The RGV War Debate: Republicans and Democrats clash, but still agree?

As the United States continues military operations against Iran under the name Operation Epic Fury, a name that President Donald Trump says he chose himself, South Texas congressional representatives and Texas’s two U.S. senators have staked out positions that reflect both the partisan divide in D.C. and some crossover votes that hit closer to home.

Strong Support from the GOP

Texas’s senior senator, John Cornyn, currently in a runoff primary race against Texas AG Ken Paxton, was unequivocal from the start.

In a statement released the day strikes began, Feb. 28, Cornyn declared that Iran had long been a destabilizing force in the region — calling the Islam-led theocracy a “purveyor of terrorism,” warning that “for too long, Iran and its tentacles of terror have destabilized the Middle East and waged an all-out assault on the West and our values.”

With his solid backing of the president, Cornyn extended his full support to both American troops and the IDF personnel involved in Epic Fury.

Fellow GOP Senator Ted Cruz, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, echoed Cornyn’s prowar sentiment, even though the president is still describing the U.S. military assault on Iran as an “excursion.”

Cruz praised the U.S. armed forces and intelligence community, saying the strikes will “enhance the national security of the United States and our allies.”

He has since pushed back against comparisons to the 2003 Iraq War, drawing a clear distinction between targeted strikes against the regime and the kind of prolonged military engagement that defined that earlier conflict, which included our 20year stay in Afghanistan.

Dems Want War Powers

On the other side of the political aisle, South Texas Democrats Henry Cuellar (TX-28, Laredo) and Vicente Gonzalez (TX-34, McAllen) joined hands and threw their support behind a bipartisan War Powers Resolution introduced in early March, that would give the Trump administration a 30-day window to wind down operations or seek formal congressional authorization for continued war powers.

Never going to happen, but it was the thought that counted?

The two politicos, along with their fellow Dems, said this would be a measured position that would try to balance what they described as “constitutional authority” with ongoing military action (which up to now has had no formal input from congress).

But when a more immediate Democrat resolution came to the House floor — one that would have halted military operations far sooner — the two politicians diverged.

Vicente Gonzalez co-sponsored the measure and held firm.

Cuellar broke ranks, voting with Republicans to help defeat the more immediate resolution. The final tally was 212-219.

If four Democrats, including Cuellar, had voted with their party, the war resolution would have passed.

Meanwhile, that winning vote for the Trump administration and its allies in Congress drew sharp criticism from progressives and put Cuellar in a familiar, but uncomfortable, position.

With his so-called liberal critics still mocking him for the presidential pardon handed to him and his wife by the president this past December, Henry Cuellar stuck close enough to the center to frustrate progressive members of his own party, while serving a Texas border district that has trended steadily Republican, citing border crossings and national security issues as legit reasons to color me red.

In the March Dem primary, Cuellar secured enough votes to avoid a runoff.

At the opposite end of the RGV, Vicente Gonzalez faces a similar balancing act. He has not publicly broken with the Trump administration on whether the strikes on Iran were justified — only on the question of who has the authority to authorize them.

Trying to figure this out, Gonzalez has argued that despite Iran being a “state sponsor of terrorism,” the president does not have the authority to engage in continued hostilities without consulting Congress.

De La Cruz and Pulido

The Iran war is already reshaping one of South Texas’s most competitive congressional races.

Republican incumbent Monica De La Cruz, who won her March 3 GOP primary unopposed, has largely aligned with the Trump administration on the military campaign, as with almost everything else the president supports.

No surprise. But she has also raised concerns about what the war is costing taxpayers.

In her own social media posts, De La Cruz has publicly pushed back on disruptions to federal relief funding she says are leaving long-term community recovery projects on hold, even as aerial operations in the Persian Gulf expand.

It is a careful line, she wrote, backing President Trump’s military aims while ensuring that the many RGV constituents who depend on federal aid don’t see those funds dry up.

Her Democratic challenger for the South Texas district, Latin Grammy-winning Tejano star Bobby Pulido, has been more direct about “Trump’s War.”

On the campaign trail, Pulido pointed to an RGV economy already squeezed by immigration enforcement, he said, which is now facing additional strain from rising prices tied to the Mideast conflict. Higher gas prices at the pump being front and center.

With the administration reportedly preparing to ask congress for as much as $50 billion in emergency war funding, Pulido and other Democrats have asked why is it, there is always money for overseas military campaigns, ALWAYS, but when it comes to money needed for health care back home, food for hungry families, help with living expenses, the so-called congressional money pot is always empty?