DeSantis's Ukraine remarks, Republican response and the blurred lines between phoniness and sincerity

 By now, you're aware of what the Florida governor said:

"While the U.S. has many vital national interests — securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Community Party — becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them," DeSantis said in a statement to Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

A territorial dispute. Interesting way to frame it, to say the least.

A number of prominent Republicans seized the opportunity to seize the moral high ground - or something that they hope voters will see as a reasonable facsimile.

Let's start with the reaction of the one Republican addressing this whom we can be confident is driven by principle:

“The Ukrainian people are fighting for their freedom,” the former lawmaker said in a statement to The New York Times on Tuesday. “Surrendering to Putin and refusing to defend freedom makes America less safe.”

Cheney, who was known as a defense hawk during her time in Congress, said the stance by DeSantis showed “weakness.”

“Weakness is provocative and American officials who advocate this type of weakness are Putin’s greatest weapon,” Cheney said. “Abandoning Ukraine would make broader conflict, including with China and other American adversaries, more likely.”

Nikki Haley, who irreparably damaged her cred with the early 2021 pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago and who is now a declared presidential candidate, exudes the vibe of a politician striving to straddle in her response:

“President Trump is right when he says Governor DeSantis is copying him—first in his style, then on entitlement reform, and now on Ukraine,” Haley said in a statement. “I have a different style than President Trump, and while I agree with him on most policies, I do not on those.”

In her own response to the Fox News questionnaire, Haley offered an unequivocal “Yes,” when asked if defending Ukraine was in America’s vital interests.

“America is far better off with a Ukrainian victory than a Russian victory,” Haley said. “If Russia wins, there is no reason to believe it will stop at Ukraine.”

John Cornyn, the Texas Senator who serves as the grownup foil to his colleague with the same position, speaks pretty plainly about it:

“I’m disturbed by it. I think he’s a smart guy,” Cornyn told Politico. “I want to find out more about it, but I hope he feels like he doesn’t need to take that Tucker Carlson line to be competitive in the primary. It’s important for us to continue to support Ukrainians for our own security.”

As sentiment from some in his party has soured on the war, Cornyn has been one of the leading conservative voices in the Senate continuing to voice the need for U.S. support.

“The point that keeps getting lost in this war is that a Ukrainian victory is in our national interest,” Cornyn said on the Senate floor last month. “The most effective way to keep American troops out of the line of fire is to help the Ukrainians stop Putin now, before his conquest moves even further west.”

Marco Rubio rightly zeroed in on the "territorial dispute" characterization.

Thom Tillis emphasized the humanitarian-crisis aspect.  

This dustup will deepen the fissure between MAGA world and, well, pretty much the rest of the country. Everybody who is not eyeball-deep in Kool-Aid can see what the drop-Ukraine-like-a-hot-potato position for what it is. Yes, Ukraine has dealt with corruption issues since the fall of the USSR. Nations are comprised of fallen human beings, and every last one of them has ever-present challenges as a result. But from 1991 to 2014, the world understood the parameters of Ukraine's sovereignty. Putin has acted in utter disregard for that understanding since then. A reliably stable global order is what's at stake here.

Is DeSantis flaming out already?

Probably too early to say decisively, but it's heartening to see the short-term damage it's doing to his national standing. But we surely have many more plot twists to witness before determining whether it is a corrective moment or a fatal one. 

 

 

Principled political figures are as rare as snow in July, but once in a while you find one

 

 

I'm more reluctant by the day to lionize any political figure, especially since the Trumpism phenomenon made my heart heavy with disillusionment. 

But as of now, Liz Cheney is on my list of supremely cool people. Watch her Meet The Press Interview from this morning.  She give exactly the right answer to the two most important questions in the seven-minute conversation. 

When asked about what kinds of compromises might bet necessary on Ukraine's part to achieve a cease-fire, she says, in so many words, "none." Just so. It would be like a woman negotiating with her rapist on the consequences of his aggression. 

And she's similarly spot-on about the attempt to put the JCPOA back together. Chuck Todd tries to parse matters by asking her if she'd be cool with a deal on Iran's nuclear capabilities if Russia weren't involved. "Nah," she basically says. A pariah state is a pariah state. Surely we're learning that from the Eastern European cataclysm.

If I do vote for president in 2024 - and it's far from certain that I will - it will be for her, whether or not she's on the ballot.

