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Republican lawmakers have spent the last half decade following Donald Trump's lead, even as he moved the party away from long-held party philosophy. But when it comes to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, GOP officials are no longer taking their cues from the former president.

Condemnation of Vladimir Putin is a rare unifying force on Capitol Hill. Few Republicans are echoing Trump's description of the Russian president as savvy or smart. Former Vice President Mike Pence said there was no room in the party for "apologists for Putin." Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina even went as far to say that Putin should be assassinated.

And after the years standing by as their party leader questioned the value of NATO and traditional global security alliances, threatened to withhold aid to Ukraine in exchange for a political favor, and publicly took Putin's word over that of his intelligence agencies, Republicans are now arguing for every possible resource short of U.S. ground troops to help stop the war in Europe.

The "vast majority of the Republican Party writ large, both in Congress and across the country, are totally behind the Ukrainians and urging the president to take these steps quicker, to be bolder,"Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell saidSunday on "Face the Nation."

"There's been a pretty dramatic division between the traditional post-WWII Republican view of our leadership in the world, which is the one I hold, and those who wanted to follow a policy that was more focused on retreating to thinking that somebody else would fill our role in the world if we didn't," Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri told CBS News. "And I think what's happening at the current moment, most Republicans--and, frankly, most members of the Senate--have shifted to what I would see as a more internationalist view of our responsibilities. And I'm glad to see it."

There can often be a disconnect between party leaders and party voters. But in this case, polling shows support for taking a tougher stance on Russia among the party's rank and file.

CBS News polling finds 76% of Republicans approve of sanctioning Russia's oil and gas (and 62% say so even if it means higher gas prices), 75% say the U.S. should send weapons and supplies to Ukraine, and 61% say the U.S. should send troops to protect NATO allies near Ukraine.

Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, a Trump ally in the Senate, said his constituents are appalled at the Russian invasion and are telling him "we need to do everything we can" to help the Ukrainians.

"They are fighting for their existence. And Russia has aided every enemy of ours for the last 60 years. So I don't feel too bad I know Putin wines that this is escalatory. He's invaded a sovereign nation. So we should arm the Ukrainians and give them every defensive weapon that they want," Hawley told CBS News. "We need to do everything we can do asymmetrically there in Ukraine to help the Ukrainians. And we should do that for the long haul, as long as it takes."

Hawley joined all Senate Republicans, with the exception of Mitt Romney, in exonerating Trump at his impeachment trial in 2019 that centered on his asking Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate Joe Biden in exchange for military aid. In an interview with 60 Minutes at the time, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said that Trump did nothing in that conversation with Zelenskyy that was impeachable.

Now, McCarthy is trying to keep some members of his conference who are speaking ill of Zelenskyy or echoing Trump's praise of Putin at bay. Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina has come under fire for calling Zelenskyy a "thug" at a town hall.

When asked about the comments last week, McCarthy told reporters that "Madison is wrong. If there's any thug in this world it's Putin." McCarthy then referenced the Russian bombing of a maternity ward and a theater housing children. "This is atrocious, this is wrong, this is the aggressor, this is the one that needs to end this war," he said of Putin. "This is the one that everybody should unite against." (When asked whether he would support Cawthorn's re-election, McCarthy said "yes.")

Republicans are still largely opposed to direct U.S. military involvement in Ukraine, and there is very little appetite on Capitol Hill for the establishment of a no-fly zone, a reflection of the party's shift in the Trump era away from engaging in military conflict overseas. Colin Dueck, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who wrote a book on post-WWII Republican foreign policy, told CBS News that even though Trump tapped into voters' frustrations with traditionally hawkish GOP views, party voters still maintained their support of NATO and opposition to Putin. The invasion reminded them of those views, he says, and there has been a rallying around a hardline against Russia.

"It has often been the case that Trump acts and others react....what's interesting right now is that nobody seems to be deferring to him on this issue," said Dueck. "There is a momentum that is independent of him. And he has had to catch up with it."

In some cases, appearing to share Trump's rhetoric on Putin is becoming a liability for Republican candidates on the campaign trail.

In the North Carolina GOP primary for an open U.S. Senate seat, former Gov. Pat McCrory released an ad accusing his Trump-backed rival Rep. Ted Budd of taking Russia-friendly votes and praising Putin. The ad uses an interview clip in which Budd calls Putin a "very intelligent actor." Club for Growth then released anad supporting Budd and arguing McCrory took the congressman's words out of context, and played clips of the full quote in which he called Putin "evil" and an "international thug."

