Here's How the GOP Became Pro-Russia

Hint: It has been a long time coming

Did you hear? Tucker Carlson considers Moscow better than every major city in the United States. Are you aware that he recently reported with a sense of awe that  Russian supermarkets are superior to ours and this was enough to make him  “radicalized” against America’s leaders?  

Do you know that GOP Representative Paul Gosar said, “Russia is not our enemy.”  Or that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene believes Moscow’s invading army is fighting “neo-Nazis” in Ukraine?  How about former White House advisor Peter Navarro’s belief that since it was once part of the USSR, Russia has a right to invade Ukraine because it “is not really a country.”  Did you know he said this?

Lastly, have you heard that Nick Fuentes, head of the pro-Trump America First Political Action Conference, said, “I wish Putin was our president?”

Led by Donald Trump, who recently said he might encourage Russian attacks on our allies, the GOP is becoming more and more pro-Russia every day. When you consider that just 12 years ago the Republican nominee for president, Mitt Romney, called Russia the biggest threat to America, this is an astounding turnabout.

I was still in my first term in Congress when Romney made the GOP’s anti-Russia stand clear. He recognized that though Russia had escaped Communism with the death of the USSR, in the dictatorship of Vladimir Putin one dangerous, belligerent totalitarian regime had been replaced by another.

At that time, most of my colleagues embraced Romney’s declaration and said it marked a realism that his opponent Barack Obama ignored at the world’s peril. (In fact, Obama’s lack of concern about Russia was just one of many problems in his approach to world affairs.)  If there were any GOPers who were on Russia’s side, they were fringe figures like California Representative Dana Rohrabacher whose pro-Russia posture had been so obvious that it was said that instead of occupying a seat on the GOP side of the aisle in the House, he should be seated in the Duma, Russia’s rubber-stamp legislature. (Many of us did, and in fact still do, believe he was actually on Russias payroll.)

Little understood is that conservatives had begun to warm to Russia with the break-up of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. With Vladimir Putin’s rise to power, reactionary conservatives found someone whose commitment to tradition and monomaniacal nationalism reflected what they wanted in American politicians. Meanwhile the Russian Orthodox Church, with a similar regard for the past, appealed on a religious basis. Its anti-gay-rights stands, which Putin made law, were admired because the Americans were strenuously opposed to the equality measures taken at home.

You may have thought that American conservatives would have stepped back from Russia in 2014 when Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region and disrupted what George Bush called the “new world order.” Regular Republicans did protest what Russia did in Crimea and lambasted President Obama for his timid response . However, among the far right in the U.S., Putin’s nationalist action and his muscular impulses found little opposition.

Little noticed at the time, Putin had made his personal commitment to the Russian Orthodox Church part of his political profile. He had been aided in this direction by  millionaire businessman Konstantin Malofeev. Known as “God's oligarch,”  in 2014 Malofeev paid for anti-gay conferences attended by American Christian nationalists.

In a demonstration of doublespeak that defied the reality of Putin’s dictatorship and democracy in Europe and America, Malofeev explained, “Just as Christians in the West in Ronald Reagan’s time helped us against the evil of communism, we now have to return our debt to Christians who are suffering under totalitarianism in the West,”  He also said he intended to build a TV network similar to Fox News. It is operating today.

All of the above represents my attempt to show that before Trump, an extreme element of the GOP had become pro-Russia and pro-Putin. These folks refused to recognize any problem associated with the aid Trump received from Russia in the 2016 presidential campaign. The rest of the Republican Party embraced a similar stand. At the Republican National Convention, Trump beat back an attempt to include an anti-Russia plank in the party platform.

Today there’s almost nothing Russia or Putin could do that Trump would criticize. For evidence look at his statement on the death of Putin’s main opponent, Alexei Navalny. A hero to pro-democracy Russians, Navalny had been jailed on bogus charges. He died in a prison located above the Arctic Circle. In response, Trump sent a coded message to the large number of Republicans and conservatives who like Russia because of its traditionalism. On social media he wrote, "The sudden death of Alexei Navalny,has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country," He added that liberals and government officials are “DESTROYING AMERICA. WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE, A FAILING NATION!"

Knowing that Navalny was surely killed on Putin’s orders, Trump’s statement struck his critics at home as bizarre and politically tone-deaf. What they don’t understand is that most Americans won’t care about Navalny come Election Day. In contrast, his base will appreciate Trump’s support for Russia’s regime. They have been waiting and hoping for a president like him for decades.