IThe 100-minute NA speech was held at a moment when Donald Trump elicited more applause from Democrats than Republicans. As the president told Congress last week, the way the US sent billions of dollars of military aid to Ukraine was when his political opponents slammed the Ukrainian flag and spread it out.
It was insights in the transformation of the Republican Party, from the Cold War profession to one of the “America-First” isolationists in the space of generations. Where Trump leads, many Republicans have been obedient, and have been on the embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“The reversal is dramatic, and the willingness that comes with the Republican Party continues to be breathtaking,” said Charlie Sykes, political commentator and author of How the Right Wrecked the Heart. “For at least for a while, Republicans still seemed to support Ukraine. But now that Trump has completely reversed our foreign policy, it seems like it’s barely pushed back.”
Last month, Trump established a peace process that began with a meeting of top US and Russia diplomats in Saudi Arabia. He branded Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the “dictator” who is the president of Ukraine.
Along with Vice President J.D. Vance, he denounced Zelensky in his oval office. This prompted Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin to observe that Republican President Ronald Reagan, the eager enemy of Soviet invasion, was “must be rolling in his grave.” Trump has suspended offensive cyber operations against Russia and suspended military aid and information sharing with Ukraine until he agreed to a 30-day ceasefire.
The oval office shakedown shocked the world, but received little criticism from Republicans. Secretary of State Marco Rubio sank on the couch and said nothing as he was angered as he screamed around him. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who previously supported Zelensky, has even suggested that the Ukrainian president should resign.
Speaking at the American Progression Think Tank Center event in Washington this week, former Obama administration official Patrick Gaspurd said:
Without Trump, I don’t think you’d see this redirection of the Republican Party.
Max Boot
“It was amazing to see the Republican leader who praised Zelensky on Monday and had removed references to him from their website by Tuesday. It’s extraordinary to see someone like Lindsey Graham who was pretty serious about this issue suddenly say things.”
Meanwhile, other Russian Hawks are on the sidelines, including former vice presidents Mike Pence, Liz Cheney and Adam Kintzinger. Republicans who were not embarrassed to counter Trump’s foreign policy ideas during his first term are at least standing by his side in public.
Max Boot, Senior Fellow of the Council of Diplomatic Relations and author of Reagan: His Life and Legend, said: Even Trump is very unsure about it on many Republicans, especially Capitol Hill, and although they don’t like what Trump is doing, they are afraid to speak up. ”
Others suggest that loyalty and fear towards Trump may not be the only explanation. Young Republicans have questioned the legitimacy of agencies such as NATO and the United Nations, chasing far-right influencers such as Tucker Carlson, who interviewed Putin of Russia last year and claimed that Moscow is “a lot better than any city in my country.”
Critics say Trump, Carlson, and the “American Great Again” movement will see an ideal version of white Christian nationalism in Russia, in contrast to the value of “awakening” in Western Europe. Putin laughed at the US embassy to fly the rainbow flag, suggesting that transgenderism “is on the crisis of crime against humanity.”
From this perspective, struggle has awakened to no longer capitalism against communism, but rather to madness. In various speeches, Putin opposes Western “racial obsession,” “modern cancel culture,” and “reverse racism.” He states of the West:
Let’s make it a real American concrete. Russia is the Red State and France, the UK and NATO. They are blue states
Steve Bannon
Everything is a familiar story point of the Maga Playbook. Certainly, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green said last year on a warroom podcast by right-wing strategist Stephen Bannon. The Ukrainian government is attacking Christians. The Ukrainian government is executing priests. Russia has not done so. They are not attacking Christianity. The truth is, they seem to protect it. ”
Bannon keeps his desire to defeat the European Union and the “globalist” army without secret. Joel Rubin, former deputy director of Barack Obama, has led a comparison with conservative “red” and liberal “blue” states in the United States. “Let’s make that a real American concrete,” he said. “Russia is a red state, France, the UK and NATO. They are blue states.”
During the Cold War, it was a hard-hitting anti-communism that was at the heart of the Republican brand. Reagan branded the Soviet Union as a “evil empire” and strengthened US military spending. However, relations improved when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union in 1985.
Reagan and Gorbachev held several summits that led to major arms control agreements. Reagan’s successor, George HW Bush, worked closely with Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin as the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, encouraging a transition to democracy and capitalism.
Early in the presidency of Republican George W. Bush, he had a relatively positive relationship with Putin, so he couldn’t remember saying, “I saw Putin’s soul,” and felt he could trust him. The two cooperated in counter-terrorism following the 9/11 attacks, but tensions grew over the Iraq war and US support for Georgia and Ukraine.
By 2008, when Russia invaded Georgia, relations had deteriorated significantly. Democrat Obama initially pursued a “reset” policy with Russia and aimed to improve relations, but tensions were expressed after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and supported separatists in eastern Ukraine. In response, Obama imposed sanctions on Russia and expelled the diplomats.
Russia has launched an active effort on Trump’s behalf to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, according to a report by the Senate Intelligence Election Committee after it discovered widespread evidence of contact between Trump’s campaign advisors and Kremlin officials and other Russians.
I disagree with the idea that Republicans are obsessed with Putin.
Henry Olsen
Even if his administration imposed sanctions on Russia, Trump vehemently denied the conspiracy. At a joint press conference in Helsinki in 2018, Trump sided with the Russian president over his own intelligence agency. He remained reluctant to criticize Putin, even after opposition activist Alexei Navalny died in prison after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Putinization of the Republican Party probably shouldn’t be overstated. Older senators such as Mitch McConnell, who will retire in the next election, Tom Tillis and Roger Wicker, have remained stubbornly supportive of Ukraine.
“We’ve seen a lot of effort into thinking tanks at Washington’s Center for Ethics and Public Policy,” said Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Washington Center for Ethics and Public Policy. There is evidence that Republicans are tired of the fight in Ukraine. These things are not the same. ”
However, once the Cold War disappears into memory, it appears that the balance is changing. According to a CBS News/Yougov poll released earlier this month, around 41% of Republicans consider Russia to be “friendly” or “allied.” A Reuters/Ipsos survey found that only 27% of Republicans agreed to a statement that Trump was too close to Moscow.
Adam Smith, a top Democrat on the House of Representatives’ Armed Services Committee, spoke to the Guardian about the “American Great Again Make” movement. Pity is growing, and the wings of Republicans opposed to it are weaker, while others are stronger. ”
He added: I think I’m still a minority within the Republican Party, but Trump is the president. He is the leader of that party and they are protecting him. Trump has enormous sympathy for his worldview, many of which are drifting in that direction. ”
Bill Galston, former policy advisor to Bill Clinton, said: “The Republicans during the Cold War were anti-communists, and from their point of view, when communism disappeared, they did as well as their main motivations to oppose Russia.
“The fact that Russia is a right-wing dictatorship doesn’t particularly bother them. As long as Putin transforms himself into a warrior of traditionalist culture, he is making a positive appeal for what the Republican Party has actually become.”