According to Politifact, McCrory's ad cut out Budd's full quote: "I would say Putin is evil. But that doesn't mean he's not smart. He's a very intelligent actor, although I'd say he's been quite erratic in his approach to the Ukraine."

While Republicans are rallying around a hard line against Russia, they aren't eager to criticize Trump for his past behavior towards Putin. Instead, when asked about Trump's approach to Putin, they insist the policies outweigh the rhetoric.

"I have disagreed with President Trump's rhetoric on Putin, previously. I don't think it was helpful. But on substance, on the actual policies implemented, the Trump administration's policies on Russia were much, much tougher than the Biden administration's policies," Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas told CBS News, pointing to the sanctions he authored against Russia's Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline that Trump signed into law.

"There's probably a lot of mistakes that we could look atI know Trump is criticized for his rhetoric. But I will say, in my view, when the time came to really get tough, to sanction Nord Stream 2 for instance, he was there at the end to do the right thing to be tough on them," Hawley told CBS News when asked if he thought the previous president miscalculated Putin. "But listen, that's in the rear view mirror. Now we have to think about, what are we going to do moving forward?"

Caitlin Huey-Burns is a political reporter for CBS News.

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Republicans are backing an aggressive policy toward Ukraine, breaking with Trump - CBS News

Steve Corbin| Guest opinion

Most citizens dont know that Republican leaders in Iowa, Utah, Kansas and Florida are limiting journalists access to open-to-the-public legislature and gubernatorial sessions.

This begs the question: What issues and policies are GOP elected officials trying to hide?

Furthermore, what is there about the First Amendment to the Constitution specifically freedom of the press Republicans dont understand? Maybe GOPers are demonstrating their anti-democracy intentions, giving favor to control the media as witnessed by fascistcountries such as Russia, China, North Korea and Venezuela.

According to information published by Freedom of the Press Foundation, 72 media access denial incidents occurred in the last four years. Republicans denying or limiting journalists access to government events appears to be retaliatory or done without meaningful justification.

In Florida, the GOP governor blocked multiple journalists from covering the signing of a controversial election bill. Journalists in Iowa, Utah and Kansas were kicked out by Republican leaders of their historic press benches on the senate floor and moved into a gallery. The press bench permitted reporters to observe debate, have immediate access to legislators and report the facts. The new rules allow legislators to duck out and run away from journalists, avoiding being held accountable by their constituents.

Steve Morris, who led the Kansas GOP from 2005-13, wrote in a Kansas Reflector editorial, Placing restrictions on journalists in the Senate chambers suggests there is something to hide or that leadership is taking unwarranted and unnecessary retaliation against reporters.

After Parker Higgins of the Freedom of the Press Foundation spoke with Iowa and Kansas reporters about the restrictions, hesaid, in terms of doing your job quickly and effectively, you cant get that from the public gallery.

Richard Gilbert, press secretary for Iowa Gov. Robert D. Ray (Republican, 1969-1983) wrote an op-ed for Julie Gammacks Potluck.Reflecting on Republicans restricting access to the media, he stated: It is enough to set off alarm bells for anyone who cares about clean and open government at all levels.

Gilbert continued,as Rays press secretary ... my job was not to control access to what went on in state government. It was to make the information accessible.

Gilbert lays it on the line for voters who are witnessing freedom of the press restrictions: which brings me to the obvious question whats the objective of stonewalling or making it more difficult for the reporters covering deliberations of the Iowa (and other states) senate? What dont these elected officials want the people ... to know or see?

Gilberts candor is refreshing: if legislators want to extract petulant payback on the press corps because the coverage of their august body is often embarrassing, then perhaps they should quit doing and/or saying so many stupid things.

Iowa, Utah, Kansas and Floridas elected GOP officials media access restrictions blatantly counterfree press, a cornerstone of democracy. Voters need to confront Republicans as well as Democrats seeking election or reelection and ask their deep-seeded beliefs on freedom of the press.

