In 2016, Donald Trump showed that a Republican candidate can run, and win, without swearing fealty to the permanent war party. He ran on a platform of “America First,” and since that moment almost all Republican politicians and commentators have at least paid lip service to the idea.
Yet now, all of that is being thrown aside for the sake of Ukraine.
In 2019, would-be America First Senator Josh Hawley delivered a speech about “Rethinking America’s Foreign Policy Consensus,” condemning “endless wars” and “metastasizing commitments” to far-off countries, and demanding a new narrower focus on keeping America and Americans safe and prosperous.
And then Ukraine came along, and Hawley suddenly looked like any other Republican from 2006.
Just finished a briefing with President Zelensky of #Ukraine, whose courage on behalf of his people is inspiring. Zelensky urgently asked the US to stop imports of Russian gas and oil. More important than almost any other sanction, he said. When will Joe Biden listen?
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) March 5, 2022
Powerful message this morning from President Zelensky of #Ukraine – said he wished Joe Biden would step up and lead the world. Biden needs to get serious and shut down Russian energy production, open up ours, and arm the Ukrainians with MiGs to defend the skies
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) March 16, 2022
It is one thing to see the Democrats eagerly join the CIA, State Department, and Pentagon in demanding the escalation of U.S. involvement in the Ukraine-Russia conflict. That alignment makes perfect sense politically—why wouldn’t the left align with the same national security state that embraces all of its values, and which has repurposed itself to target the left’s domestic political enemies on the right?
Seeing lawmakers on the right take the same stance, though, is both puzzling and pathetic. The relationship between the national security state and most GOP lawmakers and pundits increasingly resembles the relationship between an abusive husband and his battered spouse. Like a wife who believes her husband still loves her even as he sends her to the hospital, the same lawmakers and Fox News figures who claim to have embraced the Trump realignment are yet again letting themselves get played by a Regime that hates them.
Sure, it’s not nice when the Regime drinks too much and suddenly labels us all domestic terrorists, but patriotism requires that we unthinkingly serve this same regime when it wants to endanger American lives for another misadventure thousands of miles from our shores.
After all, freedom isn’t free!
