THE GOP REALLY IS "THE ENEMY"

In case you were wondering, the Republican Party is even more The Enemy Of America now than it was back in the 2020 election. And the Republicans are going out of their way over the past two months to take every opportunity to let us know this fact as they keep saying the quiet parts out loud - not just in a speaking voice, but shouting at the top of their lungs.

A week ago - last Wednesday - 15 Republican senators held a press conference where they criticized President Biden for employuing insufficient boldness in Ukraine. John Kennedy - who plays the country hick despite an Oxford education - compared Biden to “Bambi’s baby brother.” Ben Sasse - who revels in playing the role of “independent voice” - accused the administration of acting as if the war was a “nerd-lawyer” dispute, not “a moral battle.” John Cornyn declared, “The Biden administration’s timidity in the face of this evil needs to end.”

This is how Republican politicians talked about foreign policy from Dwight Eisenhower in 1955 to Mitt Romney in 2012 - they were the party of toughness and strength, while Democrats were the party of weakness. If that was ever true, it is no longer.

The GOP, as measured by the expressed beliefs of its voters, has reverted to what it was as of December 6, 1941.

Beginning with opposition to the Versailles Treaty and the creation of the League of Nations 100 years ago, the GOP embraced isolationism, culminating in the America First movement in the years before Pearl Harbor. It was only on December 8, when FDR asked Congress to declare that since the previous day - the “Day of Infamy” - a state of war had existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire, that Republicans became advocates of international military force. Jeanette Rankin, the Republican congresswoman who had voted against declaring war in 1917 was the sole vote against in 1941.

Republican isolationism has waxed and waned since 1941. It was a factor President Truman had to consider when he declared the Truman Doctrine in 1947. There were Republicans who argued against the Berlin Airlift in 1948 and Republican votes against the NATO Treaty in 1949. It was not until the “traditional” Republican ruling wing was defeated by the nomination of former Allied Supreme Commander in Europe Eisenhower over isolationist Senator Robert Taft in 1952 that the party became firmly “the party of toughness and strength.”

The Trump era as seen this wing become dominant in the party for the first time since before World War II.

The Echelon Insights poll taken February 19-23, as Vladimir Putin prepared to invade Ukraine, saw 58 percent of Democratic voters agree that “It’s best for the future of our country to be active in world affairs,” while Republicans supported “We should pay less attention to problems overseas and concentrate on problems here at home” by a ratio of 2:1.In the same poll, 47 percent of Democrats said human rights should be a top priority in foreign policy. Only 27 percent of Republicans agreed.

Following the lead of Trump, Republicans aren’t only less interested than Democrats in fighting for universal values like as democracy; they less likely to support allies. In an Economist/YouGov poll in early February, 27 percent of Republicans said the United States should withdraw from NATO, a position supported by only 8 percent of Democrats. A month later, a week into the Russian invasion, 34 percent of Democrats held a “very favorable” view of NATO; this was the position of only 12 percent of Republicans.

Rising isolationism in the GOP base has converged with Trump’s sympathy for Russia and hostility to Ukraine. Putin’s favorable rating among Republicans has reached 14-18 percent in surveys, two times more than his favorable rating by Democrats. Republicans are more likely than Democrats to affirm that Putin is a “genius,” that his conduct of the war is justified, and that the best outcome would be a Russian victory. On average, only about 10 percent of Republicans openly express such pro-invasion views. But they’re joined by a much larger group of Republicans who are hostile to or wary of Ukraine. This is the result of Trump propaganda that accused Ukraine of pervasive corruption and electoral sabotage against the GOP.

In the latest Economist/YouGov survey, taken March 12-15, 40 percent of Democrats classified Ukraine as an ally; only 23 percent of Republicans agreed. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was seen “very favorably” by 53% of Democrats, while only 39% of Republicans shared that view. Republicans were also significantly less likely than Democrats to acknowledge that Ukraine is a democracy. In other polls, Democrats have consistently said that Ukraine deserves little or no blame for the war; Republicans are closely divided on that question.

In February, these sentiments - isolationist, pro-Putin, anti-Ukraine - divided the GOP over whether it was more important to “take a strong stand so that Russia does not take over Ukraine by force” or, alternatively, to “maintain good relations with Russia.” A Yahoo News/YouGov poll done that month found 58%t of Democrats thought the United States should take Ukraine’s side, but only 42% of Republicans agreed. A majority of Democrats said it was “in America’s best interests to stop Russia and help Ukraine,” but a majority of Republicans believed “The conflict is none of America’s business.”

