The Party Of Trump Is The Party Of Putin

Huffington Post reports, Sen. Mitt Romney Slams GOP ‘Morons’ At ‘Evil’ White Nationalist Conference:

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on Sunday castigated fellow Republican lawmakers who recently spoke at a white nationalist conference in Florida, calling the event “evil” and likening those attending to “morons.”

“There’s no place in either political party for this white nationalist or racism. It’s simply wrong. It’s, as you’ve indicated, speaking of evil, it’s evil as well,” Romney told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

Au contraire, mon frère (Romney avoided military service during the Vietnam War in France). The majority of Republicans in Congress and the Republican Party base ARE anti-democracy and pro-Putin authoritarians because these “morons” (actually useful idiots or Russian assets) somehow believe that Russia is the white Christian Nationalist utopia of their white Christian Nationalist wet dreams that they want to impose on this country.

Here’s an idea: if you truly believe Russia is the white Christian Nationalist utopia of your fantasies, pack up your shit and move your ignorant asses to Russia where you would be happier. It’s a big county, there is plenty of room for you. I’ll even help you pack and drive you to the airport. Just get the fuck out of this country!

Romney went on to call out Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) for speaking at the third annual America First Political Action Conference, which was organized by white nationalist figurehead Nick Fuentes in Orlando, Florida.

Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers and Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin, both Republicans, also spoke at the event in a pre-recorded video.

"It's unthinkable to me. It's almost treasonous. And it just makes me ill to see some of these people do that." – Sen. Mitt Romney reacts to pro-Putin sentiments from GOP members and some media outlets: https://t.co/S6ESuaj46b #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/ZPDC3bGMgI

— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) February 27, 2022

“I don’t know them,” he said of Greene and Gosar, “but I’m reminded of that old line from the ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ movie where one character says, ‘Morons, I’ve got morons on my team.’ And I have to think anybody that would sit down with white nationalists and speak at their conference was certainly missing a few IQ points.”

Amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Romney was also quick and vocal with his denouncement of fellow Republicans who have sided with Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying he believes any such support is “almost treasonous.” [Not “almost,” IT IS treasonous, you coward!] He also said he hopes many of them are “changing their stripes” in the wake of the ongoing violence.

“How anybody in this country, which loves freedom, can side with Vladimir Putin, which is an oppressor, a dictator, he kills people. He imprisons his political opponents. He has been an adversary of America at every chance he’s had. It’s unthinkable to me,” he said. “It’s almost treasonous and it just makes me ill to see some of these people do that but, of course, they do it because they think it’s shock value and it’s going to get them more eyeballs and maybe make a little more money for them or their network. It’s disgusting and I’m hopeful that you’re seeing some of those people recognize just how wrong they were.”

Romney held back in directly condemning former President Donald Trump when questioned by Bash about whether he believes Trump’s past praise of Putin is treasonous. He did say: “Standing up for freedom is the right thing to do in America and anything less than that, in my opinion, is unworthy of American support.”

Romney is such a coward, he just can’t bring himself to call a treasonous traitor a traitor.

In a new video, The Lincoln Project calls out Fox News, Steve Bannon, and the Republican Party for supporting Putin.  Leave it to this group of former Republicans to know how to make the GOP’s support for Putin and betrayal of America stand out.

Russia thanks its GOP comrades. pic.twitter.com/wxvYgE0txp

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) February 26, 2022

The Washington Post reports, How Republicans moved from Reagan’s ‘evil empire’ to Trump’s praise for Putin:

For decades, the Republican Party’s stance on Russia’s dictators and expansionist tactics was rock-solid: From Dwight D. Eisenhower to Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan, Russia — then the Soviet Union — was America’s chief enemy, untrustworthy, anti-freedom. It was, in Reagan’s famous formulation, the “evil empire.”

This week, while many Republicans blasted Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s all-out assault on Ukraine, former president Donald Trump and some of his allies urged the United States to stay out of the conflict and praised Putin, even presenting him as a “peacekeeper,” as Trump put it.

“Don’t look for consistency in Republican policy,” said Craig Shirley, a Reagan biographer and longtime Republican political consultant. “The Republican Party right now is a little schizophrenic. Anti-communism and love of freedom used to be the glue that held the party together, but now the attitudes toward Russia have gotten all mixed up with domestic politics.”

