But whatever you think about the administration’s efforts, the episode once again shows how far the Republican Party and most of its politicians are willing to rule.
A group of Republicans spent the war accumulating, mocking Biden’s warnings about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plans to invade; this includes the main faction, which until about a week ago ranged from Putin’s curious to full Putin fans. Former President Donald Trump may be right to say that the invasion of Ukraine was a “genius” move, but at the moment this assessment seems to be a classic “Donald of Queens” ignorant comment from a caller on the talk show.
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(I should note that the Liberal faction also scoffed at Biden’s talks on the impending invasion, including some who blame the conflict for NATO enlargement rather than Putin’s aggression. A party when it comes to foreign policy. The same is not true. for Republicans who sympathized with Russia).
As for most other Republicans? They demonstrated that they had little or nothing to offer. They were at their best – or I guess at least – when they hit Biden for a vague, vague weakness, without suggesting how weak he was in Europe or what specifically they wanted him to do to be stronger. But things go downhill when they offer details, whether Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker advocates a U.S.-banned no-fly zone (which Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, in his honor, toppled as the start of World War III) or South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham is calling for someone to kill Putin.
Republicans are so reluctant to agree with everything the Democratic president does that when the Democratic president takes the middle ground, they have nothing to say. This may be due to the fact that they do not want Biden to thrive politically, but it is likely that what really motivates Republican politicians is paranoia about the anger of the party and its voters and provoking a successful challenge to nominate in the next election. So they remain either with vague summaries or with encroachment on policy options that have been rejected for good reasons.
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There is more than that, however. Republicans are still suffering from the consequences of leading the nation to a major foreign policy catastrophe in Iraq two decades ago. Democrats dealt with Vietnam by fighting each other, eventually clearing many of those involved in the party, and fighting for more than a decade to find a new party consensus on national security. Republicans after Iraq have taken a different course, essentially pretending for a decade that this was not a disaster at all – a position that was among the reasons they were vulnerable to Trump in 2016.
The result was (on national security issues) a split in the party with foreign policy professionals, many of whom continued to defend the invasion of Iraq, forming the core of the politically oriented anti-Trump faction. However, Trump was even less prepared to build a new foreign policy consensus than Jimmy Carter was for Democrats in the 1970s, although he expelled more and more professionals who could contribute to sensible political ideas, such as some have left the party altogether and others, such as the families of former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, have been partially or completely purged.
None of this will stop Republicans from winning elections, even presidential ones. But that leaves them unprepared to rule. Or to be a constructive opposition for now.
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For weekend reading, here are some of the best articles by political scientists this week:
The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage continues to make all sorts of great comments about Russia and Ukraine. Here is Sharon Werning Rivera for Putin’s control over Russia’s elite.
Dave Hopkins on the State of the Union speech.
Dan Dresner has some skepticism about the sanctions.
Robert Farley on the Russian military and political situation.
Matt Glassman on Twitter and Thinking.
This column does not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist for politics and politics. He teaches political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio and DePauw University and wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.