Why would the GOP base be on board for war against Russia — is it about the End Times or is it about Western Civilization being saved from something, something. Barbarism doesn’t necessarily require the Barbarians be at any gates. Trumpists may want capitulation and not even appeasement. Chamberlain in the Sochi dacha swinging that candlestick with Colonel Mustard. Meanwhile there are some reports of logistics being moved into place, including blood supplies.
Republican Rift on Ukraine Could Undercut U.S. Appeals to Allies
G.O.P. leaders are attacking President Biden for what they call a weak response to Russian aggression, but their far-right flank is questioning U.S. involvement, and even its alliance with Kyiv.
WASHINGTON — As President Biden tries to forge a united allied response to Russian aggression in Ukraine, unity on the home front is strained by a Republican Party torn between traditional hawks in the leadership and a wing still loyal to Donald J. Trump’s isolationist instincts and pro-Russian sentiment.
Republican leaders, by and large, have struck an aggressive posture, encouraging Mr. Biden to get tougher on Russia, through immediate sanctions on Russian energy exports and more lethal aid to Ukraine’s military. But that message has been undermined by the party’s far right, which has questioned why the United States would side with Ukraine at all, and has obliquely suggested with no evidence that the president is bolstering his son Hunter Biden’s business interests.
Driven by a steady diet of pro-Russian or anti-interventionist rhetoric from the Fox News host Tucker Carlson, the Republican right has become increasingly vocal in undercutting not only U.S. foreign policy but also the positions of the party’s leaders.
The Republican representatives Matt Rosendale of Montana, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia; the Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance; and Donald Trump Jr. have weighed in to oppose confronting Russia or to suggest nefarious intentions on Mr. Biden’s part. Mr. Trump told the conservative podcast host Lou Dobbs that Mr. Biden’s reported plan to send as many as 50,000 troops to bolster Europe’s defenses was “crazy.”
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“Republicans running in high-profile primary races aren’t racing to defend Ukraine against a possible Russian invasion,” Axios reported on Thursday. “They’re settling on a different line of attack: Blame Biden, not Putin.” But the populist activist class does not “blame Biden” for rewarding Putin’s aggression with summitry and sanctions relief, which has emboldened the revisionist autocrat in Moscow. No, the nationalists are promoting the convoluted idea that any effort to contain an expansionist Russia is not just reckless but a product of darker ulterior motives only they can deduce.
From television personalities like Tucker Carlson to GOP candidates like Blake Masters, J.D. Vance, and Bernie Moreno, among others, self-styled populists are supposedly “leery” of offending GOP voters by advocating a harder line against Russian aggression. “GOP operatives working in 2022 primary races tell Axios they worry they’ll alienate the base if they push to commit American resources or troops to help Ukraine fight Russia,” Axios concludes. It is entirely unclear what “base” they’re talking about. All evidence suggests the populists are courting a Republican voting “base” they’ve made up in their own minds.
A Pew Research Center survey published this week found that there is virtual bipartisan unanimity in this country over the potential threat a Russian invasion of Ukraine presents to American interests and the need to prevent that outcome. Indeed, Republicans are slightly more likely than Democrats to understand what’s at stake. That poll found that only 9 percent of Republicans viewed Russia as a “partner.” Thirty-nine percent of self-described GOP voters labeled the country an “enemy,” and a majority called it a “competitor.” Similar shares of Democrats and Republicans describe Russia’s military buildup on Ukraine’s borders as a “major threat” to American interests (26 and 27 percent, respectively). Another 36 percent of Republicans say these events represent a “minor threat,” joined by 33 percent of Democrats. Republicans are six points more likely than Democrats to say they know precisely how Russian brinkmanship affects U.S. interests.
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Trump, discussing tensions between the Biden Administration and Putin over Ukraine, recently commented, “What's happening with Russia and Ukraine would never have happened under the Trump Administration. Not even a possibility!"
“The party that was once defined by its strong anti-Russian stance is caught between a Trump and a hard place: the more traditional anti-Putin hawks — who, post-Trump, have somehow found their sea legs again — vs. the still-practicing Trumpist isolationists, with some fanaticism thrown in,” Gloria Borgers explains. “Lately, it's hard to avoid the Tucker Carlson wing of the GOP, as he publicly wonders: Why take Ukraine's side over Putin's side?.... And how about this? Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, has woven a tale that Biden apparently wants war because Ukraine ‘has the dirt on Hunter Biden.’”
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In one corner are the Reagan Republicans who don’t trust Vladimir Putin, the ex-KGB agent, and who believe it’s dangerous to allow regimes to invade their neighbors. In the other corner are the America Firsters who would sit on their hands if Russia invaded and occupied Ukraine.
This split was perfectly illustrated recently on an episode of Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Tonight. “Why would we take Ukraine’s side and not Russia’s side?” Carlson asked. “It’s a sincere question.”
Republican Rep. Mike Turner responded by explaining, “Ukraine is a democracy. Russia is an authoritarian regime that is seeking to impose its will upon a validly elected democracy in Ukraine, and we’re on the side of democracy.”
During the Cold War, Ronald Reagan used similar language to rally the world against an Evil Empire, while the Soviet Union engaged in whataboutism. Take, for example, a Soviet-era propaganda lithograph that, according to the Washington Post, “depicted U.S. police beating a black man and a U.S. soldier standing over a dead body, presumably in Vietnam.”
In recent years, rather than channeling Reagan, too many Republicans have taken a page from Russian propaganda. Trump famously defended Putin in 2017 by asking, “You think our country’s so innocent?”
