A primary election fight within the Republican Party in Indiana has attracted attention nationwide because it puts the party’s current leadership against the former representative of the House district, whose focus on freedom and loyalty to the Constitution is gaining political support.
In the competition for Indiana’s 8th Congressional District, nine Republican candidates are vying, with two main contenders familiar to the state’s voters: Mark Messmer, a current state senator, and former Rep. John Hostettler, who entered office during the Republican takeover of Congress in 1995 and served until 2007.
During his time in Congress, Hostettler was one of the most opposed members of the House Republican Conference, as he was one of only six in his party to vote against authorization of the Iraq War. What makes this year’s race nationally important is that the former congressman wrote a book after leaving office in which he stated that the increasingly disliked Iraq War was fought partly for the benefit of Israel.
Hostettler’s opinions about Israel’s role in the war that led to Saddam Hussein’s downfall have attracted the attention of two apparently pro-Israel political groups, who are spending record amounts of money in the primary election to criticize the former congressman for allegedly holding anti-Israel views.
The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) announced said earlier this month that it was launching a $1 million ad campaign “committed to ensuring [Hostettler] does not get back to Congress,” according to a statement by RJC CEO Matt Brooks.
Brooks stated that RJC was taking action because “Hostettler has consistently opposed vital aid to Israel, promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories, and voted against a 2000 resolution which supported Israel and condemned Palestinian leadership over the violence of the second Intifada.”
Some of those funds have already been spent on ads backing Messmer.
United Democracy Project, the super PAC of the lobbying group American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, has also been airing an attack ad against Hostettler. The 30-second advertisement criticizes him for voting against military aid to Israel and claims that keeping him out of Congress is especially significant following the October 7 attack by Hamas terrorists and the subsequent war.
Hostettler’s opponents argue that his anti-war stances are actually anti-Israel and could be seen as antisemitic. Nevertheless, he is not alone in criticizing the country considered by many as America’s closest ally in the Middle East. Many critics of the ongoing war have long alleged that Israeli leaders openly pushed for the United States and its allies to invade Iraq.
As Hostettler explained in a recent interview with The Dallas Express, he believes a crucial part of his role is to ask tough questions about whether a course of action benefits the United States.
“When I served in the House of Representatives, I prioritized the United States and the United States Constitution and had no intention of prioritizing a foreign country,” he stated. “Much of the negative campaigning seems to be connected to my 2008 book, Nothing for the Nation: Who Got What Out of Iraq.”
When DX asked the RJC for evidence that Hostettler spread antisemitic conspiracy theories, RJC national political and communications director Sam Markstein referred to a 2008 review of Hostettler’s book by then-Anti-Defamation League national director Abe Foxman.
In that review, Foxman summarized his interpretation of Hostettler’s argument:
“Government individuals with Jewish last names and ties to Israel provided important information on Iraq and were more concerned with Israel’s safety than with the American republic.”
Foxman said Hostettler’s reasoning was similar to that of academics John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt in their 2007 book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.
Similarly, Mearsheimer, a professor at the University of Chicago, and Walt, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, reached similar conclusions to Hostettler regarding the role of the “Israel Lobby” in the United States' decision to invade Iraq.
In a piece in Foreign Policy — published in 2010 when many Americans had concluded that the Iraq War was at least misguided — Walt listed more supposed evidence for the argument that a coalition of Israeli leaders, pro-Israel U.S. lawmakers, and pro-Israel lobbyists pushed for the war.
“If the neoconservatives are to blame for coming up with the idea of invading Iraq, key groups and individuals in the lobby also played a significant role in promoting it to Capitol Hill and the public,” Walt wrote.
Importantly, Mearsheimer and Walt published their book before Hostettler self-published his.
Hostettler defended the claims in his book by referring to the statements of Israeli leaders prior to the Iraq War, including the testimony of then-former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee in 2002.
Netanyahu told U.S. lawmakers, “There is no question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking and is working and is advancing toward the development of nuclear weapons. No question, whatsoever.”
Walt also mentioned a similar speech by Netanyahu to the Senate as additional evidence of Israeli leaders supporting the U.S. invasion of Iraq in his Foreign Policy op-ed.
Over the following years, several lawmakers admitted that there was likely no connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, and that the claims about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction were false, as reported by coverage by The Dallas Express. For many of them, 4,500 U.S. troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died in a war fought under false pretenses, just as Hostettler had warned.
Estimates of the cost of the Iraq War to American taxpayers vary significantly, but most estimate the cost in the trillions of dollars. In 2020, the Military Times put that price tag at nearly $2 trillion. A 2010 study published by The Washington Post stated that the cost up to that point was $3 trillion.
In explaining why The Washington Post’s figure was much higher than the 2003 Bush administration projections that the war would cost $50-60 billion, lead author Linda Bilmes said, “It appears that our $3 trillion estimate (which accounted for both government expenses and the war’s broader impact on the U.S. economy) was, if anything, too low. For example, the cost of diagnosing, treating, and compensating disabled veterans has proved higher than we expected.”
Israel’s current position is that its military is in a war with groups supported by Iran, not only in Gaza but in other areas. Iran has assisted Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Houthi rebels in Yemen, all of which have attacked Israel recently. Iran launched hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel from its own territory last weekend, but most of them were intercepted.
As the competition in Indiana intensifies with less than a month before the primary election, Hostettler has taken an anti-war stance again, with a platform that highlights his opposition to U.S. involvement in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. He is also receiving support from figures in the America First movement, such as Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who recently appeared in an ad endorsing Hostettler as a “constitutional conservative.”
In the advertisement, Paul stated that Hostettler can be relied upon to “stop sending our tax dollars overseas” and “stop the out-of-control spending causing soaring inflation.”
“I have confidence in John to protect our freedom,” Paul added.
The primary election will likely determine the individual who will go to Congress, as Democrats are not expected to present a strong candidate in the heavily Republican district.
