WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 For\u00a0President Joe Biden,\u00a0strong backing for Ukraine\u2019s effort to repel\u00a0Russia\u2019s invasion\u00a0has been a rare issue where he\u2019s mustered bipartisan support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But this week\u2019s\u00a0first GOP presidential debate\u00a0\u2014 and recent comments on Ukraine by\u00a0the 2024 GOP polling leader and former president, Donald Trump\u00a0\u2014 show that unusual unity will face a stress test as the 2024 presidential campaign intensifies and the leading Republican contenders show antipathy toward the American backing of Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There long has been an isolationist strain in the United States, particularly in the Republican Party, but rarely has it been shared by so many candidates for president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the debate stage in Milwaukee, Florida Gov.\u00a0Ron DeSantis\u00a0said he would make additional U.S. aid \u201ccontingent\u201d on European allies increasing contributions. Entrepreneur\u00a0Vivek Ramaswamy\u00a0called it \u201cdisastrous\u201d that the U.S. government was \u201cprotecting against an invasion across somebody else\u2019s border\u201d and argued Ukraine funding would be better spent on the \u201cinvasion of our own southern border.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, Trump, who did not participate in the first debate, has said he will end Russia\u2019s invasion in one day if he wins back the White House. Even some of his Republican allies, like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said that assertion was folly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump also has\u00a0called on Congress\u00a0to withhold additional Ukraine funding until the FBI, IRS and Justice Department \u201chand over every scrap of evidence\u201d on the Biden family\u2019s business dealings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Daniel Fried, a former U.S. ambassador to Poland and distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council, said that Republican congressional leadership and Biden remain on the same page on providing Ukraine the assistance it needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still, he said the prominent voices in the Republican field calling for the U.S. to slow or wind down support for Kyiv send a troubling signal to allies about what the U.S. commitment could look like following the 2024 election and harken back to the years when isolationists pressured the U.S. to remain neutral during the first two years of World War II.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe majority of elected Republicans in the committee chairs and the people with power in Congress are still solid,\u201d Fried said. \u201cWhen they attack the administration, it\u2019s usually for not doing enough. But Trump and the Trump wannabes represent this other tradition in our history. And the last time this isolationist tradition was powerful in America, it led to catastrophic results.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz in a statement criticized \u201cMAGA Republicans\u201d on the debate stage for siding with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the Ukrainian people and alluded to Ramaswamy mocking U.S. politicians who have made the trip to Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to show solidarity with the Ukrainian people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At one point during Wednesday\u2019s debate, Ramaswamy took a dig at\u00a0former Vice President Mike Pence\u00a0and\u00a0New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, both of whom visited Kyiv this summer, for making a \u201cpilgrimage\u201d to \u201ctheir Pope Zelenskyy\u201d without doing the same for Americans impacted by Hawaii\u2019s wildfires and crime and violence in U.S. cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley\u00a0on the debate stage slammed Ramaswamy, saying he was effectively standing with Putin and was being short-sighted about U.S. interests. \u201cThis guy is a murderer. And you are choosing a murderer over a pro-American country,\u201d said Haley, who also previously served as the South Carolina governor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Publicly, the White House has stressed that key Republican lawmakers, notably the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, are largely in agreement on the need to continue robust assistance to Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe majority of elected Republicans in the committee chairs and the people with power in Congress are still solid,\u201d Fried said. \u201cWhen they attack the administration, it\u2019s usually for not doing enough. But Trump and the Trump wannabes represent this other tradition in our history. And the last time this isolationist tradition was powerful in America, it led to catastrophic results.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz in a statement criticized \u201cMAGA Republicans\u201d on the debate stage for siding with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the Ukrainian people and alluded to Ramaswamy mocking U.S. politicians who have made the trip to Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to show solidarity with the Ukrainian people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At one point during Wednesday\u2019s debate, Ramaswamy took a dig at\u00a0former Vice President Mike Pence\u00a0and\u00a0New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, both of whom visited Kyiv this summer, for making a \u201cpilgrimage\u201d to \u201ctheir Pope Zelenskyy\u201d without doing the same for Americans impacted by Hawaii\u2019s wildfires and crime and violence in U.S. cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley\u00a0on the debate stage slammed Ramaswamy, saying he was effectively standing with Putin and was being short-sighted about U.S. interests. \u201cThis guy is a murderer. And you are choosing a murderer over a pro-American country,\u201d said Haley, who also previously served as the South Carolina governor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Publicly, the White House has stressed that key Republican lawmakers, notably the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, are largely in agreement on the need to continue robust assistance to Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe majority of elected Republicans in the committee chairs and the people with power in Congress are still solid,\u201d Fried said. \u201cWhen they attack the administration, it\u2019s usually for not doing enough. But Trump and the Trump wannabes represent this other tradition in our history. And the last time this isolationist tradition was powerful in America, it led to catastrophic results.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz in a statement criticized \u201cMAGA Republicans\u201d on the debate stage for siding with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the Ukrainian people and alluded to Ramaswamy mocking U.S. politicians who have made the trip to Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to show solidarity with the Ukrainian people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At one point during Wednesday\u2019s debate, Ramaswamy took a dig at\u00a0former Vice President Mike Pence\u00a0and\u00a0New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, both of whom visited Kyiv this summer, for making a \u201cpilgrimage\u201d to \u201ctheir Pope Zelenskyy\u201d without doing the same for Americans impacted by Hawaii\u2019s wildfires and crime and violence in U.S. cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley\u00a0on the debate stage slammed Ramaswamy, saying he was effectively standing with Putin and was being short-sighted about U.S. interests. \u201cThis guy is a murderer. And you are choosing a murderer over a pro-American country,\u201d said Haley, who also previously served as the South Carolina governor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Publicly, the White House has stressed that key Republican lawmakers, notably the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, are largely in agreement on the need to continue robust assistance to Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dozens of Republicans in the House, and some GOP senators, have expressed\u00a0reservations\u00a0about \u2014 and even voted against \u2014 spending more federal dollars for the war effort. Many of those Republicans are aligning with Trump\u2019s objections to the U.S. involvement overseas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very easy to say \u2018I\u2019d rather spend money on a bridge in West Virginia than a bridge on Ukraine.\u2019 That on a superficial level makes sense,\u201d said Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a conservative Washington think tank. \u201cWe\u2019re witnessing a struggle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party right now and the Ukraine debate is a proxy of that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Christopher Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion in Pennsylvania, said the handling of the Ukraine war isn\u2019t as salient to the electorate as the economy, health care, immigration, abortion and some other issues. But polling suggests that concerns about the costs of the war resonate with working-class Republican primary voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the flip side, Borick said Biden is not likely to win votes solely on his handling of Ukraine. But how the war plays out in the months ahead could help or diminish the president\u2019s broader argument about his administration\u2019s competency and success at restoring U.S. leadership on the international stage after four years of Trump\u2019s \u201cAmerican first\u201d foreign policy approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cRight now, Ukraine isn\u2019t as prominent an issue for voters, but we\u2019re seeing Trump, Ramaswamy and DeSantis setting the table to raise the question later in the campaign of how much U.S. treasure we\u2019re spending over there that we could be spending at home,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 For\u00a0President Joe Biden,\u00a0strong backi […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2741,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2740"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2742,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2740\/revisions\/2742"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}