Republicans erupt into open warfare over Ukraine
aid package vote
As the speaker of the House finally allows a vote to
go forward on aid, GOP infighting is tearing apart the party
Robert Tait
in Washington
Sat 20 Apr
2024 15.14 CEST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/20/republicans-ukraine-aid-package-congress
Republican
divisions over military support for Ukraine were long simmering. Now, before
Saturday’s extraordinary vote in Congress on a foreign aid package, they have
erupted into open warfare – a conflict that the vote itself is unlikely to
contain.
Mike
Johnson, the speaker of the House of Representatives, triggered an all-out
split in his own party’s ranks last week by finally agreeing, after months of
stalling, to a floor vote on the $95bn foreign aid programme. Passed by the
Senate in February, it contained about $60bn for Ukraine, $14bn for Israel, and
a smaller amount for Taiwan and other Pacific allies.
Johnson’s
decision to finally bring the package to a vote made a highly symbolic break
with the GOP’s far right, the people who engineered his elevation to the
speaker’s chair last October after toppling his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy.
These Republican rightwingers – reflecting the affinity of their political
idol, the former president Donald Trump, for the Russian president, Vladimir
Putin – have grown openly hostile to Ukraine’s cause.
Speaking
from the Capitol on Thursday, Johnson made no apologies for antagonising them,
telling C-SPAN that providing aid to Ukraine was “critically important” and
“the right thing” despite the potential power of his opponents to bring him
down in yet another internal party coup.
“I really
believe the intel and the briefings that we’ve gotten,” Johnson said. “I
believe that Xi and Vladimir Putin and Iran really are an axis of evil. I think
they are in coordination on this. I think that Vladimir Putin would continue to
march through Europe.
“I am going
to allow an opportunity for every single member of the House to vote their
conscience and their will,” he said, adding: “I’m willing to take a personal
risk for that, because we have to do the right thing. And history will judge
us.”
The
backlash was fierce. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the outspoken Georgia
representative, immediately filed a resolution demanding Johnson’s removal,
called the bill a “sham”.
“I don’t
care if the speaker’s office becomes a revolving door,” Taylor Greene told
Steve Bannon, Trump’s former adviser, on his War Room channel. “The days are
over of the old Republican party that wants to fund foreign wars and murder
people in foreign lands while they stab the American people in their face and
refuse to protect Americans and fix our problems.”
Branded
“Moscow Marjorie” by former Republican representative Ken Buck, who said she
gets her talking points from the Kremlin, Taylor Greene went further by
accusing Ukraine of waging “a war against Christianity”.
“The
Ukrainian government is attacking Christians, the Ukrainian government is
executing priests,” she said. “Russia is not doing that. They’re not attacking
Christianity.” (In fact, according to figures from the Institute for Religious
Freedom, a Ukrainian group, at least 630 religious sites had been damaged or
looted in Russia’s invasion by December last year.)
Taylor
Greene’s move to oust Johnson was supported by the Kentucky representative
Thomas Massie, who also backed an ultimately successful attempt to remove a
previous Republican speaker, John Boehner, nearly a decade ago.
Other
Republican rightwingers are unhappy, too, though they have so far stopped short
of moving to topple the speaker. That might be because Trump, the party’s
presumptive nominee for president who is currently on trial on fraud charges
relating to paying hush money to keep American voters from learning about his
alleged affair with an adult film star, has backed Johnson.
So have all
four Republican chairs of the key House committees – foreign affairs,
intelligence, armed services and appropriations - a position driven by the
sheer urgency of Ukraine’s predicament.
More than
two years into the war, Ukraine has a catalogue of absolutely critical military
requirements, including artillery shells, air defence missiles and deep-strike
rockets.
Johnson has
tried to dilute the internal opposition by unbundling the aid package into four
separate bills, with each to be voted on individually – apparently in the hope
that the chance to vote against the bits they dislike (such as Ukraine) while
backing causes more palatable to them (such as Israel) will placate the
implacable.
Although
the Republicans’ house majority is now whittled down to two, Democrats – who
mostly back funding Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion – have
pledged to support Johnson’s bills. That could mean Ukraine would finally get
the US assistance it has so fervently hoped for: roughly $60bn in assistance
(much of which would be to replenish weapons stocks provided by the US),
including $10bn to be given in the form of a loan, a concept Trump has
apparently endorsed.
Predictably,
Democrats are gloating. Jared Moskowitz, a Democratic representative from
Florida, moved an amendment to the Ukraine bill calling for Taylor Greene’s
office in the Cannon building to be renamed the Neville Chamberlain room – in
homage to the pre-second world war British prime minister notorious for
appeasing Hitler – and asking she be appointed “Vladimir Putin’s special envoy
to the US”.
While
Saturday’s vote may settle the Ukraine issue for now, Republican divisions will
probably rumble on, according to Kyle Kondik of the Center for Politics at the
University of Virginia.
“The GOP
split on Ukraine would remain, but the need for action (or inaction) in the
short term would be solved,” he said.
“Johnson
may be well-positioned to survive as speaker because Democrats may provide him
some votes. But the GOP conference is so divided (and so small in its majority)
that I’m sure something else will come along to cause more turbulence.”
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