(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The NY Times Swings and Misses on the Republican Charlie Foxtrot over aid to Ukraine [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-06 The drama that has played out among House Republicans over the past week has highlighted a sharp decline in the party’s willingness to back continued aid for Kyiv’s fight against Russia. Sorry, I’m not going to waste a link through the paywall on this one. Just when I had hopes that the Gray Lady was getting her act together on things Republican, this appeared. Reporting from Washington, Karoun Demirjian reports on how the Republican party is at loggerheads over sending more aid to Ukraine. Catie Edmondson and Luke Broadwater contributed reporting; it appeared in print Oct. 6, 2023 in the New York edition with the headline: G.O.P. Resistance To Aid in Ukraine Expands in House. The framing in the digital edition is that it’s becoming a broader issue across the Republican Party. So why are Republicans fighting over whether or not to send more aid to Ukraine? ...Hard-line Republican critics have long espoused isolationist views about Ukraine’s war effort, arguing that sending tens of billions of dollars to Kyiv risks dragging the United States into a head-on conflict with Russia and siphons money away from domestic challenges. Former President Donald J. Trump popularized the argument with his “America First” approach to foreign policy, but until recently, most lawmakers refrained from embracing it. That was then; this is now. More Republicans are having qualms for… reasons. In the past few days, Republicans managed to strip billions in military and humanitarian assistance requested by Mr. Biden out of a stopgap spending bill to keep the government from shutting down. They rallied a majority of their colleagues in the House to vote against funding a program to train and equip Ukrainian troops. And a small faction of hard-liners joined with Democrats to boot Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, as speaker after accusing him of making a “secret side deal” with Mr. Biden to fund Kyiv’s war against Russia. emphasis added Can you see what’s wrong with that sentence? It asserts that McCarthy was booted by Democrats, who were only joined by Republican hardliners because they thought he was making a secret deal with Biden to help Ukraine. Yes — McCarthy is gone because Democrats forced him out. It was the REPUBLICAN hardliners who called for the vote to vacate the Speakership, but never mind. So why is there a growing number of Republicans opposed to aiding Ukraine? ...They “have stirred up our base to make them think that if you’re for Ukrainian funding that you can’t be for a secure border, or you’re a lib or whatever,” Mr. Rogers added. [Representative Mike D. Rogers, Republican of Alabama] “But when you talk with people, they don’t have a problem, they just don’t want to get in trouble back home.” Speaking of stirring up the base... “This is a very unpopular issue — not with just Republican voters, but also with Americans,” said Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia and one of the lawmakers leading the charge against Ukraine funding. Citing a recent CNN poll that found that a majority of Americans opposed continued financial support for Ukraine’s war effort, she said the assistance had become a toxic issue, even for those previously inclined to support it. Others, like Senator Lindsey Graham are willing to provide aid — IF Biden will do something about immigration and agree to cuts elsewhere. Sure — why not turn Ukraine into a hostage bargaining chip? The thrust of the article is that there is growing reluctance to keep sending money and arms to Ukraine, on the part of Republicans, but for some reason there’s a few things left out of this ‘litmus test’ narrative that are conspicuous by their absence. The Evidence of Things Not Seen Here’s the first interesting thing. Trump is mentioned exactly twice in the article. The first was for his “America first” foreign policy — which in practice was actually “Trump first”. The second is at the bottom, where Senator Todd Young, Republican of Indiana complains “Without President Trump’s leadership — I use the term very loosely — in the Republican Party, we would not be seeing this sort of opposition.” And why, pray tell, is Trump’s “leadership” causing such a ruckus over aid to Ukraine? You’d never know it from the article, but those of us who still have a functioning memory recall that Trump and Ukraine have, as the saying goes, a history. Trump is still the black hole around which the Republican universe spins. Shall we talk about the elephant in the room? A recap. It seems that then President Donald J. Trump got impeached for the first time for trying to blackmail Ukraine into helping him fake up a corruption scandal involving Joe Biden, who he anticipated would be a candidate facing him in 2020. (He was also impeached for obstructing the investigation into it.) ...Only two Democrats opposed the article on abuse of power, which accused Mr. Trump of corruptly using the levers of government to solicit election assistance from Ukraine in the form of investigations to discredit his Democratic political rivals. Republicans were united in opposition. It passed 230 to 197, with Speaker Nancy Pelosi gaveling the vote to a close from the House rostrum. ...