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It’s been a couple of weeks since House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul was surprisingly candid about one of his party’s direction. “I think Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base,” the Texas Republican complained.
Less than a week later, the House Intelligence Committee’s Republican chair, Ohio’s Mike Turner, echoed the sentiment, conceding that some of his GOP colleagues are peddling rhetoric that’s “directly coming from Russia.” Soon after, former Defense Secretary William Cohen, a longtime GOP lawmaker, said he believes many congressional Republicans are now working as “the arm of Vladimir Putin.”
If these rebukes were designed to discourage GOP officials from making the kind of public comments the Kremlin wants to hear, they don’t appear to be having their intended effect.
On Friday, for example, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene appeared on Steve Bannon’s podcast and continued to peddle the same rhetoric she’s pushed since Russia invaded Ukraine more than two years ago. “Vladimir Putin has not said he wants to go march across Europe and take Europe,” the Georgia Republican said, as if the Russian autocrat is a credible source of information.
The same day, The New York Times published an op-ed from Republican Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio — a persistent opponent of U.S. support for Ukraine, and a man who has professed his total indifference to Ukraine’s future — which argued that a Russian victory is inevitable.
President Biden wants the world to believe that the biggest obstacle facing Ukraine is Republicans and our lack of commitment to the global community. This is wrong. Ukraine’s challenge is not the G.O.P.; it’s math. Ukraine needs more soldiers than it can field, even with draconian conscription policies. And it needs more matériel than the United States can provide. This reality must inform any future Ukraine policy, from further congressional aid to the diplomatic course set by the president.
The reality is far more complex. Indeed, just hours after the Ohioan’s op-ed reached the public, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner published a notable item to social media, noting just how much damage Ukraine did over the course of the first two years of the conflict to Russia’s military capabilities.
Whether the Virginia Democrat was directing his message to his GOP colleague was unclear, but the missive nevertheless countered Vance’s case for defeatism. The idea that Russia is simply too strong and dominant to lose, so the West should simply allow Putin to take part of eastern Europe by force, is belied by recent evidence.
The Senate Republican nevertheless kept going down the same path, sitting down with CNN’s Jake Tapper yesterday and arguing that the United States should encourage Ukraine to “take a defensive posture,” instead of launching counteroffensives against their Russian invaders.
It fell to the host to remind his guest, “The counteroffensive is within Ukraine, though. They’re not seeking land from Russia.”
It’s likely that officials in Moscow were pleased with Vance’s latest rhetorical push, but Americans should be far less impressed.