Today, Republican politicians say Biden should have sanctioned Russia and sent more weapons to Ukraine before the invasion. But that wasn’t what Republican voters thought. In weekly Economist/YouGov surveys, Democrats clearly favored weapons shipments to Ukraine, but Republicans were evenly divided. A Washington Post/ABC News poll found that if sanctions on Russia entailed higher energy prices in the United States, 62% of Democrats would still support them, but only 44% of Republicans would do so.

As Biden moved to fortify Europe against the Russian threat, Republicans opposed him. In mid-February, a Quinnipiac poll informed respondents that Biden had “approved the deployment of thousands of troops to Eastern Europe to support U.S. allies in NATO, such as Poland and Romania.” That was approved by 70% of Democrats; a plurality of Republicans, 47% to 43%, rejected it. Echelon Insights found Democrats supported this statement: “The United States has a moral responsibility to protect Ukraine and other democratic allies from aggression and invasion, even if it means sending military aid or deploying troops” 56% to 31%. However, by 51% to 39%, Republicans agreed with the alternative statement: “The United States has more important issues to focus on at home than sending military aid or deploying troops to deter a potential Russian invasion.”

The latest Yahoo News survey, completed last Monday, shows that 76% of Democrats say the United States should take Ukraine’s side; only 57% of Republicans agree. An overwhelming 80% of Democrats endorse “severe economic sanctions on Russia”; only 57% of Republicans agree. Two-thirds of Democrats prefer a “full Russian defeat”; only 51 percent of Republicans agree. When respondents are asked whether “It’s in America’s best interests to stop Russia and help Ukraine,” 72% of Democrats say we should help Ukraine. Fewer 50% of Republicans agree.

It gets worse. Less than 50% of Republicans are willing to “maintain our commitment to defend NATO allies when they are attacked;” “send U.S. troops to protect NATO allies near Ukraine;” or “Keep U.S. military forces in NATO countries near Ukraine.” Even when they’re told that Article 5 of the NATO Treaty means that “The U.S. and its European allies are obligated to defend countries that belong to NATO if they are invaded by a foreign power,” less than 50% of Republicans say we should respond with force “if Russia were to invade a NATO member state.”

These numbers drive home an uncomfortable truth: As war returns to Europe, America’s soft underbelly isn’t in the Biden administration. It’s in the GOP.

The problem isn’t just that rank-and-file Republicans are reluctant to stand up to Putin. It’s that they still think they represent a muscular foreign policy. In every survey, they complain Biden has been “too weak,” and they insist that the United States must get “tougher.” But then, when they’re asked about measures that would actually get tougher, they flinch.

It’s not just on the crisis in Ukraine. The Senate hearings on approving Judge Ketanji Jackson as the first African-American woman to become a Supreme Court Justice have brought out the real beliefs of Republicans on race and the old Confederacy claim of “state’s rights.”

Yesterday, far right Indiana Senator Mike Braun told a reporter that states not only should decide the issue of abortion but should also be able to decide the issues of whether interracial marriage should be legal and whether couples should have access to contraception, saying: “Well, you can list a whole host of issues, when it comes down to whatever they are, I’m going to say that they’re not going to all make you happy within a given state, but we’re better off having states manifest their points of view rather than homogenizing it across the country as Roe v. Wade did.” Braun’s willingness to abandon the right of Americans to marry across racial lines was particularly pointed, given that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is in an interracial marriage.

What Republican right wingers mean when they say such things as Baun did is that the entire body of decisions in which the federal government protects civil rights, beginning with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision ending segregation in the public schools, is illegitimate.

Braun is not an outlier. The same day he said this, Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) challenged the Griswold v. Connecticut decision legalizing contraception, and Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) questioned the constitutionality of Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage in their questioning of Judge Jackson. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham had the gall to ask Judge Jackson what her religion was; the noted “constitutional expert” apparently forgot that the Constitution explicitly states that no religious test shall ever be used to hold an office in the United States.

Some have criticized Senator Durbin for allowing these questions. I think he’s doing the country a favor by letting the Far Right be the Far Right in public, on national television, so the rest of us can see them for what they are.

