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US Republicans willing to sacrifice democracy for power [1]
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Date: 2023-05
Florida governor Ron DeSantis made waves within the Republican Party last week when he declared that US support for Ukraine’s defence against Russia’s war of aggression is not a matter of “vital national interest”. He even went so far as to downgrade the war to a mere “territorial dispute”.
The remarks – which DeSantis made in response to a questionnaire sent to all potential 2024 Republican presidential candidates by Fox News host Tucker Carlson – put him in line with ex-president Donald Trump. But a number of prominent Republicans, including senators Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham, immediately pushed back against his comments.
As many have pointed out, DeSantis’s current position on Ukraine stands in sharp contrast to the one he struck as a congressman nine years ago, when Moscow annexed Crimea. He called for the US to provide lethal aid to Ukraine while decrying what he described as then-president Barack Obama’s “policy of weakness”.
How the “flip-flop” (as Trump called it) will play for DeSantis remains to be seen, but both Trump and former US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley have jumped at the opportunity to accuse him of hypocritically aping Trump’s position, presumably in an attempt to win over the former president’s voter base.
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Although DeSantis has not yet officially announced a bid for the 2024 Republican presidential candidacy, he is widely regarded as a frontrunner and Trump’s most serious rival – a position borne out by polls.
Public opinion may also be behind DeSantis’s comments about the war in Ukraine. A recent poll shows that almost two-thirds of Republican voters oppose the federal government providing more financial and military aid to Ukraine (even though Americans of all political stripes overwhelmingly view Russia unfavourably).
This row over foreign policy among Republicans may seem to belie my contention from last week that there is very little substantive difference among the party’s presidential hopefuls, all of whom can be expected to maintain the party’s current authoritarian trajectory. But I think this is the exception that proves the rule.
From Trump’s bromance with the brutal ex-Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte to the fawning enthusiasm of many on the US right for the zealously anti-LGBTIQ Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, or the invitation to ex-Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro to speak at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference – contemporary Republicans’ admiration for right-wing authoritarian leaders is no secret.
In this connection, it’s important to remember that, before he launched a full-scale war against Ukraine last year, Vladimir Putin was also widely and openly admired among Republicans, whom he had deliberately courted (both directly and by proxy) through high-level meetings and events such as the World Congress of Families’ annual conferences and the National Prayer Breakfast.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/republicans-desantis-admiration-putin-orban-bolsanoro-ukraine/
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