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Republicans' betrayal of Ukraine is about one thing and one thing only: Pleasing Donald Trump [1]

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Date: 2023-12-19

The pathetic capitulation of the Republican party to Donald Trump may turn out to be the singular political phenomenon of the twenty-first century, possibly eclipsing even the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in its sheer scope and impact, not just on American society but ultimately on the rest of the world. What began as simply crass (if comprehensible) political opportunism on the part of one of this country’s two major political parties has by now morphed into a movement that embraces something profoundly worse and far more damaging, a strain of reflexive strongman-worship that now threatens to eradicate the American experiment altogether and could take the rest of the world’s free societies down with it.

Clear warning signs were all visible at the outset, well before Trump descended his golden escalator to the “oohs and aahs” of a fawning, fascinated media: A party inherently susceptible to authoritarianism and disdain for the egalitarian nature of democracy; a shrinking demographic of aggrieved white males and white evangelicals facing unfamiliar, threatening cultural shifts; racism; misogyny, all waiting to be galvanized by the cynical machinations of a demagogue appearing at just the right moment to exploit them. Those factors certainly combined to create the phenomenon we are witnessing. But as David Frum convincingly explains in a new essay written for the Atlantic, what has now pushed Republicans irrevocably over the edge is the same thing you see in any totalitarian dictatorship: An irresistible, mandated compulsion to demonstrate fealty, over and over again, to the Great Leader.

The most glaring example of this imperative can be seen in Republicans’ refusal to provide continued military aid to Ukraine. As Frum observes, fear of Donald Trump’s disapproval — coupled with the frantic desire to please him — has completely transformed many Republicans’ attitudes about Ukraine, attitudes that were directly cultivated by Trump based on his own sycophantic relationship to Vladimir Putin. Over a period of only a few years, these attitudes were amplified by Trump himself, by pro-Putin mouthpieces on Fox News and other right-wing media. They are now so deeply embedded in the GOP that in the event Trump is re-elected to power this country will likely abandon not only Ukraine but also our European NATO allies, with whom we have worked for 75 years to preserve the peace not just of Europe, but for ourselves as well.

We may not know for decades the real reasons for Donald Trump’s slavish admiration of a dictator like Vladimir Putin. The most benign explanation, perversely enough, is that he is simply enamored of the idea of absolute power, wielded cruelly and ruthlessly. Or there may be a more prosaic (and insidious) reason, involving Trump’s convoluted history of shady business dealings with Russia that have intersected and overlapped with the Russian dictator’s strategic goals. It’s also entirely possible (as has been theorized) that Trump himself is compromised or somehow beholden to Putin, who certainly has the capacity, motivation and wherewithal engage in blackmail.

But at this point the reason is less relevant than the result: Because Trump’s grip on the Republican base is so dominant, Republicans feel compelled not only to align themselves with him, but to act in accordance with his wishes. Failure to do so means electoral banishment from the party and risks incurring the violent wrath of his legions of fanatic supporters. It’s been made clear in the last month that this fealty now includes — and will ultimately require if Trump is re-elected — cutting off all military aid to Ukraine, where a Russian victory would cement and accelerate Putin’s long-term goal of intimidating and infiltrating the remaining Western-style democracies on the European continent. It’s obvious to those countries — or it should be — that Trump and Putin’s logical endgame would eventually result in America’s strategic abandonment of NATO altogether.

Frum, the former speechwriter for George W. Bush may be most recognized for his pithy summary of his fellow conservatives' conditional relationship to democracy and its institutions. In another essay for The Atlantic, written in 2018, he took note of the marked drift towards authoritarianism by the Republican Party as it has evolved under Donald Trump. He famously noted that "If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy."

Whatever you may think of Frum’s background or his own past culpability as a cog in the GOP machine, his statement has been thoroughly vindicated. Republicans are in fact quite demonstrably abandoning democratic institutions. Voter suppression, election denialism and the draconian autocratic plans of the Heritage Institute known as Project 2025 all evidence a deliberate strategy to reshape the United States into a far more authoritarian, country, one where the right to vote is diluted or otherwise manipulated to satisfy rightwing policy imperatives such as Christian and White nationalism.

In the new article for the Atlantic, Frum destroys the notion that Congressional Republicans’ refusal to provide continued military aid to Ukraine stems from anything other than its abject desire to please Donald Trump. He dispenses with Republicans’ lame attempt to equate providing such aid to sealing the U.S.- Mexican border. Since comprehensive immigration reform is the very last thing Republicans are actually willing to discuss, Frum believes that really only indicates that they have zero interest in helping Ukraine in the first place, and the fact they have treated such aid as “barter” is more telling in and of itself.

What Republicans’ refusal to aid Ukraine in its war with Russia does indicate, however, is the complete co-opting of a substantial portion of the Republican party to Trump (and by extension, Putin’s) views about Ukraine. He begins by explaining that in the time frame from 2015-2017, in tandem with the extensive Russian efforts to achieve Trump’s election, Republicans effected a remarkable turnaround on their views towards Russia and its dictator, Vladimir Putin.

