Senate Republicans have once again surrendered a core constitutional power rather than risk defying President Donald Trump. On Thursday, the chamber voted 49 to 50 against a war powers resolution directing Trump to halt the war with Iran, marking the 12th failed Senate war powers resolution.

This vote arrived in a political climate unlike those surrounding the earlier failures. The Republican midterm outlook has deteriorated from difficult to downright awful, while gasoline is nearly $4.50 a gallon and diesel has reached $6.50.

Despite those pressures, nearly every vulnerable Republican sided with Trump. For anyone wondering whether looming electoral punishment might weaken his grip on the GOP, the Senate offered a bleak answer.

Trump’s second term increasingly resembles former President George W. Bush’s second term. In both cases, a president, his party and much of the press treated a narrow election victory as something more decisive, even as the president’s political standing later plunged and endangered previously secure Republican seats.

Trump’s position before the midterms may be even worse than Bush’s. Polling averages place his net approval rating more than 20 points underwater, and he recently reached new lows for this term in a half dozen polls, including surveys from CNN/SSRS, NBC News, Reuters/Ipsos, Strength in Numbers/Verasight and American Research Group.

Attempts to reverse the slide have fallen flat. Beef imports, a midterm convention and promises of $5000 checks have failed to improve the situation, while polling expert G. Elliott Morris wrote Thursday, “No president has gone into a midterm election this unpopular.”

Democrats now hold an average lead in the high single digits on the congressional generic ballot. The White House announced Thursday that Trump will hold election rallies in deep red Oklahoma and Alabama, while Republicans are withdrawing money from Senate races in North Carolina and Georgia.

Democrat James Talarico has led all 10 of the latest public polls in the Texas Senate race. Republicans are also raising alarms in Florida and Iowa, while Kansas Republican Sen. Roger Marshall could face trouble in a state that has not elected a Democratic senator since the 1930s.

More than a month remains before Election Day, and Republicans and donors including Elon Musk are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising. Polls can also miss by a couple of points, potentially leaving Democrats with the House but still well short of capturing the Senate.

A polling miss in the other direction, however, could produce a historic blowout. Some Republicans are trying to distance themselves rhetorically from Trump during the campaign’s final weeks, but Thursday’s vote offered little evidence they would reconsider their MAGA loyalty after Election Day.

The war with Iran is deeply unpopular, and surging fuel prices have made it even more politically poisonous. Ohio Sen. Jon Husted, Iowa Rep. Ashley Hinson and former Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers, each involved in a close Senate race, have called for the conflict to end.

Trump has made clear that he will effectively ignore any war powers resolution. That approach is alarming for the constitutional order, but it also made supporting the resolution an easy opportunity for vulnerable Republicans to signal that they understood voters’ anger.

Instead, Husted voted against the resolution just two days after telling Politico, “The war needs to come to an end as quickly as possible.” Forty eight other Republican senators joined him, including Alaska’s Dan Sullivan and Kansas’ Roger Marshall.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins was the only vulnerable Republican to support the resolution. Collins remains competitive, and in some polls is leading, despite representing a state Trump has lost three times, yet her Republican colleagues showed little interest in following her example.

Political scientist Seth Masket noted that several forces continue preventing a Republican pivot away from Trump. The president retains the backing of most Republican voters and will probably intervene in the 2028 primaries, much as he did during previous cycles.

A decade of submission has also left the Republican Party with few alternatives to MAGA. Vice President JD Vance abandoned his antiwar positions this year to attach himself to the Iran war, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio offers no visible new direction.

Republicans had a straightforward chance to demonstrate independence from an unpopular president and an unpopular war. With electoral warning lights flashing across the country, almost all of them chose Trump anyway, proving that even the prospect of a blue wave may not be enough to break MAGA’s hold.