I made a post in the Russia-Ukraine breaking news thread that @WhatExit? properly shut down. I’m bringing the question here:
My question, political issue, what have you, is “when did Russia become the friend for Republicans?” Growing up, the GOP was made up of the coldest of Cold Warriors. Russia was the enemy.
When and why did it change? Were GOP attitudes based solely on ideology? It was communism, not the fact that the USSR had silos and subs full of nuclear weapons aimed at the US?
And it’s reciprocated: when Trump won in 2016, a member of the Duma came into the chamber and announced that it was great news, Trump had been elected.
I don’t have answers, or a position to argue, so I’m putting it here rather than in GD.
Republicans realized long ago that their grip on power in the US was on the wane, and they don’t like it. They had two choices: Broaden their appeal so they could win in the customary manner, or cheat. They chose cheat.
Once they had crossed that Rubicon, they could easily adhere to the belief that the ends always justifies the means, because Republicans in power is Righteous and Good and the American Way.
For Russia, anything that weakens America’s standing in the world is a good thing. Their interest is so transparent, and I don’t understand why more Americans don’t see it. But as I’ve said many times, that war on education by Republicans over the past 50 years is paying big dividends now.
Realistically, I don’t think that there’s any logic to it past doing the opposite of what the Democrats do.
If the Democrats were to come out hard on 6-8 hours of sleep a day then the right-wing conspiracy network would come out saying that it’s a made up number that was created by the Liberals for nefarious reason X. You should alternate sleeping 4 hours and then 10 hours to own the libs. There’s no real logic to it, it’s just contrarianism for the sake of contrarianism. Or, better said, it’s a group of people who have figured out that they can cash in on the hatred for city folks that exists in the rural regions, by saying things that will piss off city folks. And, those people being themselves city dwellers, they don’t really care what the impact is on their listeners. And, given the fat wads in their pockets, they don’t really much care what the impact is on the rest of the world, either.
It’s market forces gone off the rails. “Russia” could be any other thing.
The only way to get around it is to downplay it and make the whole subject very boring.
I suspect it dates to approximately when the Russians, the Putin regime specifically became their ally. The well documented work of the Putin security services to boost GOP and GOP-related causes online (known to the rest of the world as abhorrent racist homophobic disinformation) being the most blatant example of thia
More generally Putin has always been hero worshiped by the GOP for his Christian Nationalist views. His message that his regime is the only bulwark of weak decadent “woke” liberal west with its sexual depravity and atheism, against the rise of extremist Islam and the brown skinned masses that are poised to overwhelm Europe, is basically the GOP platform
We are seeing some positively stalinist erasure of history with the GOP forgetting all those years they spent stan’ing the Russian military and how, with its adherence to traditional Christian masculine values, it’s overtaken the effete western military with all it’s wokeness. Remember if war was ever to break out between Russia and the western powers their manly unwoke army would wipe the floor with their girly western opponents!
There are no Republican issues or opinions anymore. There is Trump’s opinion. If Trump is in favor of a thing, the Republicans are in favor of that thing. Trump likes Putin, so the Republicans like Putin. If Trump decided tomorrow that he hated Putin, then the Republicans would hate Putin too.
I recall during the Trump administration when it became known that Russia had been funneling a bunch of money into the NRA, which then was then going into GOP campaign coffers. I think that’s another factor to consider, that Russia was essentially funding a lot of GOP candidates, so the GOP had to cozy up to Russia to keep that sweet sweet campaign cash flowing.
As an ex-Hawk, ex-Republican, falling somewhere in the John McCain or Rockefeller Republican type, I find the lack of Republican resolve to help defeat Putin mindboggling. But I left that party as it moved so far from what I believed in, I had no choice.
Green issues weren’t always Rep vs. Dem.
The Cold war warriors were more likely to be Rep but not exclusively so.
Pre-Reagan the Dems still had more of the wanna-be Theocrats but they’ve all moved to the Republican Party and with outsize sway over it.
There was even a time when the Dems were more blue collar and the Reps were generally better educated.
Today it is all chaos and doom on the Republican side. They don’t seem to be for anything but grasping power.
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s (AASM) officially recommends at least seven hours of sleep for adults aged 18 to 60, same with the National Sleep Foundation.
“Don’t sleep any more than you have to,” Trump wrote…“I beep-de-beep”
Just thought I’d see if any politicians made any statements regarding sleep and I found that. (Note: I’m not trying to prove anything with it, I just thought it was funny, especially the 'beep-de-beep" part.
From here, if anyone wants to read it.
Well, you see, Russia wasn’t bad because they were barbaric, evil, ruthless killers who even the Nazi’s feared. No, they were bad because they were Communist. That is the evil. Communism is, by definition (GOP definition), not only godless but anti-Christian. It was the evils of Communism that drove the Russians to be barbaric, evil, ruthless killers.