The past ten days, I have had a personal opportunity to see just how far gone the Far Right is now. Back in 2016, my then-agent, the late Jim Hornfischer, set up my book “The Bridgebusters: the True Story of the Catch-22 Bomb Wing” with Regnery, the noted “conservative publisher.” I agreed with this since they were the only publisher who said “yes” to the book proposal, and I even managed to agree with their acquisitions editor (who will remain unnamed here for reasons that will be clear in another sentence or so) when he said, upon learning I am not a “conservative,” that “Well, there aren’t any political disagreements over World War II, are there?” (In fact, there are many, but it wasn’t important to educate him on the point at that time.)

Cut to six years later. The book has consistently sold well, according to Amazon, despite having been left to sink or swim after six weeks of my making the rounds of right wing talk radio to publicize it (they all liked it - in fact the guy who did the best interview I have ever done with anyone on any of my books, the guy who had read it himself and loved it, was - drumroll... Steve Bannon). I noted on a visit to my Amazon page that Regnery had announced there would be a trade paperback publication of the book under “Regnery History Classics” this coming October. Checking with my editor at Osprey, I confirmed my belief that when a publisher does something like this, it means that the book has “sold through” the author’s advance. What that means is, the author should be getting some royalty checks from the publisher since the book is bringing in more money than was originally advanced against sales. However, I have never seen an Author’s Royalty Statement (probably due to Jim being diagnosed with the brain tumor that killed him last year the year after the book was released, when he had to leave his business).

So, I e-mailed that acquisitions editor to ask for a Royalty Statement. No answer. Since both he and I are on Linked-In, I checked to see if he was still there, and found he had moved to a different publisher, based in a small town outside Nashville. I googled the company to get their website to see if I could get his e-mail, and found them to be the kind of publisher that actual “published authors” generally don’t deal with (pay us and we’ll publish your book), though they were a step up from the rest of those places in that they had a deal with a Major New York City Publisher for their books to go out under the Major’s “conservative” imprint.

I googled further and discovered the company had just been dropped by that Major New York City Publisher for publishing a book written by a member of the Louisville, Kentucky SWAT Team that murdered Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old African-American woman fatally shot in her apartment on March 13, 2020, when police officers forced entry into the apartment in a drug raid, that defended the police! Not only that, the book goes on to attack the entire Black Lives Matter movement that happened in 2020.

A further look at the company’s list of published books turns up a whole lot of similar Far Far Right garbage. I was momentarily surprised, since this acquisitions editor had been someone I felt was an “OK guy” back when I was dealing with him over “Bridgebusters” in 2015-16 (though I had to threaten to “go to the mattresses” to get him to use the proper title for the book; his choice of title revealed he failed to understand the whole thing - I’ve never had that problem before or since). It took a few minutes to realize I shouldn’t have been surprised.

My acquisitions editor had simply floated on downstream on the dark river that is the Modern American Right, along with the rest of them. Regnery is considered “mainstream” in the GOP. Shortly after my book was picked up, Regnery was bought by Salem Communications, the leading Far Right communications company that you’ve never heard of - owner of 100 right wing talk radio stations, Townhall.Com, Breitbart, and just about the entire universe of Conservatism Inc’s media that isn’t television.

(And to finish off the story, I got the e-mail for Regnery’s new publisher from my friend the acquisitions editor, and found that Regnery’s head is now a guy who when I googled him turns out to be one of the “hackier” far right hacks in Conservatism Inc. But I’ll get my Author’s Royalty Statement, since contracts still control, and maybe it will add to what I am expecting from my regular publisher, since “I Will Run Wild,” ”Under The Southern Cross” and “Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club” have all been selling very very well indeed.)

My point in all this is: the Right has been on an accelerated move to the Far Right ever since Newt Gingrich arrived in Congress 40 years ago, and this movement is only becoming more accelerated and more obvious. Jennifer Rubin’s column in yesterday’s Washington Post was titled: “Fringe Republicans Are Not the Problem. It’s The Party’s Mainstream.” She is absolutely right.

Back in April 2012, The Brookings Institution’s Thomas Mann, and the American Enterprise Institute’s Norm Ornstein wrote: “The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.”

The situation is only more apparent and far worse than when they wrote that. Today’s Republican Party is both a national security threat to the United States and the “domestic enemy” of our democratic constitutional republic.

The Republicans expect to take Congress in November as easily as Putin thought he would take Kyiv. We need to show them that it’s not just the people of Ukraine who are willing to fight like hell to maintain and keep democracy.

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