Behind the GOP’s shifting excuses for abandoning Ukraine

The White House and Senate continue to work frantically toward a deal to supply Ukraine before Congress recesses for Christmas. Supposedly, all leaders of Congress are united in their commitment to Ukraine—so the new speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, insists. Yet somehow this allegedly united commitment is not translating into action. Why not?

The notional answer is that Republicans must have a border-security deal as the price for Ukraine aid. But who on earth sets a price that could stymie something they affirmatively want to do? Republicans have not conditioned their support for Social Security on getting a border deal. They would never say that tax cuts must wait until after the border is secure. Only Ukraine is treated as something to be bartered, as if at a county fair. How did that happen?

Ukraine’s expendability to congressional Republicans originates in the sinister special relationship between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

Pre-Trump, Republicans expressed much more hawkish views on Russia than Democrats did. Russia invaded eastern Ukraine and annexed Crimea in spring 2014. In a Pew Research survey in March of that year, 58 percent of Republicans complained that President Barack Obama’s response was “not tough enough,” compared with just 22 percent of Democrats. After the annexation, Republicans were more than twice as likely as Democrats to describe Russia as “an adversary” of the United States: 42 percent to 19 percent. As for Putin personally, his rule was condemned by overwhelming majorities of both parties. Only about 20 percent of Democrats expressed confidence in Putin in a 2015 Pew survey, and 17 percent of Republicans.

Trump changed all that—with a lot of help from pro-Putin voices on Fox News and right-wing social media.

At the beginning of Trump’s ascendancy in the GOP, even his future allies in Congress distrusted his pro-Russian affinities. Kevin McCarthy, a future House speaker, was inadvertently recorded in a June 2016 meeting with other Republican congressional leaders, saying, “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.” Some in the room laughed. McCarthy responded, “Swear to God.” (Dana Rohrabacher was a Republican House member from California, a notorious Putin apologist, and a joke figure among his caucus colleagues; despite almost 30 years’ seniority in the House, he was kept away from major committee assignments.)

If Trump had not caught a lucky bounce in the Electoral College in November 2016, he’d have gotten the Rohrabacher treatment too. After the Access Hollywood tape leaked, many prominent Republicans, including then-Speaker Paul Ryan, distanced themselves from Trump. In the election, Republicans lost two seats in the........

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