Co-opted by a president Russia helped elect, Republicans are blaming Biden for Ukraine

As a murderous autocrat prepared to wage a unilateral war of choice on a sovereign democracy, Republicans in California and beyond were categorically condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the world leader they deemed responsible for it: Joe Biden.

Sure, it was Vladimir Putin who openly rationalized, threatened and led an all-out military assault on Ukraine. But the Soviet revanchist didn’t warrant a mention in the analysis of Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a Butte County Republican who blamed “Biden’s appeasement” and “American weakness” for the invasion in a statement Tuesday. Another California Republican, Los Angeles area Rep. Mike Garcia, likewise called the invasion “a product of the Biden administration.”

LaMalfa incongruously opened his statement with the old saw that partisanship should “end at the water’s edge.” But unless the water in question is east of the Black Sea, he and many of his fellow Republicans are showing that principle all the respect their favorite strongman has for international borders.

The American left has long been searched and scrutinized for questionable loyalty to the country and sympathy for its enemies, particularly with respect to the old Soviet Union. But today it’s the right that is finding it strangely and unconscionably difficult to side with our president over Russia’s.

Not that the old lefty tendencies have disappeared completely. In an op-ed earlier this month, Sen. Bernie Sanders, who once spent what he called a “very strange honeymoon” in the U.S.S.R., stressed the risks not only of war with Russia — a prospect that rightly inspires trepidation across the political spectrum — but also of economic sanctions. And he emphasized Putin’s “legitimate concerns” about the NATO military alliance’s explicit but indefinite promise to admit Russia’s neighbors Ukraine and Georgia.

The Vermont socialist thereby found himself on the same page as Sen. Josh Hawley, the Missouri Republican who famously saluted the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. True to form, Hawley responded to Putin’s preparations for the invasion by demanding that Secretary of State Antony Blinken explain “the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine’s prospective membership in NATO,” a policy forged under George W. Bush in 2008.

Sanders’ op-ed, by contrast, allowed that Putin was “most responsible for this looming crisis.” And in a statement Tuesday, he acknowledged that the Russian autocrat had rejected diplomacy and deserved “serious sanctions.”

No such clarity can be found among Russia’s newfound comrades in the formerly Cold Warring, Red-baiting party of Ronald Reagan and Joseph McCarthy. Another McCarthy, Kevin, also blamed Biden’s “appeasement” in a statement with the rest of the House Republican leadership.

Appeasement is one thing; employment is another. It was McCarthy who was recorded telling fellow GOP congressional leaders in 2016 that he believed Putin had two Republicans on his payroll: Dana Rohrabacher, a notorious Kremlin apologist and then-congressman from Southern California, and then-candidate Donald Trump. “Swear to God,” he added.

None of which prevented the Bakersfield Republican, once a self-styled Russia hawk, from eagerly enabling Trump then and ever since.

McCarthy’s privately expressed theory of the Kremlin’s relationship with Trump is unproven, but judging by the former president’s performance, he might as well be Putin’s chief of staff. Trump didn’t just embrace Russian interference in the 2016 election; he sought to frame Ukraine for the crime. Nor did he stop at doubting the wisdom of expanding NATO, laboring relentlessly to undermine the alliance from within. And he not only weakened the Republican Party platform’s stance on Ukraine but also illegally withheld U.S. military aid to the country while it was under Russian attack.

This week, even as Biden and most of his fellow world leaders united in condemning Putin’s assault, Trump condemned his successor and declared Putin’s invasion “genius” — high praise indeed given that he has paid himself the same compliment.

It’s no accident that Putin’s twin invasions of Ukraine have taken place on either side of the Trump administration, a circumstance the former president and his allies laughably attribute to his toughness with the Russian dictator — a man whose nonexistent credibility he once publicly endorsed over that of his own intelligence officials. With Trump in power and America and its alliances fraying, Putin was at relative ease; after Trump, as before, democracy presents a palpable threat to authoritarianism.

In laying waste to independent media, locking up his chief opposition and eliminating any distinction between politics and violence, Putin has realized the kind of regime to which Trump only aspired. No wonder the leaders of the party he co-opted are torn between our current president and a tyrant plunging Europe into war.

This story was originally published February 24, 2022 at 10:00 AM.