Tuesday 14 March 2023

I can imagine Trump's views on Ukraine taking him back to the White House

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Where do the leading contenders for the next US Republican Party presidential nomination stand on the Ukrainian war? 

Tucker Carlson has asked them and received interesting answers.

Trump and DeSantis agree on calling for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine and in not wanting regime change in Russia. I completely agree. 

This could win Trump the next election.

Or DeSantis, I suppose. 

This was the first time the latter has commented on Ukraine.

DeSantis, one can't help but suspect, chose his position knowing that if he didn't Trump might sweep the board, in the primaries and in the general election. 

Perhaps he is a real conservative and Republican. 

However the fact that he was a protégé of Paul Ryan, who fought Pat Buchanan and the palaeo-conservatives hard and thinks the USA is a proposition nation, makes this hard to swallow. 

Trump and DeSantis both think peace should be the US objective and that illegal immigration is the real threat to the USA. I agree completely again. 

So would Calvin Coolidge. So would George Washington, who counselled against having alliances.

Someone I never heard of called Vivek Ramaswamy says similar things about Ukraine but is a warmonger where China is concerned.

Why do Americans want a cold war against China? The first one was arguably unnecessary but a second one very certainly would be. 

There is no Communist threat anymore.

Pence, by contrast, sees the war as a necessary way of fighting Russia. People who disagree are traitors. In a wonderful American word, he is a patriotard. 

I can't see him having any chance.

Chris Christie is even more of a neo-con.

14 comments:

  1. 'Patriotard', like all the others invented by by the illiterate right, is a pathetically stupid 21st century word. I'm sure you find MTG attractive and sane. Do you believe the election was stolen, and the attack on the Capitol a guided tour?

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  2. I learnt the word patriotard from a young American shop girl who had well-thought out and intelligent right-wing views. She used it to describe the people who backed George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq. She said she had no liking for the USA at all and was a patriot for Portugal instead, her father's country which she had never visited.

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  3. The Communist threat is very real. Marxist ideas (which Westerners do not fully understand because they haven't been exposed to them on a daily basis) are gaining traction insidiously in many Western countries. I agree that the threat is not coming from China, though.

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    1. Marxism is a deadly threat but a new kind of leftism is the bigger threat. China is not the enemy. Russia is not the enemy. The enemies are within - and from without in the form of the invasion of illegal immigrants.

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    2. There is no new leftism. All the current trends (critical theory, intersectionality, and so on) are pretty standard Marxist ideas, just dressed up slightly for a more modern audience.

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  4. Fantasy interpretation of US politics. Americans raise their eyebrows over the cost of the US’s aid to Ukraine but it is not an issue that will decide the next election. And it is a joke for Ron DeSantis and loser Trump to think that their “calling for an immediate cease-fire” will produce action of any kind.

    So funny for Republicans to decry the Iraq war when it was the simpering nitwit Republican George Bush who led the charge and reviled anyone who objected. The Iraq war is the GOP’s responsibility more than anybody else’s.

    Also, funny for Miss Patriotard to say, she loves Portugal, which is an EU member that practices socialized medicine, gay marriage, and legal drugs. Everything the US right wing opposes. I am sure she was very pretty and charmed you, but she doesn’t sound very intelligent.

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    1. I would be surprised if she cared about single sex marriage or a good health service. Her point was she did not regard the USA as a real country.

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    2. It is not fair to tar Trump or the Trumpians with the George W Bush brush, is it? Trump is a throwback to pre-1941 Republicanism, You may be right that the American voters won't care unless their boys are being killed - but the expense of supplying arms to Ukraine is big.

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    3. Obviously their call for a ceasefire is intended to win votes, not to influence foreign states. How could it?

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  5. The consequences of permitting Russia to do what it wants in Ukraine here and now would, within about 50 years, prove absolutely disastrous for the USA and American interests. Russia is an expansionist imperial power. It has always been an expansionist imperial power. It only stops when opposed by equal or greater force, and such stoppages are, in the Russian view, always only temporary.

    The USA needs to disengage from its overseas obligations, but leaving power vacuums behind WILL create situations that will drag it right back in, in worse conditions than if it had never left in the first place.

    Disengaging from NATO needs to be done under circumstances that leave one or more military powers in place capable of resisting imperial incursions. Ukraine is proving itself a perfect candidate for such a job, and the rest of Europe is waking up to the necessity. The cost to the USA is a rounding error; HIMARS was 1980s technology and much of the other material that has been supplied was scheduled to be decomissioned in the coming decade or two. The military aid in question has zero impact on the immigration situation or on whether gas stoves are legal.

    To force Ukraine to the surrender table now would be demonically stupid - snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in a manner absolutely unparallelled in human history - and if it were done your grandchildren would damn you for your idiocy.

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    1. The world existed until recently without a policeman. It is true that there were many terrible wars but there are still many wars. Great Britain, when the strongest power in the world, tried not to be involved in continental wars, though we did not succeed. There can be no dispute that American attempts to promote her values since 1991 have led to wars, including the Ukrainian war, but once a war starts it is no easy matter to know how to stop it unless one side wins. So I partially agree.

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    2. I obviously do not want a surrender. I want a ceasefire. Russia might take advantage of it but so might Ukraine. If Russia is pushed out of Ukraine this will probably not be the end of the matter, though hard to imagine Ukraine recapturing the Crimea..

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  6. alas ...
    c' est possible

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