There's no place for principle, character or spine in the 2022 Republican Party

 Last month, at Precipice, I summarized the challenge that I've had as a cultural observer since the insertion of a new force in our nation's politics since 2015:

When I started opining on culture, politics, economics and world affairs online, and in a column I wrote for several years for our local newspaper, the lines of demarcation were more clear-cut. There was right, and there was left. I expended a great many keyboard strokes trying to get people to see that Barack Obama was a lurch leftward beyond any that had come before for the Democrats. Frank Marshall Davis, Rashid Khalidi, the Midwest Academy, Bill Ayers and all that. The task before conservatives (back when that term stood for something recognizable) was straightforward: explain and defend our glorious lineage, from Edmund Burke through Frederic Bastiat, Richard M. Weaver, Russell Kirk, National Review and on up to Reaganite fusionism, and point out the dark nature of the lineage on the other side.

It’s all quite different now, isn’t it? Yes, the Left has grown increasingly grotesque, but an entirely new element has upended everyone’s previous assumptions . . .

That’s why any pundit, let alone fundraiser or political candidate who focuses solely on the very real grotesqueness of the Democrats - “We’ll defeat these leftists and then everything will be alright” - must be viewed with suspicion. Such a figure wants you to ignore the at least equally monstrous malignancy on the Right.

Now, the governor of Florida has illustrated exactly that kind of smokescreening maneuver:

"Liz Cheney is just totally off the rails with her nonsense," DeSantis said during an interview Monday with Fox News Digital. "And I think she's not really a Republican in terms of terms of what she's doing. We want people that are going to fight the left, and that's what we need to do in this country. That's what we're doing in Florida, standing up for people's freedoms. We're opposing wokeness. We're opposing all these things." 

A tactic closely akin to the the-Left-is-all-we-have-to-oppose ploy is whataboutism taking the form of "but there was urban violence in 2020." That's how Elise Stefanik, who assumed Liz Cheney's number three position in House Republican leadership, even thou her voting record has been far less consistently conservative that Cheney's, has chosen to obscure the 800-pound gorilla in the room:

“House Democrats did not condemn the violence that happened all of 2020,” she said in reference to riots in some cities following the murder of George Floyd in police custody. “And we believe the January 6 commission is political theater.” 

Sorry, Madame Conference Chair, but that's a non-sequitur. It's not the subject at hand. 

Then there's the dragging-our-brand-across-the-finish-line-is-far-and-away-our-primary-mission approach, as exemplified by Nikki Haley in response to a question from Bret Baier on FNC's Special Report:

“Mike Pence is a good man,” Haley said. “He’s an honest man. I think he did what he thought was right on that day. But I will always say, I’m not a fan of Republicans going against Republicans.”

Donald Trump has, of course, been breaking people who once prided themselves on being animated by principle since he entered the political fray. What a lifetime ago it seems when 

Lindsey Graham characterized the Very Stable Genius thusly:

"If Donald Trump carries the banner of my party," Graham said, "I think it taints conservatism for generations to come. I think his campaign is opportunistic, race-baiting, religious bigotry, xenophobia. Other than that, he’d be a good nominee."

and Rick Perry put it like this:

"Let no one be mistaken Donald Trump’s candidacy is a cancer on conservatism and it must be clearly diagnosed, excised, and discarded," Perry said during a speech in Washington, D.C. "It cannot be pacified or ignored for it will destroy a set of principles that has lifted more people out of poverty than any force in the history of the civilized world and that is the cause of conservatism."

and Ted Cruz, full of righteous indignation, said this:

“This man is a pathological liar. He doesn't know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth,” Cruz told reporters in Evansville, Indiana.

The Hoosier State primary is crucial for Cruz’s goal of preventing Trump from gaining enough delegates to secure the GOP presiential nomination. Most polls show Trump with a lead in the state, and Cruz’s attacks against his rival on Tuesday went into his personal life in a way Trump’s opponents have largely avoided until now.

“Donald Trump is a serial philanderer and he boasts about it,” Cruz said. “This is not a secret, he is proud of being a serial philanderer." 

The only people left in the Republican Party interested in having any personal honor almost certainly have no future in it. They don't even respect each other. They each and all know that they opted to be motivated by fear of a four-year-old in a 76-year-old man's body. 

They claim to be so concerned about the impact of progressive aggression on the foundations of the American way of life, but deep inside they know they've chosen a path that is utterly ineffective in addressing it.

The entire party, save for the handful of outliers with no voice in it, is in the throes of a delusion borne of cowardice.