GOP foreign policy gurus can't have it both ways
GOP foreign policy gurus can’t have it both ways
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/02/republicans-trump-ukraine-hypocrisy/?utm_source=reddit.com
By Jennifer Rubin, Columnist at the Washington Post
Yesterday at 11:00 a.m. EST
"SNIP.......
A parade of GOP lawmakers has attempted the impossible: to clamber onto the pro-Ukraine, pro-democracy bandwagon without repudiating Russia’s favorite enabler and ongoing PR helper, former president Donald Trump. The majority of Republicans — from Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) — have twisted themselves into pretzels. They denigrate President Biden for weakness (despite orchestrating the most robust sanctions in history) while refusing to acknowledge Trump’s role (and thereby their own complicity) in enabling Putin, sowing dissension in NATO and undermining Ukraine. (Certainly, Senate Republicans must recall acquitting Trump for extorting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky by threatening to withhold vital military aid.)
The same conundrum afflicts a segment of Republican foreign policy pundits who heretofore have not broken with Trump. Take the Vandenberg Coalition, a who’s who of GOP national security experts that includes both consistent opponents of Trump and his Putin appeasement, and many who have never spoken an ill word about the former president. (Some even joined the administration.) The coalition put out a tough-minded statement, declaring that “we must reject the moral equivalency that refuses to distinguish between aggressor and victim, and the isolationist arguments that the United States has no interest in resisting aggression in Europe.”
Great! So does that mean they’ve all now broken with Trump and his undermining of NATO, and they would never support Trump for president, let alone serve in a (God forbid) second Trump administration? Well, oddly, it’s not easy to get those who didn’t break with Trump years ago to make that logical, consistent argument.
I asked Vandenberg Coalition Executive Director Carrie Filipetti, who served in the Trump administration in the State Department and at the United Nations, to explain. She did not respond to multiple requests for contact. I contacted 10 members of the advisory board. One said he never saw the statement.
......SNIP"
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