Once they abandoned Communism, and started spending their money with us, like proper Capitalists, they became just fine. They’re not even brown-skinned.
By the same thought process, China is still Communist, so they are still evil, barbaric, ruthless killers. Yeah, the fact that Capitalism is alive and well in China is beside the point. They are still ruled by the Communist Party, CCP. Also ignore that they are a Republic (it’s in their name, People’s Republic of China), whose government is controlled by a constitution, which makes them a Constitutional Republic, No! They are Communists and that is the definition of bad. Besides, their skin has a funny tint and their eyes are different. And, they’re godless. Totally different from Russians.
Why did McCarthy (R-California) say that in July 2016?
My answer: I think the Russians were deep in bed with the Republicans (or right-wing groups like the NRA) long before 2016. I don’t think they were fully aware. The mystery money was rolling in, nobody asked questions, like mysterious PAC ontributions, real-estate deals that were too sweet to be true. Then when everything came to light starting in 2016, they realized how deeply they were compromised. But it was too late to get out. Many of them had criminal exposure by that point. And to a man (or woman) they were too gutless and power-hungry to act against Russia.
Plus as you mention, there’s that moronic oppositional mindset that makes Republicans say the sky is green if Democrats say it’s blue. Conservatives really only hold 2 principles, that they should rule, and truth is the opposite of whatever Democrats say.
It definitely predates that. I remember in the later Obama years the right wingers* on my social media posting videos of Russian school children stripping and reassembling AK-47s and bemoaning the fact that American schoolkids were too soft and busy using the wrong gender bathrooms (or whatever the GOP moral panic du jour was back then) too do cool stuff like that. Ironically this meant ignoring the fact that those weapons drills were actually a soviet-era practice, and part of the communist youth indoctrination process.
I had no idea at the time, but I’d bet good money those videos originated in a Putin-funded troll farm somewhere (I also bet the senior figures in the GOP who were encouraging it knew that)
At the time they all claimed to free-thinking libertarians but all to a man signed on as card-carrying MAGAites in the Trump era.
Yeah, I think it was this as well. They forgot the years when we actually paid attention to Russians trying to infiltrate western governments during the Cold War, and figured that was all over. But the Russians never really stopped trying this (maybe they took a few years off in the early 90s, but not too many). So they never noticed when they actually became compromised. I suspect there was a lot of this in the old Tea Party as well.
If Russian records of the last 30 years ever see the light of day, I’m sure we’ll all be shocked at how many GOPers were compromised.
Sadly, and scarily true. It’s still a bit mind boggling to me that in the facade that is the Republican primary the only one willing to even mildly criticize TFG is Chris Christie. You know, in those debates that TFG isn’t even bothering to participate in.
Yes. It’s the white supremacism. (And Christian and male supremacism, but then all three pretty much go together.)
It’s also, as some in this thread have said, that Republicans do the opposite of what Democrats do (and Democrats see Putin as being something OTHER than a well-wisher for USA security and prosperity). And it’s also that Republicans do whatever Trump wants, and Trump admires (worships?) Vlad and so good Republicans must do so, too. And it’s also the raw greed of GOP pols being offered Russian cash.
But mostly it’s the white supremacy.
Most smart people who pay attention to US politics realize that white supremacy is a massive motivator for the right. But for various reasons, we don’t want to say so out loud, or at least not very often. Apparently it’s seen as analogous to mentioning Hitler too often.
Sometimes the ‘socially awkward’ stuff is actually too true to ignore. And there is a fair amount of attention given it by analysts, though some seem to feel the need to apologize for being so blunt.
Republicans have always had a love affair with third rate kleptocratic rulers in South America. Partly this has to do with them being reliably anti-communist, and partly because they were nicely corrupt in the Republican’s favor.
This goes back past the whole Pinochet thing in Chili to the banana wars of the inter war period, and beyond.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, and Putin came out on top, he very much fit the model of a right wing anti-communist kleptocrat, and the Republicans fell for him because they have always had a weakness for that type.
It’s also the case that the Republicans and the Russians have had 2 things in common.
They don’t like brown people, and black people even less.
They think that the world would be a better place if the US government was smaller, poorer and weaker.
They have different reasons for believing number 2 of course, but politic makes strange bedfellows. Just ask the NRA about that.
I think the above posts have mostly addressed why big “R” Republicans are chummy with Russia: money, support for white/male primacy, $$$, and political aid legal and not.
I used to wonder why little ‘r’ republicans were so accepting, especially the older generation who spend decades with the Russia IS EVIL philosophy.
And there it’s even more simple, and more in common with their love of Trump. They LOVE the appearance of strength. They are tired of making complicated choices and decisions. They are tired of responsibility. They are tired of being respectful for the other, be it color, creed, etc. They want someone STRONG that beats down their enemies, or anyone, so they can live that experience vicariously. Responsibility is hard, abandoning it towards a greater being (President / Czar / God) is easy.