One of the rare points of general consensus in the United States right now is that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was bad and Russian President Vladimir Putin is reprehensible. These are certainly not universally held positions; some TV presenters have also repeatedly implicitly sided with Russia in recent weeks. But in general, Russia’s position on this issue is not the one that commands the day in US political talks.
It’s one of the reasons a tweet from the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) sparked an outcry over the weekend.
“Vladimir Putin announces the annexation of four territories occupied by Ukraine,” it said. “Biden and the Democrats continue to send billions of taxpayer dollars to Ukraine. Meanwhile, we’re being attacked on our southern border. When will Democrats put #AmericaFirst and end gifts to Ukraine?”
An animated Russian flag fluttered gently underneath.
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It’s not even really clear what the point was. That the illegal annexation – a series of apparently fabricated “referendums” in the contested regions – should be recognized as legitimate? That Ukraine does not deserve military support (this “gift”) by repelling the invaders? Matt Schlapp, husband of a former official in President Donald Trump’s administration and head of the organization that runs CPAC, demolished the tweet, blaming it for not having an opportunity to verify it.
But why wouldn’t someone at CPAC think this is consistent with the organization’s policies? The group has been cheering autocrats and autocrat candidates for years. The mistake was just picking the wrong one.
At the start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Republicans viewed Putin about as negatively as various Democratic elected officials. Since early 2017, Republicans have consistently labeled Russia less of an enemy of the United States (as opposed to an ally) than Americans as a whole. But once the invasion happened, that changed. Now Republicans are about as skeptical of Russia as Democrats or Americans overall. Putin has ruined his image.
For years, Russia had a particular appeal to the American right. When it conquered Crimea in 2014, there was a section of the GOP that benevolently contrasted Putin with then-Democratic President Barack Obama. As Russian actors sought to bolster Trump’s 2016 candidacy, the 2014 enemy-of-my-enemy position morphed into something of a friend-of-my-friend position.
But an undercurrent was an appreciation for Putin’s perceived tenacity in wielding power. Russian conservative media personality Megyn Kelly once said, “Don’t want this whole Brooklyn pumpkin-spice latte-drinking man they’re creating here.” And she added, “Neither do I.”
Trump himself has made his preferences in this regard very clear. His ties to autocrats – Putin, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Chinese President Xi Jinping – have generally been more positive than his ties to America’s geopolitical allies. He himself appealed to the right’s claim to leadership with an iron fist, a heavy hand that would nullify election results and smash the opposition.
Aside from Trump, no leader of the American right has benefited from this instinct more than Orban. After a speech in Europe, in which he shouted “becom[ing] Mixed race peoples,” he spoke at a CPAC convention in Dallas. In doing so, he largely repeated Trump – understandable since the two share a broad philosophy. (When Orban ran for re-election this year, Trump eagerly supported him.)
Orban is the leader of Hungary’s Fidesz party. According to an analysis by the V-Dem Institute at Gothenburg University in Sweden, like the Republican Party in the United States, it has seen a rise in anti-pluralist sentiment over the past two decades. In other words, both parties are moving away from a system in which different parties are equally vying for power. Orban has explicitly done so.
(Putin’s United Russia party has, of course, long been deeply anti-pluralist.)
One of those opponents of pluralism that CPAC has supported is Trump himself. He spoke at a rally in Michigan over the weekend, declaring that future election results could not be trusted. This has been a core part of his rhetoric since 2020, for obvious reasons: getting people to suspect election results is a key part of making them believe he didn’t lose.
However, the effect within his party was widespread. Most Republicans still say they believe the 2020 election was stolen. A Yahoo News poll conducted by YouGov shows that less than half of Americans think candidates should make a commitment to accepting the results of their elections. Nearly 4 in 10 of those who voted for Trump in 2020 say losing candidates should continue to question the results.
Political strategist Frank Luntz, who appeared on Monday’s Morning Joe, expressed deep pessimism about those numbers.
“If you lose faith and trust in the election itself, you have lost your democracy,” he said. “And we’re so close to the edge.”
Luntz is not a leftist. He’s a longtime Republican adviser, someone with close ties to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). And his assessment is that the kind of electoral skepticism advocated by Trump and embraced by Republicans as the party moves away from pluralist democracy poses a significant threat.
CPAC eventually deleted that tweet. In a statement, the organization acknowledged that the embassy “belittles the plight of the innocent people of Ukraine” and that “[w]We must oppose Putin.”
The space that Putin created for himself on the American right has all but evaporated. At this point it cannot serve well as a useful foil for the right to criticize the left. CPAC’s admitted mistake was not to side with an autocratic foreign power against the American president. It’s just the power they chose.