13127

I’m still missing the part where most Republicans are coming out in favor of Russia? They are still spineless when it comes to standing up to Trump, I won’t deny that. I won’t even deny the strong possibility that they are doing this for purely political reasons, but in that case I’d expect them to come out less strongly for Ukraine if they felt that was where the party voters were at. I’d also even venture to guess that the support on the right for Putin is far greater than from the tankies and whatever Tulsi Gabbard is, I just don’t think it’s anywhere close to the majority of the Republican party.

13128

I think they can be divided into two major groups: those (like Trump and his many followers) who are essentially on Russia’s side, and those who are using the crisis as a way to beat Joe Biden with a club. The latter group certainly make anti-Russia noises — at least they do now — but mostly to point out how dangerous and weak Biden is. I don’t actually consider that ‘support’ for a US effort to try to check Putin. Of course there are outliers, but there alway are.

13129

I agree with the first group but ultimately I think we’ll just have to disagree on the second group, although I’m open to there being many options for what the people in the second group believe. Clearly there was enough support during the Trump years to keep up the aid to Ukraine and we know that wasn’t coming from Trump himself(see impeachment #1). Mentally I just kind of filter out politicians using a crisis to try to score political points at this point because it’s expected.

On the bright side, I think so far the Biden admin has been handling this as well as one could hope, and some day I hope to read about all the backchannel international calls and arm twisting that have happened over the last couple of days. Assuming Putin doesn’t decide to just end the world I think Biden ends up with all the domestic political points on this one.

13131

I mean, even if you discount the kooks at AFPAC, who actually cheered Putin, CPAC was a pretty good indication of where the party is. Trump said Putin was a genius. Pompeo said this was all Biden’s fault. Charlie Kirk said Americans don’t and shouldn’t care about Ukraine. Kristi Noem said Biden was weak and should resign. Desantis said nothing whatsoever about Russia or Ukraine. Hawley said it was Biden’s fault for not opening up petro production in the US. Grenell said it was Biden’s fault for abandoning Trump’s America First policies.

Ted Cruz said it was Biden’s fault. Ron Johnson said it happened because we impeached Trump. Kevin McCarthy said today it was Biden’s fault.

Who have I missed? I called out Romney’s mostly sane and decent take, which nevertheless included blaming Biden, but who else is there? Cheney and Kinzinger are certainly better — despite Kinzinger’s insane insistence on no fly zones — but they’re outcasts, like Romney.

13132

I didn’t mean that Fox News would declare what a great job Biden has done or anything like that, I just don’t believe the current attempts at blaming Biden will stick in any way outside of the deepest recesses of the echo chamber.

Implicit in most of those messages(the ones declaring this is Biden’s fault) is that this invasion is bad and that they don’t support the invasion. I’m just trying to make the distinction between seemingly the majority of the GOP supporting (even if only weakly) Ukraine, which is different from them trying to blame Biden. I don’t expect any of them to utter nice words about Joe Biden, that’s long dead in our politics. The domestic debate IS NOT “who are the good guys here?” or even “should we care about Ukraine?” at this point, it’s entirely “what should we do to help Ukraine”. I think that’s notable, and partially I think it’s notable because there’s a gulf between where the nation seems to be at and where Trump is at.

13133

Well, yes, because you can’t blame Biden for something if that something isn’t a bad thing that deserves blame.

I don’t know why you’re trying to make that distinction. ‘The President is a weak doddering dementia patient who got us into this mess’ should not earn you any ‘united front in the face of adversity’ points. These people don’t give a damn about Ukraine, it’s just a club they can use to beat Biden for personal political gain. Trump himself is already pivoting to this position, however reluctantly.

13134

Because that’s different from them all being in Putin’s pocket which was what my original post was in response to. But now I just feel like I picked a really weird hill to die on.

13136

My belief is that they are using the crisis as a way to try to beat up Joe Biden. I do not disagree with any of you on that. It’s gross and it’s wrong(but not surprising in any way).

My pushback is the posts declaring the Republicans to be in lockstep with Russia or something right now. That’s the whole message I was pushing back on. I’m not trying to defend the Republicans beyond pointing out that the vast majority of America seems to believe that Russia is the bad guy.

13137

You objected to the political cartoon that showed the GOP on the same side of the table as the Russians, facing off the Democrats. Using a Russia crisis to attack the Democratic President seems entirely consistent with that cartoon, at least to me. They certainly aren’t on the Democrat’s side of the table.

13138

And this may all just come down to us interpreting that cartoon differently. If the focus is on the Dems/Biden/domestic politics then that cartoon makes sense as is.

I’m mentally focused on Russia and Ukraine right now so I looked at it from that perspective and just disagreed that Republicans(with obvious Trumpy exceptions) are aligned with Putin when it comes to Ukraine and wherever that conflict goes from here.

Either way, I can stop since it seems like it was just differences of interpretation of a cartoon.

13139

Yes, I understand that. Peace!

13140

Some of us find it helpful to think of the GOP as something other than a monolithic evil presence. Which, yes, it is most of the time these days. But @abrandt’s point seems to be that – for the most part – they’re on the side of the good guys this time (i.e. approaching the issue as one of support for Ukraine, even if they’re trying to score political points against Biden’s administration).

Exactly. As Putin finds himself increasingly isolated, part of the isolation is from the Republican party in the United States with whom he previously enjoyed almost unquestioning support. That unquestioning support is gone and at this point, it’s one of the silver linings of this conflict.

-Tom

13141

It’s almost as if that may have emboldened Putin. Perhaps it’s time for the GOP to engage in some self-reflection.

Back to reality now. The GOP will never admit to any of it. They can go fuck themselves instead of fucking the rest of the country.

13142

I think that’s what this is. We’re probably seeing all the self-reflection we’re going to get. You can read it in Tom Cotton’s long pauses. :)

-Tom

13143

At least Romney seems to have seen which way the wind was blowing.

13144

Another patriotic American standing shoulder to shoulder with the commander-in-chief in a crisis.

13145

I’d like to think that long pauses, are the patriotic part of of Tom Cotton trying breaking through. The part that inspired a Harvard Law grad to enlist in the army and serve as platoon commander in combat. The cynic is me says, that he knows he is political minefield. The correct way of navigating through a minefield is to carefully follow previous guys footsteps. So the pauses are actually, just doing that.

13146

Really, they were probably due to delays in the feed or something. It’s obvious Cotton is just returning to his talking points du jour, which were him finding whatever weasel space he could around Trump’s latest insane comments.

But I maintain this is one of those sadly all-too-rare situations where both parties are on the same side of the issue: pro-Ukraine.

-Tom

13147

Washington Post: Conservatives turn to a new message: ‘God bless the Ukrainian people’

I think we all know if the invasion had gone as expected, if Ukraine had collapsed as quickly as Putin seemed to expect, conservatives* would all sound like that video posted earlier of the dude introducing Magic Taylor Gathering to a crowd of people chanting Putin’s name.

-Tom

* sigh. i give up.

13148

A moment of silence for this casualty of war.