“Over the course of the last three months, we have found incontrovertible evidence that President Trump abused his power by pressuring the newly elected president of Ukraine to announce an investigation into President Trump’s political rival,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the Intelligence Committee chairman, who led the impeachment inquiry. ...Instead, the existential threat to Mr. Trump’s presidency centered around a half-hour phone call in July. On it, he pressured Ukraine’s president to announce investigations into former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and other Democrats at the same time he was withholding nearly $400 million in vital military assistance for the country and a White House meeting. The quotes above about the impeachment are taken right from a NY Times article; you’d think a Times reporter wouldn't have to worry about a pay wall to research this. Heck — wikipedia has a lot of info on it. Trump failed in his attempt to coerce Ukrainian President Zelensky into creating a fake scandal for him, and if there is one thing Trump does well, it’s hold a grudge. It’s not a coincidence that the hardliners currently blocking Ukraine also are largely Trump MAGA acolytes. But wait — there’s more. Ukraine failed to hand Trump the scandal he wanted — but Republicans are busy trying to fabricate it up all by themselves. Trump wants revenge for being impeached twice and for losing to Biden. The hardcore elements McCarthy enabled for so long are fully on board with this. The story they are promoting is that Hunter Biden’s ties with the Burisma Energy Company involved bribes, corruption, etc. and that then Vice President Biden got a Ukrainian prosecutor fired to keep him from investigating it. (They have plenty of other baseless slanders, but that’s the gist of what they’re trying do with Ukraine.) The actual facts of the matter are that the man was fired for NOT investigating corruption. Despite hours of hearings and assertions made without any evidence to back them up, Republicans have yet to show any involvement by Joe Biden in his son’s business affairs or any proof of Hunter Biden doing anything more than trading on his name. Their witnesses are not credible. The impeachment inquiry is a shambles. But… they need to keep raising ‘questions’ about Ukraine to keep the kangaroo court charade going — which also would seem to be rather relevant to the question of why Republicans are having difficulty with sending aid to Ukraine. Again, it’s something that does not get mentioned in the article. Also not mentioned is how Russia is still all through this, from Trump’s open admiration for Vladimir Putin, to Republican fascination with Putin as a strong leader. Republicans embracing white Christian nationalism are susceptible to the idea that Putin is fighting the good fight in that regard. They also support Putin’s homophobia and war on trans people. The same ‘hardcore’ Republicans include some openly supportive of Russia. That’s yet one more thing that might be brought up in the discussion — along with something that’s hiding in plain sight. President Biden’s support for Ukraine has been a foreign policy success to date. NATO has been revitalized and has new members. The Russian conventional military threat is not seen as quite as invincible as it was before the invasion. China has to be rethinking its ambitions for Taiwan. The Party of Trump has shown it is ready and willing to do anything it can to sabotage Biden’s presidency. That alone is sufficient reason for them to monkey-wrench aid to Ukraine. It’s all about winning in 2024 and ever afterwards. It might be useful to know how many of these “hardliners” are people who still take the line that Biden stole the election and refused to certify him as the winner of the 2020 election. Hardliner is pretty much a euphemism for insurrectionist when push comes to shove. These people are continuing January 6 from inside the government. The Republican Party is effectively Putin’s Fifth Column. Tis a pity this Times article so badly missed the point with this article. Calanbo links to a video of Beau of the Fifth Column talking about why aid to Ukraine is critical. (In Beau’s case, the Fifth Column reference is ironic, in that he’s working from the inside of Redneck country against the expectations that go with that territory.) He’s talking here about the way Ukraine has been able to put the Russian Black Sea Fleet on the run, despite not having a comparable navy. He makes a strong case that ending support for Ukraine will be a huge mistake — and that the people doing so are putting their own interests over those of America. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/6/2197687/-The-NY-Times-Swings-and-Misses-on-the-Republican-Charlie-Foxtrot-over-aid-to-Ukraine?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/