By John McCormack
Wednesday, April 06, 2022
Yesterday, I published an article about
how Ohio GOP Senate candidate J. D. Vance got on the wrong side of Republican
voters and even some of his donors over his stance on Ukraine.
In response to my article, Michael Brendan
Dougherty argued that
Vance’s position on Ukraine is actually popular, so let’s take a closer look at
the issue.
Here is what Vance said on February
19, a few days before Russia launched its full-scale invasion:
“I gotta be honest with you, I
don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” Vance said on
Steve Bannon’s podcast. “I’m sick of Joe Biden focusing on the border of a
country I don’t care about while he lets the border of his own country become a
total war zone.”
Vance’s position that he didn’t “care what happens to
Ukraine one way or another” was deeply unpopular — so unpopular that even some
Vance donors (who clearly don’t have a problem with populism) called
him to complain.
Vance is now pretending
that all he said was that he wanted to avoid nuclear war with Russia
or that Ukraine isn’t in the “vital” national-security interest of America. But
that is not what he said, and if you play a video clip of Vance uttering that
single sentence — “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or
another” — most Republican voters will recoil.
Vance’s statement wasn’t merely a matter of sentiment, of
course. If Vance really didn’t “care what happens to Ukraine one way or
another,” then the logical policy based on that belief would be to do nothing —
no arms for Ukraine, no sanctions against Russia.
While Republicans overwhelmingly support military aid to
Ukraine and harsh sanctions against Russia, Vance has flailed around
on both issues.
At first, Vance basically defended the isolationist
position he staked out on Steve Bannon’s podcast. Before the invasion, Vance
did not call for the United States to lift a finger to help Ukraine.
On the eve of war, prominent populists
scoffed at the notion Americans were interested in aiding Ukraine.
Michael Brendan Dougherty laughed at
the idea that
it would be popular for Republicans to support sending weapons to
Ukraine: “If people want to buy weapons, that’s something to discuss. But
the idea that GOP voters have some deep passionate attachment to this conflict
is insane. This is a debate for insiders.”
In an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show the night
of February
23 — after Vladimir Putin had delivered his speech announcing the
“special military operation” in Ukraine — Vance dismissed “this Ukraine crisis
that has nothing to do with our national security. . . . We would be much
better served, Tucker — our people would be safer — if we declared the Mexican
cartels a terrorist organization, focused on them, and let Ukraine and Russia
figure out what’s in Russia and Ukraine’s business.”
But on February 24, after the horror of Russia’s
full-scale invasion had begun to unfold, Vance changed his tune on Ukraine.
“Russia’s assault on Ukraine is unquestionably a
tragedy,” he wrote in a statement released
just five days after he had said he didn’t “care what happens to Ukraine one
way or another.”
Vance said in his February 24 statement that “Trump
deserves an incredible amount of credit for the strength and diplomatic
engagement that kept Putin in check.” But if Vance didn’t care about Ukraine
one way or another, why did Trump deserve credit for deterring an invasion of
Ukraine?
“Russia has earned sanctions, but whatever sanctions we
apply will have little effect,” Vance wrote, coming out in favor of sanctions
for the first time. But if Vance believes America has literally no
national-security interest at all in Ukraine and that sanctions will have
little effect, then why would he support any sanctions on Russia?
In his February 24 statement, Vance’s only mention of
U.S. military aid to Ukraine was a condemnation of it: “We spent $6 billion on
a failed Ukrainian army.”
By March 3, after Ukraine’s military proved far more
resilient than most experts had expected, Vance was willing to concede on
Tucker Carlson’s show that he was “fine with sending aid — you know, food,
medicine, other supplies” on the condition that Congress approved $30 billion
to build the wall on the U.S.–Mexico border. Vance again pushed the idea of
“predicat[ing] aid to Ukraine” on funding of the border wall in a March
23 Federalist article.
Is it popular, after Russia invaded Ukraine, to hold
military aid to Ukraine hostage in order to achieve any particular
domestic-policy goal — whether it’s building the wall, banning abortion,
passing the Green New Deal, or Medicare for All? I’m very skeptical. Just look
at the behavior of House Republicans who cosponsored a bill to ban aid to
Ukraine until the border wall is built:
In February, ten House Republicans backed a bill to deny funding for arms
for Ukraine until the U.S.-Mexico border wall "is completed."