In Congress, across conservative media and on the social media battlegrounds where so much of right-leaning America thrashes out its differences, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine seemed to open a gap between Trump and some of his erstwhile loyal supporters.

On Capitol Hill, Republicans usually quick to agree with most anything Trump says issued statements that aligned with Republican reactions to Russian aggression through the past seven decades.

As Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene and Rep Paul Gosar speak at this white supremacist, anti-Semitic, pro-Putin event, silence by Republican Party leaders is deafening and enabling.

All Americans should renounce this garbage and reject the Putin wing of the GOP now. pic.twitter.com/6fgpV6ohZ8

— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) February 26, 2022

[B]ut other Republicans hewed closer to Trump, who on Fox News touted his “good relationship” with Putin and suggested that the Russian president had attacked Ukraine only because of the “weakness” of the Biden administration.

Fox’s most popular host, Tucker Carlson, pooh-poohed the idea that Putin is an enemy: “Why do I hate Putin so much?” he said. “Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him?”

“Makes your head spin, doesn’t it?” Shirley said. “The party is searching for meaning beyond just anti-Bidenism, and there’s no one position.”

A chief cause of the Republican splintering on Putin and his invasion of Ukraine is the dramatic shift in rhetoric and policy that Trump introduced into the party’s messaging, starting in his 2016 campaign and continuing through his term in the White House and his embittered post-presidency.

* * *

Republican leaders campaigned for decades on reining in Russia, from Eisenhower’s statement that the Soviet Union represented “godless depravity in government” to GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s 2012 characterization of Russia as “our number one geopolitical foe.”

The country’s establishment politicians and policymakers have generally leaned toward America playing an active role in international affairs. The United States is, as Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, said, “the indispensable nation,” on trade, certainly, but also on securing peace, curbing extremism and spreading democracy.

[T]he party’s division was evident as Russian missiles landed in several Ukrainian cities and Trump defended the Russian leader. “I don’t believe he wanted to do this initially,” Trump said of Putin on Fox News. A day earlier, on a conservative podcast, Trump called Putin a “genius” for declaring two regions of Ukraine to be independent countries and said “he’s going to go in and be a peacekeeper.”

Trump defended casting Putin as “smart” during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando on Saturday night. The former president condemned the attack on Ukraine, calling it “an atrocity that should never have been allowed to occur,” but he did not directly criticize the Russian president.

“The problem is not that Putin is smart — which, of course he’s smart — but the real problem is that our leaders are dumb,” Trump said to applause. “Dumb. So dumb.”

Trump’s aversion to portraying Russia and Putin as America’s enemies was evident from the start of his late-life political career. During the 2016 campaign, he moved to erase from the Republican platform any mention of protecting Ukraine from Putin’s designs. And he repeatedly praised Putin throughout his presidency.

But why did so much of the Republican political leadership and the party’s voter base so easily flip from traditional anti-communism and suspicion of Russian motives to an acceptance or even an embrace of Putin and his authoritarian ways?

* * *

“There’s always been an ebb and flow between isolationism and internationalism in the party,” said Shirley, who is also the author of “April 1945,” a history of World War II’s endgame. “It’s really based on the personalities of our presidents and the Russian leaders more than on any principles. The current crop of Republicans still says they like Reagan, but they just like his personality. They don’t share his consistent internationalist philosophy.”

The evolution of attitudes toward Russia in the Republican base has been driven not only by Trump’s popularity and the struggles of the U.S. economy, but also by a years-long effort by Russia to influence how Americans of all political stripes view the world, according to disinformation researchers who have traced Russia’s hacks, deceptive Internet posts and fake accounts on social media.

[In] 2016, Russia interfered in the U.S. election by hacking and disseminating sensitive Democratic Party emails, and the Internet Research Agency, run privately by a Putin ally, flooded Facebook, Twitter and other platforms with faked social media posts that helped drive Americans to polarized political positions while also supporting Trump’s presidential bid.

Russia has sought to shape American attitudes toward political issues “through a subtle, sophisticated, very long game of influence,” said Camille François, a disinformation researcher at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. “It’s a full-spectrum campaign with covert and overt elements.”

