It Turns Out Republican Voters Don’t Actually Care about Ukraine Aid

By Noah Rothman

Monday, May 20, 2024

 

“This is disgraceful,” said Senator J. D. Vance following the passage through the Senate, earlier this year, of legislation designed to provide support to America’s embattled partners abroad. “And if you are a leader of this country, of the United States of America, you should be getting fired up about that.” Along with the indecorous Ukraine critics he’s decided to make his allies, Vance promoted himself as the true champion for the unexpressed views of a majority of Republican voters. His opposition to supporting Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s war of conquest was an expression of his voters’ views, Vance insisted.

 

It seemed like Vance had the facts on his side. The polling had long indicated that support for Ukraine’s cause was on the decline among Republican voters, and Speaker Mike Johnson’s reluctance to take up the Senate bill appeared to support the claim that Republicans with their ears to the ground understood that endorsing Kyiv’s cause represented a political liability. “Credit to Mike Johnson for being the one person in that meeting who’s standing there saying, ‘We have got to put the interest of our own citizens first,’” said Vance glowingly.

 

But Johnson buckled. In late April, the House easily passed a variety of proposals aiding U.S. allies in Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine; an amendment backed by Marjorie Taylor Greene that was designed to zero out U.S. support for Kyiv generated just 71 Republican votes. The anti-Ukraine right was livid, but the expressions of their outrage — up to and including an attempt to oust Johnson from the speakership — failed. All this suggests that hostility toward Ukraine among the GOP rank-and-file was far less salient than many understood. But how would those voters react when they had the chance to register their dissatisfaction with their pro-Ukraine representatives in GOP primaries? That question loomed large, but it has since been answered. Republican voters have now demonstrated that the long-forecast anti-Ukraine backlash was not going to materialize.

 

In Late April, the New York Times explored the surprising failure of Republican voters to impose political consequences on their pro-Ukraine representatives in primaries. Even in “solidly Republican” districts, incumbents who voted with the majority have survived. Last week, the Washington Post’s Paul Kane followed up on the phenomenon and found that Republican voters’ oft-retailed “anger” has not manifested in support for anti-Ukraine upstarts.

 

There are lessons to be gleaned from the exposure of this political mirage. “If Republicans can escape this primary season without an incumbent losing over the Ukraine vote, it could begin to teach them to avoid living in fear of their own voters,” Kane asserted. Indeed, as member after member of the GOP conference in Congress has told reporters, when the stakes of Russia’s war in Europe are explained to voters, “people get it.”

 

So, when elected leaders opt to, you know, lead — treating voters like adults by outlining their principles and presenting the facts as they understand them — voters respond favorably. That condition might come as a shock to elected officials who believe it is their job to ratify whatever the consensus opinion among the GOP “base” is at any given moment, but it shouldn’t shock those Republicans who still retain some attachment to Burkean sensibilities.

 

“I think people have been too obsessed with voting for foreign wars,” Greene told reporters after what she has deemed Johnson’s “betrayal.” She seemed convinced that when her fellow Republicans went “home and hear from their constituents,” the backlash would be overwhelming. But it was not to be. Perhaps Greene, Vance, and their anti-Kyiv allies will take the hint and stop presuming to speak for the Republican voters they don’t appear to understand. But don’t anyone hold your breath.