Last week, eight of those 10 Rs
voted for a resolution calling for "immediate" additional U.S.
military aid to Ukraine. https://t.co/z08FE9ttw7 pic.twitter.com/EZGryz81DV
— John McCormack
(@McCormackJohn) March
7, 2022
In other recent comments, Vance has flatly opposed aid to
Ukraine. On March 19, he said on Steve Bannon’s podcast that the United
States shouldn’t pour “money
into the war sinkhole” of Ukraine.
“I don’t care enough about what’s going on over there
that I’m going to step in it, get a bunch of our citizens killed and pour more
and more money into the war sinkhole while we’ve got our own problems here at
home,” Vance said.
To sum it all up: Vance’s February 19 statement that he
didn’t “really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another” — a statement
that reflected his do-nothing pre-invasion approach to Ukraine — is deeply
unpopular. It was so unpopular that Vance got blowback from his own
populist-friendly donors. After the invasion, Vance came out in favor of some
unspecified sanctions without giving a clear explanation of why any sanctions
make sense in light of his beliefs that sanctions “will have little effect” and
that America has no national-security interest in Ukraine. After the
invasion, Vance opposed military aid to Ukraine unless it was tied to $30
billion in funding for a U.S.–Mexico border wall (a domestic policy goal that
President Trump and a GOP-controlled Congress could not achieve). On March 19,
Vance told Steve Bannon the United States should not pour “money into the war
sinkhole” of Ukraine.
So, Vance’s position on Ukraine by itself is unpopular, but
Michael Brendan Dougherty objects that I did not discuss the Ukraine stance of
two of his Republican rivals.
In the Ohio GOP Senate race, two candidates (Mike Gibbons
and Josh Mandel) were polling at about 20 percent, while three candidates were
polling at about 10 percent (Vance, Jane Timken, and Matt Dolan) in the most
recent Fox
News poll from a month ago.
Michael notes that Gibbons and Mandel recently came out
in favor of a no-fly zone enforced by our NATO allies, and that policy would
likely lead the United States into war with Russia. I agree that a no-fly zone
over Ukraine enforced by NATO allies would be a terrible policy on the merits.
The policy still has almost
no support in Congress (and the outcome of the Ohio GOP primary is not
going to cause the Biden administration to support one).
As for the politics of supporting a no-fly zone? Michael
notes that top-line polling results have shown that Americans support a no-fly
zone, but support fades away when the likely consequences of a no-fly zone are
explained to voters. It’s not clear to me whether the top-line result or the
“let me explain that to you” result matters more when it comes to electoral
analysis. As the political saying goes: If you’re explaining, you’re losing.
One final point: Michael writes that hawks who criticize
Vance are acting “on behalf of” Gibbons and Mandel, but I personally hold no
brief for either candidate. Both Vance and Mandel have been
running extremely online and performatively deplorable campaigns. Mike
Gibbons’s claim that there were 5 million more votes than registered
voters in 2020 is bonkers.
At the end of the day, of course, one of these five Republicans
is going to win the nomination and then face a Democratic nominee who is a liar who
supports taxpayer-funded abortion through all nine months of
pregnancy. One million or so Ohio Republican primary voters will make their
choice about who they want to face Democrat Tim Ryan, and I’m doubtful the
online scribblings of Michael Brendan Dougherty or myself will affect the views
of more than a handful of those GOP voters.
During the 2020 election, telling the truth about Joe
Biden did not mean one was acting as an agent on behalf of Donald Trump,
and telling the truth about Donald Trump did not mean one was acting
as an agent on behalf of Joe Biden. The same is true when it comes to telling
the truth about the 2022 Ohio Senate candidates, and I’ll have more to say
about all of them soon.
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