America First Was Never Supposed to Mean This

When the Highest-Ranking Official Walks Out the Door

You can dismiss think pieces. You can dismiss protests. It is considerably harder to dismiss the resignation of Joe Kent, who on March 17 stepped down as director of the National Counterterrorism Center — a position within the Trump administration — citing what he described as his inability in "good conscience" to support the ongoing war in Iran. Kent's judgment: Iran "posed no imminent threat to our nation." [2] Kent is not a dovish figure by any conventional measure. He is a combat veteran with eleven deployments, a Gold Star widower, and a figure whose America First credentials predate the current administration. When someone with that biography concludes that a military operation lacks sufficient justification, it deserves to be treated as information rather than noise. House Speaker Mike Johnson defended the strikes, arguing Iran was "very close to enrichment of nuclear capability." Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard countered Kent directly, asserting that Trump "concluded the terrorist Islamist regime in Iran posed an imminent threat." [2] The disagreement, notably, is not between Trump supporters and critics. It is between Trump's own people.

The Numbers Do Not Lie

Set aside the ideological argument for a moment and look at the polling. Sixty-one percent of Americans disapprove of the war. Among independent voters — the group that determined the 2024 outcome and will determine 2026 — only 28% support the military operation. Trump's overall approval has settled at 36%, with the war cited as a primary driver of the decline. [3] These are not numbers that suggest a popular mandate for expanded military engagement. They are numbers that suggest the Republican Party has a serious political problem heading into a midterm cycle. Bannon has said as much publicly. Carlson has been more blunt. The math is not complicated: a party whose core coalition is enthusiastic about a war that the broader electorate finds excessive is a party making a bet it may not be positioned to win. Eighty-four percent of Republicans still support the military involvement, which means the party is not fracturing in any catastrophic sense — yet. [3] But midterms are not won by base turnout alone, and the erosion of independent support is the specific threat that should be concentrating minds in Republican campaign operations right now.

What the Critics Are Actually Saying

It is worth being precise about what the conservative dissent on Iran actually amounts to, because it has been mischaracterized in ways that serve no one. The critics are not arguing for appeasement. They are not suggesting Iran is a benign actor. They are not calling for the dismantling of American military capability. The argument is more specific and more limited: that the evidence of imminent threat required to justify a major military operation was not clearly established before bombs were dropped, and that the America First doctrine — which this movement spent years defining — was explicitly premised on not repeating the foreign policy mistakes of the Bush and Obama years. [2] This is a coherent conservative argument. It is the kind of argument that Senator Rand Paul has made in various forms for the better part of a decade, usually to polite Republican dismissal. The fact that it is now being made by Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Joe Kent, and a noticeable cohort of CPAC attendees suggests it has graduated from a fringe position to something that deserves a serious answer. The answer from the administration has largely been: trust us, the threat was real, and the mission will succeed. That may ultimately prove correct. But "trust us" has not historically been an adequate foundation for the American conservative tradition's approach to executive war powers. The founders knew better. So do most of the people in the CPAC audience.

The Paxton-Cornyn Primary and the Pressure Valve

The Iran debate does not exist in isolation. The same CPAC conference that surfaced the foreign policy fracture also underscored the ongoing battle between the populist MAGA wing and the Republican establishment — most visibly in the Texas Senate primary, where Ken Paxton is running against sitting Senator John Cornyn in a May 26 runoff. Paxton's central argument against Cornyn is not complicated: the establishment wing of the party either cannot or will not deliver on the core policy promises that got Trump elected. Border security. The SAVE Act. Filibuster reform to actually pass legislation. On each of these, Cornyn has been — in Paxton's framing — present for the photo but absent when the votes matter. [4] What the primary captures, in compressed form, is the broader question the movement is working through: what does it mean to be a conservative in 2026, and who gets to define it? The Iran dissenters at CPAC and the Paxton voters in Texas are asking different versions of the same question. Both deserve a better answer than they are currently getting.

A Party at a Crossroads

There is a version of this story that ends well for Republicans. Trump completes the Iran operation with a definitive military success, Iranian nuclear capability is neutralized, the security justification is validated by events, and the dissent fades as the economy recovers and gas prices settle. That outcome is possible. There is another version in which the war extends further than expected, costs more in blood and treasure than the public was prepared for, and a Republican Party that never seriously engaged with the internal critique arrives at 2026 midterms having lost the independent voters it needed. That outcome is also possible. The party's best tradition has always been skepticism of federal overreach — including executive overreach in the foreign policy domain. Applying that skepticism to a war is not disloyalty. It is exactly the kind of independent-minded conservatism that built the movement in the first place. [1] The dissenters at CPAC were not demanding a retreat. They were demanding an accounting. That is not an unreasonable thing to ask. And if the party is serious about the midterms — and about the kind of conservatism it wants to represent — it would do well to engage with the question rather than wait for the next news cycle to make it disappear. CPAC said the quiet part out loud this year. The party should listen.