Whenever Republican leaders restrict press access, it appears their goal is to abandon democracy and adopt dictatorial and totalitarian rule. If the GOPs anti-First Amendment actions are permitted to continue, who knows whats next. Maybe well see something like neo-Nazi banning of books, disinformation about critical race theory, anti-LGBTQ legislation, using public taxpayer funds to support private education, and invoking voter suppression.

Oh, wait! Were already witnessing those draconian measures in GOP-controlled states. The next authoritarian action by Republicans should be of no surprise.

Steve Corbin is an emeritus professor of marketing at theUniversity of Northern Iowa.

Read more:
Opinion: Republicans are curtailing freedom of the press; what's their end game? - Iowa City Press-Citizen

Wisconsin Republicans and Democrats both want credit for a massive tax cut signed into state law last summer.

In a sign of the times, the two parties cant agree on whether the move part of the Republican-written state budget that Democratic Gov. Tony Evers signed into law was a bipartisan one or not.

Republican leadership said no. Evers said yes.

The Wisconsin Initiative, a group whose website says it works to enact progressive policies, hold elected officials accountable and find solutions to issues facing the states working families, says yes, too.

A pro-Evers television ad from the group says the move would help working families with rising costs and declared that Evers "brought Republicans and Democrats together to cut income taxes for the middle class."

But that doesnt exactly describe what happened.

Lets take a look.

How the tax cut plan unfolded

When Evers released his two-year spending plan for the state Feb. 16, 2021, it included a net increase of $1 billion in taxes over the biennium. He aimed to give tax breaks to the lower and middle classes and raise taxes on businesses and the wealthy.

Republicans didnt care for it. They removed his tax increases and breaks and, after learning the state would receive more than $4 billion extra in tax collections over the next three years, proposed a plan to cut more than $2 billion in taxes in their own budget.

That included lowering one tax bracket from 6.27% to 5.3%, covering incomes up to $263,000 for individuals and up to $351,000 for married couples. The nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimated at the time that about three-quarters of the cuts would go to those making $100,000 or more a year.

When Evers signed that budget, he cheered the tax cut and said it delivered on his promise to cut taxes for middle-class families.

Republicans didnt like that, either.

"Governor Tony Evers deserves NO credit for signing our budget," Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, said in a statement at the time, arguing it was not a bipartisan victory but rather that Evers was "boxed into a corner."

Evers said his signature on the Republican-written budget by nature made it a bipartisan effort.

"I signed the budget simple as that. I could have vetoed that," he said at the time.

Evers signed the budget, but the tax cut plan was written by Republicans

When reached by PolitiFact Wisconsin, Morgan Grunow, executive director of the Wisconsin Initiative, pointed to bipartisan support as the Republicans budget moved through the Legislature as well as Evers final signature.

When it passed the state Assembly on June 29, 2021, four Democrats joined Republicans in supporting it. Three Democrats in the state Senate voted for the plan the next day before sending it to Evers desk.

"At the end of the day, Governor Evers introduced the budget, Democrats and Republicans both voted for it, and Evers signed into law," Grunow wrote in an email. "Bipartisan agreement on anything, especially this day and age, seems to align with the idea of bringing people together. The final vote tally speaks for itself."

Its correct that Evers has long pushed for middle-class tax cuts. He campaigned on cutting state income taxes by 10% for Wisconsinites making $100,000 a year or less. (PolitiFact Wisconsin rated that campaign promise as a Compromise last July because hed pledged to do so in his first budget, not his second.)

But it was the Republican-written budget, not his own, that eventually accomplished that goal for him.

And while the budget that was ultimately signed into law received bipartisan support in both legislative chambers, Evers didnt personally spur those Democratic lawmakers to join with their Republican colleagues.

His actions didnt necessarily bring people together the pieces unfolded on their own.

Our ruling

The Wisconsin Initiative claimed Evers "brought Republicans and Democrats together to cut income taxes for the middle class."

The end result of the maneuvering was that both sides Evers and Legislative Republicans signed off on tax cuts. But it was more the result of political maneuvering and budgetary good fortune than bipartisan outreach on the part of Evers.

Our definition of Half True is a statement that is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.

That fits here.

Continued here:
Claim that Evers brought Republicans and Democrats together on tax cut doesn't tell full story - PolitiFact

These promises seem to have worked. A recent focus group conducted by a Democratic polling firm showed that education was the top issue cited by Joe Biden supporters who had voted or considered voting for Mr. Youngkin. Participants referred to an array of complaints about education, including a sense that the focus on race and social justice in Virginias schools had gone too far, eclipsing core academic subjects. Similar charges echoed through the San Francisco school board election last month as Asian American voters, furious over changes to the admissions process at a highly selective high school, galvanized a movement to oust three school board members.

