The conservative insistence that Scary Liberal Billionaire George Soros is behind every single non-conservative movement and organization in the world is, at this point, so endemic as to be the butt of jokes. The news that Republican lawmakers are now promoting Russian-promoted charges of Soros' supposed meddling in European politics is a bit more alarming.
Led by Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, the conservative lawmakers have signed on to a volley of letters accusing Soros of using his philanthropic spending to project his liberal sensibilities onto European politics. As Lee and other senators put it in a March 14 letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Soros’ Open Society Foundations are trying “to push a progressive agenda and invigorate the political left.”
It’s an accusation that’s being fomented and championed by Moscow.
Soros, who survived the Nazi occupation of his native Hungary and fled after World War II when it was under Soviet control, has been long a bête noire of the Kremlin, which sees his funding for civil society groups in former Soviet satellite states as part of a plot to install pro-Western governments.
In the past, Republicans have rather vigorously endorsed the notion of spreading democracy, and by vigorously we mean the last Republican administration launched a war based on the premise of forcibly spreading democracy to a nation that didn't much want it. Now, though, conservative senators like Mike Lee and Ted Cruz see Soros donations targeted against European nationalists as being far more sinister. They share this concern with Russian state-sponsored propaganda teams, who have sought to promote far-right nationalist movements throughout Europe in an effort to roll back western-styled reforms and revert to a more Moscow-amenable isolationism.
So far, the Republican lobbying against Soros’ efforts in Macedonia has not resulted in much. But the involvement of several high-profile Republicans, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, is raising eyebrows within the U.S. foreign policy community, who see the baleful influence of Moscow making inroads on Capitol Hill. [...]
Russia’s state-controlled English-language websites rushed to trumpet Lee’s and Smith’s letters, holding them up as proof that the U.S. is guilty of exactly what it accuses Russia of doing in 2016 — interfering in another country’s politics.
So once again, we find prominent Republican leaders suddenly aligned with Russian interests, and both benefiting from and taking inspiration from Russia-promoted news stories. There's no deeper conspiracy there, no doubt, just common interests aligning—but it's a hell of a thing how it keeps happening, over and over. If someone had told you during any previous decade that the Republican Party would, over and over, be coincidentally spouting the same talking points and theories as Russian conspiracy websites you'd look at them like they were nuts; in this decade, it's a familiar weekly occurrence.