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Trump’s GOP and Putin’s Kremlin
Republicans have a lot of people to thank this year. For example, there is FBI director James Comey. Last summer, he was the Republicans’ goat, refusing to indict Hillary Clinton. Now he is the Man of the Hour. Then there is Hillary herself: whose corruption is a gift to any opponent, even Donald Trump. But don’t forget Vladimir Putin. Month after month, he has worked tirelessly for the GOP ticket, undermining the Democrats, mainly through his cut-out Julian Assange.
Putin has never stopped being a KGB man, just as Russian intelligence, whatever its current initials, has never stopped being the KGB. (We could go back further, of course, with this alphabet soup.)
The WikiLeaks revelations have been damning – damning of the Democrats. But can you imagine if Putin and the Kremlin were on the other side? If they were uncovering TrumpWorld’s e-mails instead of HillaryWorld’s? The e-mails of Corey, Manafort, Newt, Ivanka, Roger Stone, Ann, Laura, Sean, Kellyanne, Rudy, Ailes, and all the rest? Of Trump himself? I have a feeling those e-mails would be just as damning as the Hillary-related ones – and more entertaining.
Republicans are lucky to have the Kremlin on their side. I wonder whether they are sufficiently grateful to Putin. He is one of the MVPs for them this year.
In politics, I suppose, you take whatever help you can get. Principle, honor, ideals, and all that are “cuck” and “GOPe” (and “globalist” and every other epithet of the Trumpite Right). But Republicans and conservatives should consider: Putin may be their friend of the moment; but he is no friend of America or of democracy.
Democracy! Talk about a cuck notion. Does democracy matter? Ponder the words of Patrick J. Buchanan, a forerunner to Trump. In a recent column, he wrote that “the nationalist-populist right” is “moving beyond the niceties of liberal democracy to save the America they love.”
The niceties of liberal democracy are not mere niceties – they are necessities, enabling a free and decent life. Indeed, the American way of life.
But Republicans and conservatives are impatient with democracy, as people often are, looking with admiration at the strongmen, or would-be strongmen: the Le Pens, Orbán, Putin, and so on. (All of them are Trump endorsers. So is Kim Jong Un, for that matter.) From what I can tell, this is where the mind of the Right now is.
When I joined the GOP and the conservative movement, things were very different. The Right, broadly speaking, stood for democracy, freedom, and human rights. The Left had turned its back on those things. They snorted when Reagan talked about freedom, and, worse, from their perspective, promoted it.
Incidentally, did you notice that it fell to Hillary Clinton – Hillary Rodham Clinton, of all people – to defend Ronald Reagan? To defend him against the Republican presidential nominee? This was in the third debate, on the subject of trade.
Putin is the kind of leader who shoots his opponents in the back (Nemtsov) or tortures them to death, real slow (Magnitsky). Asked about this, Trump said, “I think our country does plenty of killing also.” Republicans and conservatives used to condemn this sort of thing as “moral equivalence.”
Trump keeps saying that Putin is very popular within Russia. He even cites poll numbers. Of course, Russia lacks a free press, multiple parties, and genuine elections. I learned to watch out for such things, way back, from Republicans and conservatives.
Earlier this year, I interviewed George W. Bush at his presidential center in Dallas. We were talking about strongmen and dictators. Unprompted, Bush brought up Putin. “People say, ‘He’s the most popular guy in Russia.’ I say, ‘Yeah, I’d be popular too if I owned NBC’” (and the other networks).
In the summer, following a coup attempt, Turkey’s strongman, Erdogan, cracked down viciously. He took the opportunity to purge, imprison, torture, or kill anyone who might have criticized or opposed him in the past. Trump was asked about all this. And he said that, really, America had to focus on its own problems. “When the world looks at how bad the United States is, and then we go and talk about civil liberties, I don’t think we’re a very good messenger.”
This is the new GOP, the Trump GOP, and it has taken much of the conservative movement with it.
The world over, but especially in Europe, Putin and the Kremlin are doing their best to undermine democracy. In September, I was in Latvia, and I asked an intellectual a simple question: “Does Putin have designs on the Baltics?” “Sure!” he laughed. “He has designs on the United States!”
I have seen many weird things in politics. The current partnership between the GOP and the Kremlin may be the weirdest.
What this country needs, I think, is a freedom party, if the Republicans no longer wish to be that. A freedom party would be a very small party, obviously. People like their statism, whether of a pink or brown hue. But at least such a party would keep the light on – the light of American ideals – until a better day.
And I warn Republicans and conservatives: You may think Vlad is cool now, because he is helping your guy. But watch your back.