More recently, Carlson suggested NATO was to blame for Russia’s actions. “Imagine if Mexico fell under the direct military control of China, we would see that as a threat of course,” Carlson explained. “That’s how Russia views NATO control of Ukraine. Why wouldn’t they?”
It’s ironic that this isolationist strain is gaining traction (according to Gallup, the number of Republicans calling Russia an ally or friend rose from 22 percent to 40 percent between 2014 and 2018), even as the right increasingly fetishizes political machismo.
For years, foreign policy hawks invoked the icon of appeasement, Neville Chamberlain, to emasculate their more dovish liberal opponents. Today, the macho men on the right are arguing that an illegal incursion by an authoritarian regime into a European nation-state isn’t our business. It’s Chamberlain’s folly delivered with a confident Churchillian swagger.
But why is this happening now? There are multiple reasons, including either grudging or explicit admiration for Vladimir Putin, whose dictatorial strongman persona exhibits many of the stereotypical attributes of masculinity.
Among the “America First” isolationist right, there’s also the argument that Putin is fighting for Christian values, while our “woke” U.S. military is the “armed wing of the Democratic Party,” part of a leftist cabal indoctrinating our young people into godless Marxism.
Consider a recent essay by Richard Hanania, president of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology (CSPI), arguing that Russia’s 2013 gay propaganda law caused American progressives to turn against Russia. “Russian opposition to LGBT triggers American elites more than anti-gay laws and practices elsewhere because Russia is a white nation that justifies its policies based on an appeal to Christian values,” he wrote.
According to this worldview, hostility towards Russia is a proxy war against Christian conservatives in America (and it would be disproportionately fought by Christian conservatives from America). As conservative writer (and avowed fan of Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban) Rod Dreher writes, “Hanania is right—this cold war with Russia is an extension of the culture war within American society, waged by elites against the American people. Once you understand that, and once you understand which class the American soldiers who would fight this war if it ever went hot come from, you are in a much better position to grasp the pro-war propaganda in our media.”
In other words, to support Putin is to support Christianity, and to support America is to support secularism and sin and leftism.
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Russia’s apologists, seeking to justify Putin’s past and future aggressions, have advanced the Kremlin line that NATO’s “encircling” of Russia is evidence of a Cold War mentality. In this view, the West’s sanctions against the Kremlin and its unceasing interference in Russia’s internal affairs somehow leave Putin no choice but to harass and invade his neighbors. According to the neo-isolationists at the Quincy Institute, a new think tank lavishly funded both by the libertarian Koch Foundation and the leftist Open Society Foundation, the West could simply resolve this prolonged standoff by treating Putin as a nuisance instead of a great-power adversary. But the truth is a good deal more complicated. Putin operates on a long-standing conviction that Russia’s chief adversary has been and remains the U.S.-led liberal order, and he will not relent until he has damaged that order beyond repair.
For more than two decades, Putin’s revanchist regime has been intent on reconstituting the Soviet Empire under the fig leaf of its vaunted “Eurasian Union.” He has made no secret of his belief that the breakup of the Soviet Union was a national tragedy, and he openly aspires to the restoration of a Greater Russia. (Even the Russian hockey team recently donned Soviet jerseys.) In the project to bring Soviet republics back under Russian sway, Ukraine seems to occupy a special position. Closely linked to Russia historically and culturally, Ukraine has nonetheless resisted the tide of authoritarianism that has swept over other former vassal states in Russia’s near-abroad. Despite endemic corruption and political dysfunction in Kyiv, Ukrainians have maintained their commitment to a free and fair electoral system. Everything we know about Putin suggests he fears that the seeds of this democratic example will spread unless it’s promptly stamped out.
The Kremlin clearly fears it will not be able to see that through without incurring steep costs, on the battlefield and in global public opinion. A costly military campaign could incite domestic dissent in Russia as well as increased support in the West for harsher sanctions against Russia and higher contributions to NATO military spending. But how costly that campaign might prove to be depends chiefly on Ukrainians and their foreign patrons. So far, Putin has not been put on notice in any way save some strong rhetoric. The Biden administration’s decisions to forgo sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which ships Russian oil directly to Western Europe, and hold multiple summits with Putin have sent the opposite signal. Such feebleness has had the perverse effect of emboldening the Kremlin to seek more concessions from the West. The White House is compounding the error by lobbying against bipartisan legislation to amend the National Defense Authorization Act to reimpose sanctions against Nord Stream 2 and to expand the number of Russian officials listed in the Global Magnitsky Act.
Ukraine is the biggest conceivable prize for Putin—something akin to what Taiwan represents for the People’s Republic of China. However many sweet words Putin may scribble or speak on behalf of Russo-Ukrainian brotherhood, his intention to reduce Ukraine’s independence and incorporate it as a satellite dictatorship in the manner of Belarus is unmistakable. It’s the prerequisite for summoning the rebirth of “historical Russia” that suffered lethal blows with the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
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Vladimir Putin's potential invasion of Ukraine is splitting the conservative movement, former George W. Bush strategist David Frum explained on Friday.
"Night after night, the host of the top-rated show on Fox News repeats Vladimir Putin’s talking points justifying aggression against Ukraine and opposing U.S. aid to that threatened sovereign country. Tucker Carlson’s influence is felt across right-wing social media, where it is amplified by figures such as Steve Bannon, Mike Cernovich, Glenn Greenwald, and Mollie Hemingway," he wrote in The Atlantic. "Meanwhile, day after day, Republican officeholders in the House and the Senate urge more support for Ukraine."
He noted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has backed Biden's approach while House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has urged a stronger policy against Russia. But GOP Senate candidates such as J.D. Vance in Ohio, Blake Masters in Arizona, and Eric Greitens in Missouri have sided with Carlson and Putin.
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