Tomorrow, Republicans in Kentucky’s 4th congressional district will decide whether to return seven-term libertarian Thomas Massie to Congress or replace him with retired Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein. As of 16 May, the race had drawn an absurd $32 million in outside ad spending, of which pro-Israel groups accounted for at least $9 million. Late polling had Gallrein leading by 5.2 percentage points among likely Republican voters.

Aipac and its allies look poised to add Massie to a list of forced retirements that already includes Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman. The lobby spent $8.5 million on fighting Bush and $14.5 million on Bowman; now, in Kentucky, the $9 million bill has been split across the Republican Jewish Coalition, Christians United for Israel, and donor networks related to billionaires Miriam Adelson and Paul Singer. The GOP’s Bible Belt base, long regarded as Aipac’s dependable firewall, now appears less secure than the walls of Jericho.

Democrats ran ahead of this story. Bush and Bowman fell in 2024, but Summer Lee survived an Aipac onslaught in the same cycle. Zohran Mamdani took New York’s City Hall in November despite Bill Ackman and other Trump allies throwing money at his opponent. In Maine, Graham Platner has effectively clinched the Democratic Senate nomination despite a Totenkopf chest tattoo and a sketchy Reddit history. Democratic primary voters under 35 break sharply against Israeli policy in Gaza, which has surely informed some of these developments.

On the Republican side, younger voters are moving in this direction too. Polling from last month found that 44% of Republicans under 50 view Israel favorably, while 33% of the same group view the country unfavorably; among Republicans over 50, favorability sat at 78%. It’s no surprise that at CPAC in March, Jack Posobiec named 45-years-old as the new dividing line on Israel and Palestine. Yale’s polling also demonstrated a substantial gap in how Israel is perceived between generations, dwarfing every other generational divide in American politics.

The brainy, contrarian Massie has turned this upheaval into a platform. He went on Tucker Carlson’s show this month to accuse Aipac of demanding 16 House votes on Israel and the Middle East in April alone. Last week, he also introduced an Aipac Act that would require the group to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. A bill that would have surely died in committee unread in 2020 now suddenly received viral distribution through a podcast ecosystem reaching hundreds of thousands of younger Republicans every week.

This shift in support has deep implications for 2028. Marco Rubio and the rest of the Aipac-aligned shortlist are likely to dominate the primary debates, but a candidate sympathetic to Carlson or Steve Bannon now has a viable lane on Israel that did not exist in 2024. Perhaps even JD Vance, always willing to change his positions over the years, could defect to differentiate himself from Rubio. The Yale polling found that Carlson and Bannon both outperform their overall electability scores meaningfully among Republicans under 35.

Trump won the 2016 nomination by being the only Republican willing to say that the Iraq War was a mistake. In a similar light, the next GOP candidate to take a populist line on foreign policy will likely be willing to argue that aid to Israel should be cut. This could include the idea that Aipac should register as a foreign agent, and that the Iran war was an even bigger boondoggle than Iraq.

---

Oliver Bateman is a historian and journalist based in Pittsburgh. He blogs, vlogs, and podcasts at his Substack, Oliver Bateman Does the Work

MoustacheClubUS

---