Why far-right Republicans are praising Putin

Out of war comes the strangest discourse, and the strangest of the strange when it comes to Ukraine is the Republican Party’s affection for Putin. The leading voice for conservatism in America has somehow fractured along lines no time traveller from the 1960s, 70s, 80s or 90s would believe.

In the early 1990s it was a common claim among Republicans campaigning for office that their party “won the Cold War” (as oxymoronic a statement as that may be). Ronald Reagan telling Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall is an iconic American moment that schoolchildren across the US learn about in history class. John McCain, the Republican challenger and Arizona senator who ran against Barack Obama in 2008, was dismissed as out-of-touch by his opponent for saying that Russia was still the country’s most dangerous enemy; but McCain kept saying it until his death, repeatedly referring to Putin as a “thug” and a “killer”. Anti-communism is an American value, but especially a Republican one: while you might hear Democrats or independents like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talk about the benefits of socialism, no Republican would be heard dead uttering the phrase in any sentence that didn’t also include the word “evil”. Indeed, despite Democrats claiming they are the natural choice for “people of colour”, Republicans win votes again and again from Cuban and Venezuelan Americans and their descendants because of that unrelentingly anti-socialism stance.

And then Putin invaded Ukraine. Trump said on the record that he thought he was a “genius”. He’s never been shy about his admiration for the Russian strongman. Republicans cut from the Trump cloth – a very different cloth from which McCain, who Trump famously hated, was cut – also waded in. Kansas senator Josh Hawley sent a public letter to the secretary of state cautioning him from allowing Ukraine to join Nato and talking about leaving Europe to deal with Russia on their own. Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene released an advert accusing “globalists” of wanting to take America to war. Trump’s former secretary of state Mike Pompeo called Putin “talented”, “shrewd” and “very capable” in a number of different news segments, adding on Fox News that “he knows how to use power. We should respect that”. Senator Ron Johnson said, also on Fox News, that he thought President Biden and “the west in general” was to blame for Putin’s actions in Ukraine.

Others on the far right who knew praising Putin probably wouldn’t go down very well in history flailed around for talking points. Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert tweeted that gun control in the US might go the same way as Ukraine giving up their nuclear arsenal; she then compared Canadian truckers protesting vaccine mandates to Ukrainians being bombed by Russians, saying: “Our neighbours to the north need liberation too.”

It’s become obvious over the past few days that this discourse could become damaging for the Republican Party as a whole rather than only the sections of far-right controversialist enclaves where it’s most commonly mentioned. A political video paid for by a Democrat-adjacent super PAC went viral on Twitter this week, describing the GOP as the “party of treason” and “puppets” of Putin. It made mention of a group of Republicans who travelled to Moscow for a meeting with Putin not long after Trump’s electoral win for president in 2016. Over a million people have viewed the video – that’s bad news for people like Trump.

Trump made his name as a 21st-century isolationist as well as, bizarrely, a well-suited diplomat for building ties with strongmen. The world watched with interest as he attempted to prove that through talks with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, and then failed. Again and again, he professed his admiration for dictators and iron-fisted leaders. His position seemed to be: they had the audacity to take what they want, so leave them to it. I don’t want any trouble, as if such people were leading rival businesses rather than countries.

It’s been interesting to watch members of the Republican Party scrabble round in an attempt to do crisis PR over the past few days. Polls showed that the average Republican voter is still concerned with America’s reputation on the world stage and unconvinced by capitulation to war-hungry dictators shooting at civilians. People who have been in the game a long time – people like Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy – have come to realise that if they want to keep their jobs, they have to sound like they’re more in touch with those voters. Indeed, they come from a different time when harsh rhetoric on Russia was de rigeuer for Republicans anyway. Some, like Hawley, have had the same “come to Jesus” moment – or, perhaps, “come to the ballot box” – and started backtracking while talking about their disgust for Putin and Russia’s actions.

Trump and other hardliners, however, aren’t changing. Neither are their media cheerleaders like Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, who was the subject of a leaked Russian memo a few days ago which encouraged Russian state media to keep featuring clips of the far-right commentator.

Fundamentally, it seems Trump, Putin and people like Taylor Greene see themselves as involved in an international war against a globalist conspiracy. This isn’t a real war, the likes of which everyone (except Russians) can see on their TV screens and social media, with bombs landing on maternity hospitals in Ukraine and tanks lining up outside Kyiv. Instead, it is a secret conspiracy being supposedly fought daily by “patriots” against liberals and socialists. It transcends national identity. It is no longer about America the great, even though it is about “America First”.

These Republicans are separating off from their most loyal voters because their voters still believe being American, and championing “American freedom”, is central to their identity. They live in small towns and flyover states they believe are overlooked by coastal elites. Their interest in international affairs extends only as far as what affects America’s reputation. For the most part, they don’t believe themselves to be engaged in a global fight; they just “want their country back”.

Both of these ideologies are regressive and problematic; but one is American through and through, and one is potentially willing to abandon the US entirely. Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump have turned “I’m proud to be an American” into something barely recognisable to people who go to the ballot box for the likes of middle-of-the-road, Second Amendment-supporting, churchgoing Republicans. As the war in Ukraine becomes more and more brutal, their positions look more and more untenable. We may be witnessing the beginning of the end of Trump’s reportedly planned rerun for president in 2024.