Atlantic: Why the GOP Extremists Oppose Ukraine -- The budget fight was about vice signaling,

[ancianita]

Why the GOP Extremists Oppose Ukraine
The budget fight was about vice signaling, not spending.
By Tom Nichols

...It’s Not About the Money

The Republicans in Congress have delayed a shutdown for another 45 days while they continue their family food fight. They are all very angry with one another, and they seem to agree on only one issue: They hate Matt Gaetz. But don’t blame Gaetz, who is clearly having the time of his life being famous. The Republicans, as the economist Michael Strain noted, have for weeks been careening toward a Seinfeld Shutdown, a budget impasse about … nothing.

Some $6 billion of aid to Ukraine, however, was removed from the budget, a temporary casualty of the near shutdown. (I say “temporary” because I have confidence that sensible members of Congress will act to restore the funds.) Republicans are trying to cloak their opposition to military and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine in a lot of codswallop about oversight and budget discipline. But the opposition to aid for Ukraine among Republican extremists on the Hill is not about money...

As is so often the case with modern Republicans, every accusation is a confession, and every assertion is projection. The majority of the country—not “the left”—is supporting Ukraine because it’s the right thing to do, not because they hate Russia for electing Trump. Rather, it’s the other way around: The MAGA Republicans are opposing Ukraine because they hate Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, for their role in the impeachment drama.

Unlike Vance and his isolationist colleagues, most Americans recognize the immense threat that Russia’s war of conquest poses to our allies, to global peace, and to the security of the United States itself. Republicans once stood at the forefront of opposition to Kremlin aggression—Ronald Reagan’s steadfast opposition to Moscow was one of the reasons I was a young GOP voter in the 1980s—but now the party is saddled with a group of shortsighted appeasers, buttressed by a squad of right-wing cranks, who would doom tens of millions of innocent people to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s butchery just to own the libs.

Also, we should not look away from a nauseating truth about the extremist caucus within the GOP: Some of them genuinely admire Putin and what he has created in Russia. Tucker Carlson, after all, didn’t get taken off the air for supporting Putin in ways that would have made Cold War Soviet propagandists blush; he got canned after a defamation lawsuit from an election-machine company. These GOP extremists have swallowed the gargantuan lie that Putin is a godly defender of white Christian Europe against the decadent West and its legions of militant drag queens. (They believe this, in part, because they know less than nothing about conditions in Russia or its demography.)

Finally, some Republicans oppose aid to Ukraine because of the more general and bizarre countercultural obsession that has seized the American right: Whatever most of their fellow citizens approve of, they must oppose, or else they risk losing their precious claims to being an embattled minority. If they were to support aid to Ukraine, how would they be different from everyone else, and especially from Biden? How would they mark their tribal loyalty if they crossed party lines to oppose a dictator—while supporting a wannabe dictator of their own?

Some Republican opponents of assistance to Ukraine are merely cynical manipulators who care little about national or international security. Many genuinely admire Putin and hope for Ukraine’s defeat. Others are merely ignorant. But all of them are bound together by the reflexive urge to reject whatever it is that most other Americans accept. As a commenter on social media said to me today, if liberals were opposing aiding the Ukrainian war effort, “the GOP would shut down the government to ensure aid and you’d see Ukrainian flags waving on the back of pickups.”

gift link:

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2023/10/gop-extremists-house-ukraine-aid/675527/?gift=kSbBcKo3dYuez4NnRbGX-AmnX2Lt8yidZ_QJAqdmw7I&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

[The Magistrate]

1. I Do Like That Gentleman, Ma'am

"Nobody goes there, it's too crowded."

[ancianita]

2. He is

in this very large company, sir.

But since there is talk among the 74 million of possible civil war, I don't think we can trust 'never Trump'ers', bottom line. Not because they all "mask," but because the voting Republican public isn't their audience, though I can't say who their real audience is. We see some of them on MSNBC, but that's it.

That said, I listen to what they think. I take their opinions with a grain of salt, hoping that they don't intellectually justify -- by explaining away -- any destabilizing moves by trumpcult and their 'big corps' backers.

I only hope this group can keep anti-democratic forces behind Republicans talking and thinking.

[The Magistrate]

3. He's A Reaganite, I Don't Agree With Him At All On Domestic Policy

In foreign affairs and security issues he is first rate, and I find I often agree with his judgement of what is politically practical at the moment. He turns a very clear eye towards what actually moves the bloc supporting Trump, and some of the genuine political and social rot we face today. Not far from Mr. Pierce in that regard.

[ancianita]

4. Still, he endorsed Hillary Clinton.

As for his judgment of what's politically practical, from where I sit, his clear eye and his pundit class don't seem to be 'moving the needle.'

Our political side forces any practical political moves on their side. Not his class of never trumpers. From what I've heard and seen from them, they explain, and thus seem to reinforce a kind of bipartisan inertia that Biden has to overcome.

No matter how well he sees Ukraine and this minority ruled party, I posted this to reinforce our position that actually helps Ukraine win, even as we drag these duped cripples along toward governance.

[The Magistrate]

5. At This Point, There Are Just Two Parties: Patriots And Traitors

Once the latter are seen off, our regular intramural squabbles can resume.


"I will stand by any man who stands with me on the old Whig ground, and for no longer."

[ancianita]

6. Works for me.

Thank you for your thoughts. They made me, as usual, think harder.

[lees1975]

7. This is right on target.

There was a time when Republican war hawks would be pressuring a Democratic president to send troops to fight with Ukraine, to protect its fledgling democracy from Russian fascist aggression. Reagan called Russia an "Evil Empire", partly for extending the Czarist regime's holdings into the Soviet era, calling them "socialist republics." Putin's aggression, built on the same Russian imperial premise, aims to deny these same people, who are not Russians or part of Russia in the same way Alaska or California or South Carolina are part of the United States (which is one of the far right's justifications for not helping Ukraine) is the same thing Reagan was against, but wow, has the GOP shifted positions.

Yeah, Ukraine's independent government had some issues to deal with as it got started, as opportunist took advantage of a quick way to grab off what they could. But there's hardly a comparison between the current government of Ukraine, under Zelenskyy, and some of the dictators we've supported in the past in the name of "preserving Democracy," like Fulgencio Batista in Cuba, or Anastasio Somoza whom Reagan backed in Nicaragua, instigating the "Iran-Contra" affair.

[ancianita]

8. And so are the reasons YOU give! THANK YOU!