Frum points out this stark reversal in attitude:

Pre-Trump, Republicans expressed much more hawkish views on Russia than Democrats did. Russia invaded eastern Ukraine and annexed Crimea in spring 2014. In a Pew Research survey in March of that year, 58 percent of Republicans complained that President Barack Obama’s response was “not tough enough,” compared with just 22 percent of Democrats. After the annexation, Republicans were more than twice as likely as Democrats to describe Russia as “an adversary” of the United States: 42 percent to 19 percent. As for Putin personally, his rule was condemned by overwhelming majorities of both parties. Only about 20 percent of Democrats expressed confidence in Putin in a 2015 Pew survey, and 17 percent of Republicans. Trump changed all that—with a lot of help from pro-Putin voices on Fox News and right-wing social media.



As Frum observes, the process began with hagiographic paeans about Putin’s “manly” rule emanating from frustrated figures of what then was termed the “New Right,” such as Pat Buchanan. If it had ended there, Frum believes, the Republican Party could have salvaged itself from the true implications of its then-nascent embrace of the Russian dictator. But as Frum explains, Russian intelligence then went to work infiltrating the Republican Party and its allied organizations in the years prior to Trump’s election.:

By the mid-2010s, groups such as the National Rifle Association were susceptible to infiltration by Russian-intelligence assets. High-profile conservatives accepted free trips and speaking fees from organizations linked to the Russian government pre-Trump. A lucrative online marketplace for pro-Moscow messages and conspiracy theories already existed. White nationalists had acclaimed Putin as a savior of Christian civilization for years before the Trump campaign began.

But, as Frum notes, the coup de grace that connected these sentiments to the electoral fortunes of the Republican Party was the appearance of Donald Trump, whose unabashed admiration for Putin and undisputed status as both president and GOP leader “tangled the whole party in his pro-Russia ties.”

At this point the sheer magnitude of the GOP’s reversal began to manifest itself.

As Frum writes:

The urge to align with the party’s new pro-Russian leader reshaped attitudes among Republican Party loyalists. From 2015 to 2017, Republican opinion shifted markedly in a pro-Russia and pro-Putin direction. In 2017, more than a third of surveyed Republicans expressed favorable views of Putin. By 2019, [Tucker]Carlson—who had risen to the top place among Fox News hosts—was regularly promoting pro-Russian, anti-Ukrainian messages to his conservative audience. His success inspired imitators among many other conservative would-be media stars.

After it became evident that Trump had attempted to extort Ukraine by denying them needed military aid to defend themselves against Russia, conditioning such aid only if Ukraine agreed to open an “investigation” to publicize dirt Trump’s allies had invented about his then-presumed opponent Joe Biden, Republicans found themselves in a quandary. How could they reconcile such objectively obvious treachery with their newfound embrace of Putin?

Frum contends it was done by embracing what he refers to as “undernews,” regurgitating innuendo and social media-churned rumors that are too ridiculous or far-fetched for even Fox News to broadcast with a straight face, but are well understood by the Republican base. In the case of Trump’s first impeachment, Frum believes the “undernews” was that Trump’s acts did not rise to the level of high crimes necessary for impeachment, because in the end Ukraine had received its weapons. Frum also recalls this “undernews” also involved “an elaborate fantasy that Trump had been right to act as he did.” In this invented world, Ukraine became the villain as part of a Biden-connected “global criminal enterprise,” and Trump acted heroically by trying to unmask it (This example by Frum provides valuable insight into the delusional world that many Republican voters actually occupy, and how the party exploits it).

Frum believes that continued fealty to Trump is the sole motivation behind newly-elected House Speaker Mike Johnson’s refusal to allow additional aid to Ukraine. Even as Putin issues warnings and threats against Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (all now members of NATO), Republicans remain beholden to the notion of (as Frum describes it): ” Ukraine = enemy of Trump; abandoning Ukraine = proof of loyalty to Trump.” He believes a majority of House Republicans still support aid to Ukraine, but the calendar is controlled by those (like Johnson) whose only interest is catering to the deluded, so-called “undernews” faction.

Thus not only Ukraine, but our European allies, whose perception of Putin’s real aims is based not on delusional notions or political loyalties but the real, existential threat Putin represents to their societies find themselves left out in the cold by a Republican party that places more priority on appeasing the whims of an indicted fraudster and Putin sycophant more than standing up to its own established and assumed strategic commitments. Nonetheless, as Frum emphasizes, “If Republicans in Congress abandon Ukraine to Russian aggression, they do so to please Trump. Every other excuse is a fiction or a lie.“

It’s probably not possible to capture in words the magnitude of betrayal that would be felt not just by the Ukrainians — who would have no choice but to fight on — but by the entirety of Europe. That it would remain a stain on American nation for the rest of its existence is the very least that can be said. The economic and strategic impact on this country’s standing in the world would be incalculable, with our ability to establish other alliances forever compromised. 75 years of cooperation and trust could be wiped out by the actions of one corrupt, ignorant man and the treachery of his delusion-ridden political party. All of which, of course, would suit Vladimir Putin just fine.

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