Is the GOP Love Affair With Putin Finally Ending

It is obvious why Donald Trump loves Vladimir Putin beyond merely Trump's stupidity and the ease with which he can be manipulated by flatteers.  Both men are malignant narcissists - Putin is showing just how malignant he is - with delusions of granduer and absolutely no morals or decency.  One doesn't reach the status of a Lt. Colonel in the old KGB by being a nice, decent or moral person.  Trump is equally bankrupt morally and no doubt wanted dictator status for himself.  It is also obvious to those who follow the misnamed "Christian Right" why that demographic loves Putin: he is horrifically anti-gay and has restored power to the RussianOrthodox Church (which is equally anti-gay not to mention anti-modernity like America's Christian extremists) not seen since the days of the Romanov dyansty.  But for the wider GOP it is harder to explain how those who claim to be American could have a love affair with one of America's leading enemies. Yet such has been the case until now thanks to Trump and the Christofascists within the GOP base.  Now, with daily television coverage of the brutality of Russia's attack on Ukraine and images of thousands of refugees - who importantly in my view are white and look like they could be someone you see at your grocery store - and bombed out residential neighborhoods it seems many in the GOP have been shocked to their senses. Yes, there are those in the "let's go Brandon" crowd who are more concerned about the cost of gas for their behemoth trucks and SUV's  than children dying in Ukraine, but for now they seem to be in the minority.  A piece in The Economist looks at this sea change.  Here are excerpts:

IF VLADIMIR PUTIN’S invasion of Ukraine rests on a grand delusion, it is one he might have learned watching Fox News and other outlets of the American right. Ever since Donald Trump rose to the top of the Republican primaries in 2016, conservative talking-heads have praised the Russian leader’s vigour and acuity and denigrated his Ukrainian, European and NATO adversaries as corrupt, weak and gutless. As recently as last week, Tucker Carlson, America’s most popular cable host, suggested that, if forced to choose between Russia and Ukraine, he would pick Russia. Only a warmongering liberal obsessive would fuss over Mr Putin’s prosecution of the faraway conflict, he added: “Is he making fentanyl? Is he trying to snuff out Christianity? Does he eat dogs?”

The subsequent reality of Ukraine’s bombed towns, dead children and heroic resistance has not entirely pierced this delusion. Fox is still airing pro-Putin commentary. Mr Trump still praises the Russian leader. Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on February 26th, he condemned the war but snuck in that Mr Putin was “smart” and “playing [Joe] Biden like a drum”. Even so, the war has caused the most dramatic rethink among Republicans since Mr Trump took over their party.

Republican voters, who felt warmly towards Mr Putin under Mr Trump, have swung hard towards Ukraine. So have Republican politicians, with a fervour—illustrated by the blue-and-yellow flags many wore to the state-of-the-union address this week—that would recently have been unimaginable. Two years ago they dismissed Mr Trump’s guns-for-political-favours shakedown of Volodymyr Zelensky as a nothing burger. Now they demand that Mr Biden do even more to support the Ukrainian leader than he is.

The right’s Putin fandom was always more about posturing than substance. Its cheer-leaders were the ultranationalist, isolationist fringe that Mr Trump elevated. Members of that relatively small group admire Mr Putin as an authoritarian challenger of the liberal order. Diehards such as Steve Bannon also consider him the leader of white Christian repulse to godless China, which seems more debatable. Yet most Republican voters expressed more mildly positive feeling towards the Russian leader, mainly because Mr. Trump kept praising him. And that was enough to deter many Republican politicians from speaking on the issue.

Even now, some of the most ambitious Republicans only do so delicately. . . . . Yet the changing mood among Republican voters is encouraging Republican lawmakers to be more forthright by the day. Though few suggest American troops should be deployed to Ukraine, most are no longer ambivalent about where America stands in the fight.

Americans have in the past witnessed many periods of introspection and self-doubt—only to relaunch themselves, re-emboldened, into global affairs. According to the scholar Walter Russell Mead, such action tends to be triggered by isolationists (whom he terms “Jacksonian”) apprehending a frightening new global threat. That may be happening now; polls suggest Mr Trump’s supporters increasingly consider Mr Putin to be dangerous as well as malign.

In any event, two things seem clear. After a prolonged isolationist funk, Republicans have rejoined the internationalist mainstream on this issue. And in doing so they have turned from Mr. Trump.

The crisis underlines how positive that is. Had Mr Trump won a second term, he might have tried to remove America from NATO by now. His administration would certainly have been incapable of the Biden team’s patient diplomacy. Yet there are probably limits to how far the normalisation of Republican foreign policy will go.

Previous foreign-policy schisms—over Germany in the 1940s, for example, and Korea in the 1950s—gave way to a sense of common purpose. By contrast, in their latest gratuitous criticisms of Mr Biden, Republicans seem determined to punish him for being right. Perhaps they wish to distract from their own former apologism for Mr Putin.

This makes the Republicans bad-faith actors on Ukraine, barely capable of providing the constructive criticism that the Biden administration needs. Senator Mitt Romney, who has justly criticised both parties’ history with Mr Putin and praised Mr Biden’s recent diplomacy, is one of the few Republicans with credibility on the issue. Not coincidentally, he was also the only Republican senator to vote to impeach Mr Trump for coercing Mr Zelensky.

In their disloyal opposition, Republican politicians are again channelling their supporters. They rate Mr Biden’s performance as badly on Ukraine as they do generally, even though most Republican voters, whether they know it or not, support his policy.

Sadly, intelligence and thinking skills are no longer common traits among the GOP base.