Ukraine aid speed bump highlights power of GOP's isolationist wing

Billions of dollars to help Ukrainians fight off Russian invaders has been one of the rare bipartisan issues in Congress which has received wide-ranging support with minimal pushback — until recently.

The fight over the latest aid package, $40 billion to pay for assistance to Ukraine, saw a large group of far-right Republicans break with their party leadership and oppose the measure. Roughly one-quarter of the Republicans in the House and Senate — 57 in the House and 11 in the Senate — voted against the latest aid package, which passed Thursday afternoon and is expected to be approved by President Biden.

The dispute revealed the growing power of the GOP’s isolationist wing — a loose coalition of populists and nationalist conservatives who have perpetuated former President Donald Trump’s opposition to a powerful presence from the U.S. on the global stage.

“It’s not so much about national security as it is about nation-building,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., told Yahoo News shortly after voting against the latest aid package Thursday. “I just don’t think we should be single-handedly financing this war. This would be three times what all of Europe combined has contributed.”

It’s a marked turn from the start of the war in late February, when leaders of the populist right, including Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Trump, largely backed away from their support for Russia President Vladimir Putin and opposition to U.S. involvement in the defense of Ukraine, as national attitudes swung almost universally in support of Ukraine.

But after about two months of war, other issues — from the likely overturning of Roe v. Wade to a national shortage of baby formula — pulled the country’s attention away from Ukraine, and Republican pollsters found that Ukraine was not a top issue for their voters.

Since then, Republicans like Senate nominee J.D. Vance of Ohio and others have stepped up their criticism of support for Ukraine again, often couched in terms that the U.S. shouldn’t be supporting a foreign ally when American families are hurting at home.

But Republicans who support providing aid for Ukraine, including the old guard of establishment Republicans, have dismissed the idea that the number of populists within the GOP is growing.

“There’s always been a stream of isolationists in our party and also in the Democratic Party,” said Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, the GOP’s 2012 nominee for president. “I don’t know that it’s on the rise, but there are some media people that are promoting that. So, not surprisingly, we get behind them where we think the voters are going to be.”

One of the Democrats who has opposed American intervention around the globe, and often aligned closely with positions pushed by Putin, is former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii. The one-time presidential contender was on-air with Carlson Monday night when the Fox News host lit into Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, for supporting aid to Ukraine.

“The more I think about it, it takes a lot of gall for eye-patch McCain to attack moms who are worried about baby formula as quote, pro-Russia,” Carlson said, sparking a minor uproar in Washington as the majority of Senate Republicans were pushing to get the aid approved.

Hawley, who is considered a contender for the Republican nomination in 2024 and supported Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, said that the term “isolationist” misses the point.

“I don’t think the core of the GOP is isolationist, I’m certainly not. I would describe it as nationalist,” Hawley said. “Do we want Russia rampant, no we don’t. But do we want to engage in nation-building with Ukraine, we don’t want to do that either.”

Carlson, Hawley and others on the right have often cited the Bush administration’s Iraq War as justification for not engaging overseas.

On Wednesday, former President George W. Bush berated the “decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq.” He then caught himself and said that he meant to say Ukraine, not Iraq.