As if President Zelensky and 44 million Ukrainians didn't have enough to worry about ...
Now comes Ron DeSantis, a popular governor and leading Republican presidential candidate, bowing to the "America First," isolationist Trump crowd. He's prepared to cut Ukraine loose in its struggle for survival against the authoritarian Russian Bear, pretty much the same as the last Russian Bear — the one Republicans inveighed against for decades as a threat to the global order and killer of human liberty.
“While the U.S. has many vital national interests — securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness with our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural and military power of the Chinese Communist Party — becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them," said DeSantis in a statement read on Fox News last night.
Specifically, DeSantis' statement was read by Fox News' Tucker Carlson, whom The Bulwark's Charlie Sykes calls the right’s "restless ethical, moral, and ideological id." And just what is the right's ethical-to-ideological rot? "Why do I care what is going on in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia?" asked Tucker in 2019. "I'm serious. Why shouldn't I root for Russia? Which by the way I am."
Which is why DeSantis had his statement read by Tucker (and why Tucker is much-watch TV in Russia). For months, and almost nightly, the Fox News host has been peddling his pro-Putinism to the gaping rubes, and of course the Republican Party's presumed presidential frontrunner, Trump, has made clear his authoritarian affinity with Putin's autocracy. Hence the GOP rank and file has suffered a diseased twist in its understanding of global right and wrong.
The NY Times notes that "a January poll from the Pew Research Center showed that 40 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning independent voters thought the U.S. was giving too much support to Ukraine. Last March, the month after Mr. Putin invaded, the proportion of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who held this view was only 9 percent."
Now, with DeSantis piling on, that 40 percent "too much support to Ukraine" will only grow. The Florida governor had to get at least to a lateral position with Trump on Ukraine. Both men will demagogue on essentially militarizing the southern border instead, since, as they tell us every hour, it is in "crisis." The Trump-DeSantis position will, regrettably, attract considerable public support. Democrats beware; it's your Achilles' heel.
DeSantis is nothing if not flexible. "Back in 2014 and 2015," as the Times further notes, "when Mr. Putin was in the initial stage of his invasion of Ukraine by annexing Crimea, Mr. DeSantis sounded like a conventional Republican hawk. He attacked then-President Obama for not doing enough."
In a 2015 radio interview, DeSantis said "[The Ukrainians] want to fight their good fight. They’re not asking us to fight it for them. And the president has steadfastly refused. And I think that that’s a mistake."
DeSantis' latest statement was in response to a Tucker questionnaire, which he had sent to all prospective Republican presidential candidates. As Mr. Sykes wrote: "[Tucker's] is the ring that still must be kissed. And kiss it DeSantis did. With enthusiasm." Also unrecognizably, from as recently as the Obama era.
Trump also answered Tucker's questionnaire, babbling that "both sides are weary and ready to make a deal" — which is patently untrue — and that the "death and destruction must end now," which Trump has said he knows how to accomplish, but he won't tell anyone. "Trump has already said he would let Russia 'take over' parts of Ukraine in a negotiated deal."
The Trump-DeSantis stance on the Russia-Ukraine war is going to cause much anguish among congressional Republicans of the older school. They've been pushing President Biden to provide more aid to Ukraine, which, I would venture, reflects an agreed-upon consensus among military analysts. But what to do when one of these men, Trump or DeSantis, is the party's presidential nominee? — which one of the two surely will be.
Meanwhile, Gov. Ron DeSantis has shown us — I'm going to borrow from George C. Scott's toned-down Gen. Patton here — that he knows as much about foreign affairs as he does about fornicating.