How can Democrats claw out of this bind? In the near term, they can remind voters that Republican efforts to limit what kids are taught in school will hurt students, no matter their background. The College Boards Advanced Placement program, for example, recently warned that it will remove the AP designation from courses when required topics are banned. Whatever the limitations of the AP program, students from all class backgrounds still use it to earn college credit and demonstrate engagement in rigorous coursework. Democrats could also take a page from Mr. Youngkins playbook and pledge, as he did, to invest more than has ever been invested in education, an issue that resonates across party lines.

But if Democrats want to stop bleeding working-class votes, they need to begin telling a different story about education and what schools can and cant do. For a generation, Democrats have framed a college degree as the main path to economic mobility, a foolproof way to expand the middle class. But now kids regularly emerge from college burdened with crushing student debt and struggling to find stable jobs. To these graduates and to their parents it is painfully obvious that degrees do not necessarily guarantee success. A generation ago, Mr. Clinton may have been able to make a convincing case that education could solve all peoples problems, but today Democrats risk irrelevance or worse by sticking with that tired mantra.

So, yes, strong schools are essential for the health and well-being of young people: Schools are where they gain confidence in themselves and build relationships with adults and with one another, where they learn about the world and begin to imagine life beyond their neighborhoods. But schools cant level a playing field marred by racial inequality and increasingly sharp class distinctions; to pretend otherwise is both bad policy and bad politics. Moreover, the idea that schools alone can foster equal opportunity is a dangerous form of magical thinking that not only justifies existing inequality but also exacerbates our political differences by pitting the winners in our economy against the losers.

Democrats can reclaim education as a winning issue. They might even be able to carve out some badly needed common ground, bridging the gap between those who have college degrees and those who dont by telling a more compelling story about why we have public education in this country. But that story must go beyond the scramble for social mobility if the party is to win back some of the working people it has lost over the past few decades.

Schools may not be able to solve inequality. But they can give young people a common set of social and civic values, as well as the kind of education that is valuable in its own right and not merely as a means to an end. We dont fund education with our tax dollars to wash our hands of whatever we might owe to the next generation. Instead, we do it to strengthen our communities by preparing students for the wide range of roles they will inevitably play as equal members of a democratic society.

Read more:
Opinion | If You Think Republicans Are Overplaying Schools, You Arent Paying Attention - The New York Times

Earlier this month, Team Trump claimed in court that their efforts to nullify Joe Bidens victory could not possibly have been fraudulent or be described as a criminal conspiracy, because those in and around the White House had merely been acting on the basis of sincerely held suspicions.

This sparked the latest round in the never-ending debate over whether or not Republicans actually believe that the election was stolen from them. Politically, it is important to push back against the opportunistic ways in which Republicans up and down the country have been using the big lie. But if we are trying to understand what is animating the rights rapidly accelerating radicalization against democracy, binary assumptions of Republicans as either true believers or power-hungry cynics are not very helpful and actually obscure more than they illuminate. In some fundamental way, Republicans are both. What we really need to grapple with is why so many Republicans are convinced the outcome of the election was illegitimate regardless of whether or not there were specific procedural irregularities.

Surveys have consistently indicated that a clear majority, probably about two-thirds, of Republicans consider Biden an illegitimate president. Its highly likely that many of them are well aware that some of the specific conspiratorial claims emanating from the right fake ballots? Lost ballots? Illegals voting? are bogus. But they dont seem to care about the specifics. They just believe Biden shouldnt be president.

What is most alarming is the underlying ideology that leads so many on the right to consider Democratic victories invalid even if they concede there was nothing technically wrong with how the election was conducted. It has become a core tenet of the Republican worldview to consider the Democratic party as not simply a political opponent, but an enemy pursuing an un-American project of turning what is supposed to be a white Christian patriarchal nation into a land of godless multiracial pluralism. Conversely, Republicans see themselves as the sole proponents of real America, defending the country from the forces of radical leftism, liberalism and wokeism.

