ANALYSIS
In a speech to Republican donors several days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, former Vice President Mike Pence reportedly said, “There is no room in this party for apologists for Putin.”
If you have somehow not paid any attention to politics for, say, the past six years, you might be puzzled as to why a major Republican politician would be compelled to say such a thing. After all, long before ordering his war of aggression against his neighbor, Vladimir Putin had distinguished himself as a ruthless autocrat.
Mr. Pence was probably admonishing a former Republican president.
Two days before the Russian attack began, Donald Trump praised Mr. Putin in an interview. And then at the Conservative Political Action Conference, known as CPAC, he defended those remarks. Mr. Trump used stronger words to condemn President Biden than he did Mr. Putin.
In this episode of History As It Happens, the conservative intellectual Charles C. W. Cooke, a senior writer for the National Review, discusses why some on the right – from elites down to ordinary voters – admire illiberal figures such as Mr. Putin, a trend that intensified during the Trump presidency.
“There are people – and I don’t think there are very many of them – who believe that the real threat, as they would put it, to the United States, to conservatism, to liberty comes from within, not without… that Vladimir Putin should in some way be praised because, well, at least he’s a ‘Christian leader,’” Mr. Cooke said. “That is nonsense. It’s disgraceful nonsense. But it does exist.”
Rep. Liz Cheney, Wyoming Republican, recently referred to a “Putin wing” of the Republican Party. Other observers allege that White, evangelical Christians are among Mr. Putin’s most fervent admirers. And some may argue Trump loyalists who look to the Kremlin for inspiration are also likely to believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen – an illiberal attitude that bodes poorly for American democracy.
“When you say that Republicans have turned against democracy – I mean, there are some areas in which Republicans are hostile toward democracy, although that is very much true of the left as well – but the problem is dishonesty. It is rank and repeated dishonesty. And I see that as something of a discrete problem from illiberalism,” Mr. Cooke said.
To listen to the full interview with Mr. Cooke, subscribe to History As It Happens, available wherever you get your podcasts.
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