of living. The recent spike has exposed what Democrats call the bad faith of the GOP’s yearslong gas price campaign.
Lawmakers running for reelection in the most competitive districts are using decidedly different messages this year. Rep. Tom Barrett, who ran a 2023 ad warning Michigan families that filling up their minivans was “even scarier” than cleaning them out, responded to questions about constituent pain at the pump by connecting it to the war in Iran. When a Reuters reporter mentioned interviewing a woman who could only afford $14 of gas, Barrett repeatedly redirected the exchange to Iran’s nuclear program. “Did you ask her if she thought Iran should develop a nuclear weapon?” he asked.
Rep. Mike Lawler, a New York Republican facing a tough reelection race, had declared in a 2024 campaign ad that “housing, car payments, gas — the cost of everything has gone through the roof.” By January 2026, he was writing op-eds crediting Washington with bringing gas prices down. When CNN asked him in March whether higher prices were worth the Iran war, he said they were “absolutely worth it.”
Not all Republicans have been so vocal in their reversal, with some just simply going silent.
Rep. Juan Ciscomani, who ran ads warning that “food, gas, medicine, it all costs more,” in 2024 has said essentially nothing about gas prices since the war began.
Rep. María Elvira Salazar, who held up an egg on camera and told voters in 2024 she felt the weight of rising gasoline and grocery costs, blamed Biden for gas prices in an X post in February, weeks before the current spike made that framing harder to sustain.
Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and David Valadao, both of whom ran promising “lower gas prices” messaging in 2024, have offered little detail on the issue since.
Other Republicans have tried a different approach, such as shifting blame to the oil companies themselves. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, whose 2024 message centered on “gas, groceries, and grandkids,” warned energy producers on Fox Business in March that “there’s a difference between profiting and profiteering.” On X the next day, he told a constituent complaining about prices: “I don’t recall you complaining when gas was $5.00 under Biden. Hypocrisy much?”
Rep. Zach Nunn, whose 2024 ads blamed “Biden-Harris inflation” for making gas and groceries more expensive, acknowledged on Fox News in March that prices are “right back to exactly where they were in the last year of the Biden administration.” His advice to anyone who wanted to make that a political issue: “Grow a stronger spine.”
The whiplash has also forced the party to navigate the best message to address the spring surge in prices. Multiple Republican strategists argued that there are few good options on that front, but that the most reasonable one is stressing that the uptick is only temporary and will hopefully return closer to average levels in the coming months.
“Isn’t that the only argument you can have right now?” one Republican operative involved in midterm contests said. “It affects our voters more than their voters. We live farther apart from each other. … You hope and pray it’s temporary.”
“I can’t with a straight face come up with anything better,” the operative added.
There have been other arguments flickering about, including that despite the high prices, they still have not reached the apex of nearly $5 per gallon that was experienced during the summer of 2022 under Biden, and that other economic indicators were far worse during those years. One senior Senate GOP aide noted that the line has been more utilized by MAGA and right-wing influencers, while casting doubt on its efficacy.
“That’s not really a good defense. You don’t try to defend high prices, you just try to bring them down. That they’re temporary is the best defense,” the aide said, adding that the problem is only being exacerbated by the high fertilizer prices that are rocking farm states. “That’s almost as big of a liability as gas prices. … A lot of states up this cycle have the combination.”
“It’s not good. It’s a nasty combination,” the aide added.
There are also the national security-based arguments — that the latest prices are a small price to pay in order to harm Iran’s nuclear capability.
Some also believe the gas price debate has allowed the party to pivot back to the tax cuts included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year, which Republican leaders have been trying to sell for almost a full year.
Operatives also don’t believe those approaches are the cure for their current political ills, which they believe need to be fixed around the Fourth of July. Otherwise, they will be ingrained in the public consciousness — much like what happened to Biden and Democrats four years ago in the midterms.
“If other things are low, it kind of doesn’t matter because the gas prices are high. People pump gas once a week or more. They see that expenditure often, just like groceries. They’re the two things regularly where they’re like, ‘Oh that’s a big number.’ Over time that builds this callus where even if they go down, it’s baked in,” the first Republican operative said. They’re like, ‘Yeah it got better, but we already thought it was too high.’”
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesperson Liam Buckley made it clear Democrats plan to keep the issue front and center. “Vulnerable House Republicans got caught in a lie and it’s going to cost them their jobs in November,” he said in a statement. “Skyrocketing gas prices are a regular reminder for everyday Americans that Republicans broke their promise to lower prices and only care about obeying their party bosses in D.C.”
Republican strategists point out that Trump’s approval numbers on the economy were consistently in a good spot during his first term, only to see them underwater for months on end while heading into a crucial stretch before voters go to the polls.
“What’s the argument we make to the American people then?” the operative said of addressing economic concerns. “If it’s not that, then what are we doing better?”