P.S. It occurs to me to quote John Dos Passos, as I have before. Here he is, writing in 1941: “Under the stresses of the last years we have seen nation after nation sink to its lowest common denominator. Naturally it’s easy for us to see the mote in our brother’s eye [our brother in Europe]. The question we have to face is: What is the content of our own lowest common denominator?”
More: “When we wake up in the night cold and sweating with nightmare fear for the future of our country we can settle back with the reassuring thought that the Englishspeaking peoples have these habits engrained in them.”
By “these habits,” Dos Passos means the habits of self-government. The habits of the Anglo-American political tradition. Can we still reassure ourselves in the night?
Dos Passos warns of a “personal despotism that has so often been the style of government” outside “the Anglo-Saxon family of nations.”
Finally: “If, in the bedrock habits of Americans, the selfgoverning tradition is dead …, no amount of speechifying of politicians or of breastbeating by men of letters will bring it back to life.”
For sure.
Published in Foreign Policy
However we have every reason he has tons of material to blackmail Clinton.
I would take these eleventh-hour anti-Trump appeals much more seriously if they would come out and definitively argue in favour of voting for Gary Johnson.
Any anti-Trump post that doesn’t include a full-throated endorsement of Gary Johnson is, by process of elimination, an endorsement of Hillary Clinton.
I can respect a thoughtful #nevertrumper, but never a #maybehillary.
And Obama is a Castro admirer
This is just goofy. Trump has not taken the conservative movement anywhere. The proof of that is the strength of NeverTrump, among pundits and elected GOP officials.
Trump is Trump. We are stuck with Trump, and if we are lucky we will boost his sorry ass into the presidency. After which, movement conservatives will spend the next four years opining on how he should be impeached.
Meanwhile, if he wins, SoCons will be praying prayers of gratitude that we did not have to suffer under a Hillary Administration.
Like so many recent posts, this one serves no purpose except to goad people. Trump voters have no influence over Putin, so how is his support via WikiLeaks a valid criticism of those voters? Have NeverTrump voters not similarly embraced the political ammunition in those leaks against Clinton?
Admins, y’all need to be more demanding of your Contributors. Civility is not circumspection in offense.
I have an aesthetic problem with the idea of the Russians hacking Hillary’s server. It’s not that they don’t have the inclination or the ability; the problem is that they have too much ability. Asking a Russian hacker to steal Hillary’s e-mails would be an insult – like asking John Robie (Cary Grant’s character in the 1955 movie, To Catch a Thief ) to break open a child’s piggy bank. Where’s the challenge, where’s the artistry?
Obama isn’t on the ballot. Who does Hillary admire? Who does Gary Johnson admire?
No collusion between Trump’s people and the RNC to steal the primary away from all the other opponents. If anything, we’d see the RNC desperate to do the opposite.
a) Nobody said it had to be Russia’s top hackers. They coulda assigned the task to their B-team.
b) Have you read about the method used to hack Podesta? It’s pretty funny, ackshully.
After taking the pot of gold as a donation to the Clinton Foundation of course.
Don’t be surprised if after she’s inaugurated we develop a more pro-leprechaun foreign policy.
Hat tip, sir.
Did Jay perhaps endorse Hillary in his piece? I must have missed it. Always so defensive and prickly. Does no part of you even consider the possibilities and dangers of Putin? You are so eager to defend Trump at all turns that you have lost sight of all objective reality in this matter. I could be more sanguine about the whole affair if Trump and his supporters at least showed some level of awareness about Putin. Instead you carry his water for him because to not do that would mean to have doubts about your own candidate.
I recall hearing from my parents that they knew Ronald Reagan was going to be great because the Russian propaganda service was all up in arms about him. I don’t see them now doing anything other than praising Trump, and I know that does not bode well.
I think Jay Nordlinger is voting for Evan McMullin, along with a lot of other people who usually vote Republican. I will likely be voting for Evan McMullin here in Indiana next Tuesday as a protest against the Leftism of both Hillary and Trump.
Is useful idiot that much better?
I tire of reading laments about love of strongmen while Republicans make little effort to restore true representation and balance of powers.
The majority of new laws each year are not voted on by elected officials, but Republicans do nothing. The President’s appointees in Executive agencies abuse their powers to sidestep legislation and the legal protections of citizens, but Republicans do nothing. Judges have become dictators, but Republicans do nothing. Voters in some states choose from a wide variety of candidates while voters in other states are limited to a paltry few, but Republicans do nothing.
Voters can only select from the bottomless package deals offered to them by candidates. Priorities are the responsibility of politicians. Restoring the order of the Constitution and limited, local government evidently has not been a priority of the GOP in my lifetime of nearly four decades.
