Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell urged his colleagues on Wednesday to support a supplemental funding request for some $40 billion by the Biden administration to aid Ukraine, as well as funding border security and disaster relief efforts.
“It’s certainly not the time to go wobbly,” McConnell said from the Senate floor, borrowing a phrase from the late UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. “Now, with Ukraine bravely defending its sovereignty and eroding Russia’s capacity to threaten NATO, it is not the time to ease up. … Helping Ukraine retake its territory means weakening one of America’s biggest strategic adversaries without firing a shot.”
McConnell's making perfect sense there—which is exactly why his commitment to continue funding the Ukraine effort isn't the consensus opinion of the Republican Party. Donald Trump and his congressional allies would just as soon give Russian President Vladimir Putin a chunk of Ukraine to end the conflict than continue funding Ukraine's effort to defeat Russia on the battlefield.
Republican voters have largely adopted that view, with 59% of them saying the U.S. has already done enough to stop Russian aggression in Ukraine, according to a late-July CNN poll. Among Democrats, it's polar opposite, with 61% saying the U.S. should do more.
But among all voters, continuing to fund Ukraine has lost steam over the last year and a half. While support for Ukraine's effort to beat back Russia was initially robust, the CNN poll found that 51% of Americans say we've done enough while 48% say we should do more.
As the war drags on, support for continued funding is unlikely to improve. That's exactly why President Joe Biden should be sending Ukraine as much military might as soon as humanly possible, particularly while McConnell still controls the Senate GOP caucus.
While the conflict itself won't unfold on any specific timeline, the politics here at home suggest timing is of the essence. And the longer the conflict drags out, the less popular that funding will become. With that in mind, Biden is already up with a new ad touting U.S. leadership on the front lines in Ukraine.
It's a topic Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas and I discussed on this week's episode of “The Brief,” during which we got back up to speed on Ukraine's fight for sovereignty. Toward the end, we discussed the upside of sending as much aid as possible as soon as possible to Ukraine, the political upsides for Biden and U.S. democracy, and the decline of the McConnell wing of the party.
Give it a listen.
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