On Wednesday morning, Vice President JD Vance lamented one war and lit the match on another.

In a jaw-dropping statement released on the heels of his party’s historic defeat in the midterms, Vance broke with the administration that bears his name.

“The real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone,” he asserted. “The reason we lost is the war.”

According to Vance, the Trump 2024 voters who crossed the aisle to vote for Democrats this time around would only come back home if Republicans did the following: end the war in Iran, tackle the cost of living crisis, “put America First” and “change our relationship to Israel.”

“In the next few months, there’s going to be a lot of gaslighting,” he warned, a match in hand and a barrel of crude oil beside him.

The veep’s parting shot? A directive to his fellow travelers to take their anger and put it “into electing Republicans who share your worldview.”

Where to start?

Vance’s diagnosis is that of the doctor who mistakes one of a number of visible tumors for the disease itself.

There’s no disputing that the war in Iran contributed to the GOP’s midterm wipeout, but it was an aggravating factor, not the principal one.

Across myriad exit polls, voters identified the economy — and the high cost of living, in particular — as well as government corruption, as the most important issues to them.

NBC News’ exhaustive survey found just 4% identified foreign policy as the most important issue to them this year.

It also found that 74% considered the war to be a “crucial” or “major” motivator for their decision at the ballot box.

But that paled in comparison to the 90% of voters who said the same thing about corruption, and the 89% who said the same about the cost of living.

Two years ago, Trump and Vance rode into Washington alongside Republican majorities in the House and Senate with a mandate to lower — or at the very least slow the steady climb of — prices.

Instead of pursuing the anti-inflationary policies voters had hired him to, though, Trump saddled consumers with a bevy of erratic and wide-ranging tariffs, raged against the Federal Reserve for keeping interest rates high and looked on approvingly as his family and friends cashed in on his presidency.

The Democratic attack ads wrote themselves.

To be sure, skyrocketing gas prices attributable to the war in Iran only made things worse, but they wouldn’t have been nearly as politically devastating if the Trump-Vance administration hadn’t already betrayed their No. 1 campaign promise.

Oh, and the indiscriminate quota-based immigration raids probably didn’t help in newly blue Texas, where the GOP’s hard-won gains with Latino voters have been wiped out.

Moreover, the economic havoc wrought by the war was no inevitability.

When the president made the call to go in, he needed to do so with a plan for controlling the Strait of Hormuz and a willingness to keep fighting until the job was finished

There are no half-measures worth taking or tie worth playing for in war.

Striking at the heart of the Iranian regime, but then allowing it to use the strait as leverage while the administration sought a negotiated settlement, was a disastrous decision.

Someone ought to ask the vice president where his memorandum of understanding was when his boss supposedly needed it most down the stretch run of the campaign.

So, why is Vance advancing this revisionist explanation for Republicans’ losses?

There’s no doubt his feelings about the war are genuine.

But it’s his ambition that’s compelled him to air dirty laundry so soon after this painful loss.

Vance’s unspoken implications are that Israel goaded the president into launching Operation Epic Fury, that it’s part of a larger pattern of manipulation (one he’s alluded to before) and that the United States’ relationship with Israel is a political liability.

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There’s nothing to suggest any of that is true.

Trump himself has dispelled the first allegation, presidents from both parties have frequently diverged from their Israeli counterparts and NBC’s exit poll found that the public is split down the middle over the country’s support of Israel.

Vance is just attributing his own views to everyone else, and hoping that by speaking it into reality, he can salvage his own political future.

It’s the strongest card he has to play.

Trump’s tariffs are right in line with Vance’s own populist (arguably left-wing) economic impulses, so the VP can’t admit that they were folly.

In fact, he can’t criticize Trump over anything without risking forfeiting his endorsement, and thus the next GOP presidential nomination.

Conveniently, though, the last scapegoat left for him to blame is one already reviled by some of his most fervent supporters.

The Jews.

It’s a Hail Mary, but one Republican voters should be grateful for.

If Vance stands with the fringes of the Right (including the antisemites, wackjobs and grifters) then it’s good he did so before being coronated at the 2028 convention.

This way, the rest of us can fight back.