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The truth is that Heritage and other Republican institutionsand leaders downplaying or reversing their stances on interventionism areresponding to other things besides economic priorities. Republicans areaccommodating themselves to realities overseas. Chinas rise the last twodecades while the United States was preoccupied with failed military adventuresin Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, alongside the hundreds of thousands ofAmerican veterans and contractors killed or wounded in the war on terrorallthis has helped turn the conservative base against once prominent notions aboutAmerican indispensability in world affairs. These developments,more than fiscal worries,are whatsdriving a foreign policy rethink among Republicans.Its about much more than that, says Trumps former Office of Management andBudget director Russ Vought, who heads a think tank called the Center forRenewing America.

Under Voughts leadership, the CRA campaigns to end endless wars, in those exactwords. Over the last several decades, the United States has abandoned aprincipled, clear-headed approach of realism and restraint to interventionism,reads the organizations website, using the type of language that used to bemarginal in the conservative moment and Republican Party. The CRA opposesexpanding NATO to include Finland and Sweden and rejects providing further aidto Ukraine. More ominously for progressives hoping to ally with conservatives skepticalof militarism, there is the whiff of nativism in the centers warning that Americas plan to accept refugees from Afghanistan means importinghundreds of thousands of people who do not share American cultural, political,or ideological commonalities [and] poses serious risks to both nationalsecurity and broader social cohesion.

Trump succeeded in making this combination of militaryprudence and xenophobia a permanent (for now, anyway) fixture of conservativepolitics, in ways that have yet to be fully incorporated by the RepublicanParty leadership. There is a movement to build on where the Trumppresidency was, says Vought. Trump remains deeply popular with GOP voters, and hisforeign policy worldview has been adopted by people like Tucker Carlson, theinfluential Fox News host who has called for President Joe Biden to push foran end to the war in Ukraine instead of single-handedly prolonging it.

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Theres a Big War Brewing Among Republicans Over Well, War - The New Republic