Other experts on disinformation, in contrast, argue that the impact of Russia’s efforts to alter Americans’ political perspectives is not so clear. Thomas Rid, a professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and author of “Active Measures,” a history of disinformation, said the role of Russian meddling may not be as powerful as some other domestic forces that have pushed Americans toward views so polarized that members of one party almost automatically take a position opposed to the other party’s.

“Your hatred of your own political opponent is so deep that you side with Vladimir Putin as he attacks major population centers in Ukraine, which is extraordinary,” Rid said.

Emily Tamkin, the U.S. senior editor at The New Statesman writes, How the American Right Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Russia:

The American political right was long associated with Cold War hawkishness. But in recent years the trend has shifted toward fawning praise for autocrats, even those leading America’s traditional adversaries, as well as projecting our own culture wars overseas. Where once Russia and other autocracies were seen as anti-democratic, they have now become symbols of U.S. conservatism — a mirror for the right-wing worldview.

Supporting Mr. Putin, as well as other authoritarian leaders, is yet another way in which the political right is weaponizing culture wars to further divide Americans.

Part of this new paradigm is that foreign policy is now a partisan matter. In 2016, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary offered an endorsement of then-candidate Donald Trump, admiration that was later returned. Mr. Putin’s Russia reportedly meddled in the American election in 2016, and the Russian president has admitted that he wanted Mr. Trump to win. Those amicable relationships trickled down to the Republican voting population, which shifted its views on Mr. Putin’s favorability, which soared from a mere 10 percent in July 2014 to 37 percent in December 2016. A Yahoo News/YouGov poll from January of this year found that 62 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents consider Vladimir Putin a stronger leader than Joe Biden.

“Strong” may be the key word here. In this construction, a strong leader is apparently one who cracks down on opposition, cultural and political, and does not concede. This idea then dovetails with right-wing ideas that liberal elites are actively corroding deeply held traditional values — including traditional gender roles. For those who spend a fair amount of airtime worrying about the emasculation of men, the kind of strength portrayed by Mr. Putin — who on Monday convened his top security officials and demanded they publicly stand and support him — is perhaps appealing.

Many of the admirers of the world’s strongmen on the American right appear to believe that the countries each of these men lead are beacons of whiteness, Christianity and conservative values. On Wednesday, conservative commentator Rod Dreher wrote, “I adamantly oppose risking the lives of boys from Louisiana and Alabama to make the Donbas safe for genderqueers and migrants.”

These comments, from the right, aren’t exactly advancing a new position. In 2018, the political commentator Pat Buchanan said that Mr. Putin and the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko were “standing up for traditional values against Western cultural elites.” He considered the Belarusian Ministry of Internal Affairs to have told a “moral truth” in asserting that same-sex relationships were “fake.” But those traditional values do not include the freedom to political opposition. According to Viasna Human Rights Center, an organization dedicated to keeping track of Belarusian abuses, there are over 1,000 political prisoners in Belarus, many of whom were arrested for peaceful assembly, protesting or daring to engage in political activities.

Russia is neither all white nor all Christian — it is a country that encompasses several regions, religions and ethnicities. Still, it is often perceived as white. The white nationalist Richard Spencer has referred to Russia as “the sole white power in the world.” Matthew Heimbach, a founder of the Traditionalist Worker Party who was involved in the 2017 Unite the Right rally, has expressed admiration for Mr. Putin and ultranationalist European political leaders. “Russia is our biggest inspiration,” Mr. Heimbach told The Times in 2016. “I see President Putin as the leader of the free world.” As The Times reported at the time, this construction of Mr. Putin as a beacon of far-right values began with the ultra-far-right nationalists in Europe and later spread to the United States.

But, as the Washington Post opinion writer Christian Caryl wrote in 2018, just as the halcyon image American Communists had of Stalinist Russia in the early 20th century belied the truth of a brutal regime, the Russia celebrated today by conservatives is also, in some ways, a fiction.

In any event, Mr. Putin is not waging a culture war. He is waging real, actual war, in which real, actual lives are already being lost.

But then, why would that matter? The Russia, Ukraine, Hungary and Belarus of conservative pundits’ imaginations are just that: imaginings. Avatars. Projections of themselves. The Russians and Ukrainians who are living — and dying — do not factor into the picture.