Last Weekend’s Political Mirage

The passage of the Ukrainian aid package won’t transform the GOP.

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The passage of the Ukrainian aid package by the House this past weekend is an extraordinary sign of political courage. But in the party of Donald Trump, this win for democracy may soon seem like a mirage.

(For further reading on Mike Johnson’s speakership and what the weekend’s victory could mean for him, I recommend Elaina Plott Calabro’s profile, “The Accidental Speaker,” published today in The Atlantic.)

First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

A Political Mirage

The mirages known as fata morgana, named for the character Morgan le Fay of Arthurian legend, are extraordinary sights. When atmospheric conditions are just right, rays of light bend, transforming boats, islands, mountains, and coastlines before the viewer’s eyes. Despite their beauty, though, these mirages soon fade away—which brings me to this weekend’s remarkable scene in the House.

On Saturday, Republican Speaker Mike Johnson faced down the threats from his party’s Trumpist isolationist wing and delivered a resounding bipartisan victory for the forces of democracy. The $61 billion Ukrainian aid package passed with more than 300 votes—the final total was 311–112—including 101 GOP votes and the support of every Democrat in the House. The bill, which is expected to be approved quickly by the Senate and signed by President Joe Biden, will provide the embattled Ukrainians with crucial support at what seems a decisive moment in the war against Vladimir Putin and his army of invaders.

The vote was a stinging rebuke to MAGA world and its leader. “Ukraine won,” David Frum wrote in The Atlantic this weekend. “Trump lost.”

We also got a vanishingly rare glimpse of political courage. For months, Johnson dithered over legislation to aid Ukraine, and his delays contributed to the unconscionable loss of Ukrainian lives as Russia rained death on Ukraine’s cities. His conversion was as welcome as it was astonishing. Although his ideological shift has been described as an evolution, it felt more like a road-to-Damascus moment. Having played the role of Neville Chamberlain for months, Johnson suddenly sounded almost Churchillian.

“History judges us for what we do,” he said last week. “This is a critical time right now. I could make a selfish decision and do something that’s different. But I’m doing here what I believe to be the right thing.”

Unlike his party’s maximum leader, Johnson paid attention to foreign-policy experts, listened to the pleas of American allies, and believed the intelligence community rather than Putin. “I really do believe the intel,” Johnson said. “I think that Vladimir Putin would continue to march through Europe if he were allowed. I think he might go to the Baltics next. I think he might have a showdown with Poland or one of our NATO allies.”

Johnson knew that the decision could cause him to lose his speakership. In this era of GOP political cowardice, his stand felt profoundly countercultural.

So did the House’s rare display of bipartisanship. The House Republican leadership (with the notable exception of New York Representative and vice-presidential wannabe Elise Stefanik) worked with Democrats to stand by Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.

After years of dominating the public narrative, the GOP’s most extreme performers found themselves isolated and outvoted. Marjorie Taylor Greene had humiliation after humiliation piled on her; her amendments (including one funding “space laser technology” on the southern border) were widely mocked and then overwhelmingly defeated. Even Fox News seemed to turn on her, publishing a scathing op-ed calling her “an idiot” who is “trying to wreck the GOP” with “her bombastic self-serving showmanship and drama queen energy.”

The isolationists were left to vent their rage at displays of support for Ukraine, which included waving Ukrainian flags on the House floor. “Such an embarrassing and disgusting show of America LAST politicians!” Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado posted. “You love Ukraine so much, get your ass over there and leave America’s governing to those who love THIS country!”

And yet, for a few hours, congressional Republicans almost looked like a functioning, rational, governing political party, one that saw the United States as a defender of democracy against authoritarian aggression. It was a party that Ronald Reagan would have recognized. But restrain your exuberance, because we most likely witnessed nothing more than a political fata morgana.

This is, after all, still Donald Trump’s party.

In the days before his legislative defeat, Trump tried to soften his message a bit, posting on Truth Social that he, too, favored helping Ukraine. “As everyone agrees,” he wrote, “Ukrainian Survival and Strength should be much more important to Europe than to us, but it is also important to us!”