Even if they dont subscribe to the more outlandish conspiracies propagated by Trumpists, many Republicans agree that the Democratic party is a fundamentally illegitimate political faction and that any election outcome that would lead to Democratic governance must be rejected as illegitimate as well. Republicans didnt start from an assessment of how the 2020 election went down and come away from that exercise with sincerely held doubts. The rationalization worked backwards: They looked at the outcome and decided it must not stand. In other words, accusations of fraud gain plausibility among conservatives not because of empirical evidence, but because they adhere to the higher truth of who is and who is not legitimately representing and therefore entitled to rule real America.

It is worth paying attention to how reactionary intellectuals have been dealing with the 2020 election. We certainly wouldnt expect Trump, most Republican officials, or the conservative base to devour rightwing treatises. As much as they would like to believe it, these reactionary thinkers are not leading the movement. But they tend to articulate the radicalizing authoritarian spirit that is threatening American democracy in strikingly stark terms. In this way, the rightwing intellectual sphere provides a crucial window into the energies and anxieties that are animating the right more broadly.

In March 2021, the magazine American Mind published a particularly instructive essay by Glenn Ellmers, entitled Conservatism is No Longer Enough. American Mind is a publication of the Claremont Institute, a rightwing thinktank in California that has become home to some of the most outrightly pro-Trumpian intellectuals. It is notable that Ellmers makes no claim that the 2020 election was stolen he doesnt allege manipulation, voter fraud, or conspiracy, and in fact explicitly acknowledges that more people voted for Biden than for Trump. He does not peddle conspiracy theories. Yet Ellmers maintains that the outcome of the 2020 election is illegitimate and must not be accepted.

According to Ellmers, Bidens presidency represents an un-American idea of multiracial pluralism something that is fundamentally in conflict with what he refers to as authentic America. In his view, everyone who voted for Joe Biden and his progressive project of narcotizing the American people and turning us into a nation of slaves is also un-American and therefore not worthy of inclusion in the body politic. Ellmers declares that most people living in the United States certainly more than half are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term. Only authentic Americans are allowed in Glenn Ellmers United States a racialized idea of the people, most clearly represented by the vast numbers of heartland voters.

On the other side are un-American enemies, not coincidentally characterized by their blind admiration for a young Black artist: If you are a zombie or a human rodent who wants a shadow-life of timid conformity, then put away this essay and go memorize the poetry of Amanda Gorman. Ellmers racist, anti-pluralistic vision is remarkably radical: he wants to redraw the boundaries of citizenship and exclude over half the population.

Ellmers is outraged precisely because he accepts the fact that a majority voted for Biden, that authentic Americans have become the minority in a country which they are supposedly entitled to dominate. Here we have a striking glimpse of the depth of despair underlying the pervasive siege mentality on the right. Whats scandalous about the 2020 election, in this interpretation, is not that it was stolen, but that un-American forces straightforwardly won.

Reactionaries like Ellmers have internalized the idea that they represent a persecuted minority, fighting with their backs against the wall in a desperate effort to defend authentic America. They dispute the legitimacy of the 2020 election not necessarily on the basis of fraud and conspiracy but because democracy itself subverted the will of real America by allowing the wrong people too much of an influence on the fate of the country.

Trumps incessant lies represent a vulgar, clumsy, narcissistic strand of conspiratorial thinking; those lies are shared by some, opportunistically used by many, and widely accepted on the right because they adhere to a higher truth: we are entitled to rule in America. Thats what is behind the widespread support for, or willingness to accept, any kind of suspicion, regardless of whether or not there is any shred of empirical evidence. If an election doesnt result in us being in power, it must be illegitimate, as we are real America; if it puts them in charge, it cannot be accepted, as they are out to destroy the nation.

Whether or not Republicans actually believe conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, most are absolutely convinced the result was illegitimate and they are all too willing to use allegations of fraud or ally with conspiracy theorists if it helps prevent future illegitimate outcomes. It is precisely the mixture of deeply held ideological convictions of white Christian patriarchal dominance, of what real America is supposed to be and who gets to rule there, and the cynical opportunism with which these beliefs are enforced that makes the assault on democracy so dangerous.

Thomas Zimmer is a visiting professor at Georgetown University, focused on the history of democracy and its discontents in the United States, and a Guardian US contributing opinion writer

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The real and far scarier reason Republicans think Biden is illegitimate - The Guardian