America is not what it was. Don’t talk as if we’re clinging to the rule of law, the balance of powers, the local preference, and respect for individual liberty that were abandoned long ago. We are fighting to regain only remnants of that freedom.
The Founders chose war long before this.
Most would agree that Putin is interfering in our election. But is he really trying to help Trump? Not if you consider that his primary objective is to ensure that whoever takes office does so in the weakest possible condition. If he were confident that HRC will win no matter how much he “helps” Trump, then the drip-drip leaks which expose her and her party’s criminality further advance his objective. Thus he is surely saving the most damaging evidence of her misdeeds until after she is sworn in, when the final blow can be delivered, leaving America in a prolonged political crisis.
Putin is playing chess while our political class is playing checkers.
I am more concerned about Trump’s response when asked about Putin killing journalists who write negative stories about him. Trump simply said, “This happens in America too.” When asked about Erdogan (Prime Minister of Turkey) and his jailing of dissidents, Trump’s response was, “We have a lot of problems in America, so we are not in a position to judge Turkey.”
Trump is not a friend of freedom. Never was; never has been.
It’s gotta be a little bit better.
A useful idiot can, hypothetically, be smartened up by events.
A puppet, however, never stops following orders.
Also, remember how he played nice with Ted Cruz during the early part of the primaries, only to turn on him like a pitbull once he shifted strategy?
I see the same thing being very possible with Putin. It makes sense to play nice now, but what if Putin ruffles his ego somehow?
I’m tiring of the parallel arguments of “we have no idea what Trump will do because he’s so unpredictable” and “we can be absolutely certain that Trump will (fill in the blank with whatever awfulness)”. Quite similar to “believe absolutely nothing he says” and “that offhand comment you don’t like he made in 1999 is an absolute and set in stone”.
Joe McCarthy presented more evidence about the commie influence. I need more than some rave with allusions and allegations doing a progressive hit job without the progressive finesse.
Do not follow these folks, Val. They are headed to a dead end.
Neither of them are. The ballot question is, “which one is the less effective enemy of freedom?”
Idea. Pay to view: Jay vs VDH debate on Ricochet.
Why throw a Hail Mary when you can simply sit down and let the other team win?
Goading? Perhaps it is pricking the conscience of Trump’s supporters, but rather than meditate why this should sting them so they lash out. Putin’s direct and indirect support of Trump should worry us all. Not because it means that Hillary is better than Trump because of it. But, for what it means about how Putin sees the world. Clearly, if Putin is feeding this help to Trump he must see some advantage for himself in doing this. So we must ask ourselves what that advantage is. We should not walk blindly into this thing with Trump, and all I see around me from the Trump folk is utter blindness to the risk here. It may be acceptable risk, but for goodness sake have the honesty to acknowledge it at least.
Evan McMullin is the Hail Mary.
Most of “the regulars” haven’t spent their entire life funding people like Jimmy Carter, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer. Nor have most “regulars” praised socialized medicine or endorsed an expansion of Medicaid.
I live in Indiana. The Republican nominee for US Senate is Todd Young. If I found out that Todd Young had praised single payer health care as practiced in Scotland and Canada or praised President Obama’s 2009 economic stimulus plan, I would be reluctant to support Todd Young.
But in the eyes of the Trumpkins, Todd Young is a member of the US House of Representatives and is therefore “part of the mess in Washington DC.” So, let’s worship Hillary Clinton donor Donald Trump, right? Wrong.
Not everyone who was of use to the Commies was a paid agent (though many were), some were honest idealists who believed in the cause, others just fools. I don’t think it made much difference to the Kremlin who was who and why so long as they were of use. Like I keep saying I would be less worried if you were just a bit more worried. But, it’s okay on this I can be worried for the both of us. Honestly I hope I’m wrong, but that isn’t how worrying works and you know it.
Sorry, but no. He’s really not. Maybe if he was on the ballot in all 50 states, like Johnson is, but he ain’t.
The only way to be #nevertrump without also being #maybehillary is to go full #johnsonweld.
Yeah, Hillary and crew are not exactly the A team. I wonder how far down the alphabet we’d have to go…
Ted Cruz also sucked up to Trump early in the primaries, and although his strategy worked better than everyone else’s, in the end Trump turned on him.
Likewise, maybe Putin thinks Trump would be better for Putin, but that doesn’t mean he’s right.
As for risk blindness, considering how Putin’s power and international prestige began to surge after Hillary’s
overchargereset, I see virtually any strategy change as less risky.