Frum noted in his recent article that Trump’s statement “was after-the-fact face-saving, jumping to the winning side after his side was about to lose.” (Perhaps the most bizarre spin came from Trump loyalist Lindsey Graham, who went on Fox News to insist that “this would not have passed without Donald Trump.”)

But there should be no doubt what Trump’s election would mean for Russia, Ukraine, or NATO. And we have precious little evidence that the GOP would ever push back against a President Trump, who would side with Putin against our allies and our own intelligence agencies.

The directional arrow of the GOP remains unchanged: A majority of House Republicans voted against aiding Ukraine (the vote among Republican representatives was 101 for and 112 against); a majority of Senate Republicans is likely to vote no as well.

And the backlash on the right is just beginning. On cue, the flying monkeys of the MAGAverse came out quickly against Johnson and the Ukraine package. After the vote, Greene declared that Johnson was not merely “a traitor to our conference” but actually “a traitor to our country,” whose speakership was “over.” She continues to threaten to bring a motion to vacate the chair, which could plunge the GOP back into chaos and dysfunction.

Senator Mike Lee railed against what he called “the warmonger wish list” passed by the House. Denunciations of Johnson’s “treason” and demands for his removal flooded right-wing social media. Donald Trump Jr. fired a barrage of attacks against Johnson and the Ukraine bill, which he’s called a “garbage bill,” while posting his support for Greene’s attempts to derail it.

Meanwhile, Steve Bannon, the rumpled consigliere of Republican anarchy, is escalating his attacks on Republicans who voted for the package. “Traitors One and All,” the former White House aide wrote on his Gettr account. Bannon called Johnson a “Sanctimonious Twerp” who had “Sold Out His Country to Curry Favor with the Globalist Elites.”

The Trump ally Charlie Kirk railed: “Not only is the DC GOP collapsing the country by their anti-American actions, they are participating in the end of the constitutional order as we know it.”

In a rational party, these would be voices from the fringe. But Greene, Don Jr., Kirk, and Bannon still represent the id of the GOP, because they have Trump’s ear and remain far closer to the heart of the MAGA base than internationalist Republicans such as Nikki Haley, Liz Cheney, and Mike Pence—all of whom have been thrown into Republican exile. In a recent Gallup poll, just 15 percent of Republican voters said they think the United States is not doing enough to help Ukraine, while a strong majority—57 percent—think we are doing too much.

Despite the illusion of a rational foreign policy and this past weekend’s flash of courage and independence, Johnson and the rest of the GOP conference are all but guaranteed to rally to support Trump. Even as he stands trial on multiple felony charges, Republicans are lining up to pledge their fealty to the former president whether or not he is convicted; New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu and former Attorney General Bill Barr are merely the latest Republicans to bend the knee.

In just a few months, my hometown of Milwaukee will host the GOP’s re-coronation of Trump, affirming once again his absolute grip on the mind and soul of the party. By then, what happened this weekend will seem like a distant mirage.

Related:

Today’s News

Lawyers in Trump’s hush-money trial in New York made their opening statements today.
The head of the Israeli military’s intelligence directorate resigned, citing his department’s failure to anticipate Hamas’s attack on October 7.
Hundreds of members of the teaching staff at Columbia University held a walkout to protest the administration’s decision last week to call in police officers, who arrested more than 100 students involved in a pro-Palestine demonstration.

Dispatches

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Evening Read

Brown marshland coming up against a green sea — Cavan Images / Alamy

It’s Really Hard to Rebuild a Marsh

By Erica Gies

The water in California’s San Francisco Bay could rise more than two meters by the year 2100. For the region’s tidal marshes and their inhabitants, such as Ridgway’s rail and the endangered salt-marsh harvest mouse, it’s a potential death sentence …
To keep its marshes above water, San Francisco Bay needs more than 545 million tonnes of dirt by 2100. Yet for restorationists looking to rebuild marshes lost to development and fortify those that remain, getting enough sediment is just one hurdle: The next challenge is figuring out a way to deliver it without smothering the very ecosystem they’re trying to protect.

Read the full article.