Isolationism courses through the GOP as foreign threats intensify - The Boston Globe (2024)

“History’s watching,” Biden warned.

But many in the GOP see a political upside in opposing the aid, as isolationism fueled and reflected by former president Donald Trump and his “America First” campaign slogan picks up adherents among the ranks of congressional Republicans who are battling over foreign policy and the very future of their party. Now, the bill that would provide that aid, which fractured Senate Republicans, has no immediate prospect of advancing in the House of Representatives.

A little over a week ago, Trump, the Republican standard-bearer and likely presidential nominee, seemed to encourage Russia to attack NATO member states who do not spend enough on defense, saying at a South Carolina campaign rally that he would tell tell Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to those nations.

Then, in the wee hours of last Tuesday morning, the Senate passed a bipartisan bill to send $95 billion in aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, but without the support of 26 Republicans, including longtime defense hawks like Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, who is struggling to wrangle a historically narrow Republican majority, refused to immediately take up that measure. He has said Putin must be met with “united opposition”; he is also well aware that the rules of the House mean that any one of his “America First”-loving members could seek his ouster if he upsets them.

“The kind of isolationist sentiment that we see in play now has been in remission, really, since 1941,” said Charles Kupchan, a professor of international affairs at Georgetown who wrote a 2020 book on the history of isolationism in America. Kupchan said he sees Trump as a symptom of something bubbling up from the American electorate as much as he is a cause of it.

“The Trump phenomenon is bringing isolationism out of the woodwork,” Kupchan said, “in some ways re-legitimating it.”

The tide of isolationism has been especially surprising — and sudden — in the Senate, where members tend to view themselves as more deliberative and attuned to the long view. Longtime isolationists who used to be viewed as gadflies on the margins, like Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky or Mike Lee of Utah, found themselves voting alongside members once viewed as more comfortable in the foreign policy establishment, like Graham or Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.

“These isolationists have always been around,” said Scott Jennings, a former adviser to Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. “They now exist in a party where the leader of the party happens to see it their way.”

Funding for Ukraine has been particularly important to McConnell, who has spoken at length about America’s responsibility to protect its allies abroad — and ultimately, itself.

”I know it’s become quite fashionable in some circles to disregard the global interests we have as a global power. To bemoan the responsibilities of global leadership. To lament the commitment that has underpinned the longest drought of great power conflict in human history,” McConnell said in a floor speech on Feb. 11. “This is idle work for idle minds, and it has no place in the United States Senate.”

Yet there are multiple signs that it is the isolationists who will carry the party into the future. Nine of the 10 Republican senators who were first elected in 2020 or 2022 voted against the aid (the tenth, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, did not vote), as did all but two of the seven who were elected in 2018. They replaced establishment GOP lawmakers like Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri and Senator Rob Portman of Ohio. In a post on X, Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri, Blunt’s successor, pointed out that nearly every senator younger than 55 — himself included, at 48 — voted against it.

“Youthful naivety is bliss, the wisdom of age may save the west,” lamented Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, 63, in response. He and Senator Mitt Romney of Utah were the only two Republican members of the class of 2018 to vote in favor of the foreign aid. “Reagan may be dead, but his doctrine saved the world during less dangerous times than these.”

Senator J.D. Vance, 39, an Ohio Republican who has forged his political identity to dovetail with Trump’s, hit back with a post of his own.

“The fruits of this generation in American leadership is: quagmire in Afghanistan, war in Iraq under false pretenses, declining life expectancy, and demographic collapse in the West,” Vance said. “This moment calls out for many things, but boomer neoconservatism is not among them.”

Earlier this year, while campaigning for Trump, Vance spoke of another change in the Senate: He said he was one of about 10 “America First” senators, and urged voters to elect Trump so that there can be even more.

“There’s 10 more America First senators today than there were 10 years ago,” Vance said. “When [Trump is] making sure that Republicans don’t lose their spine, that is how you ensure that Congress stays America first — that’s why we’ve got to nominate this guy, we’ve got to re-elect him.”

A representative for Vance did not respond to a query about who exactly those 10 senators are.

Historically, Kupchan said, there are three strains of isolationism in American history: Those who believe that ambition abroad comes at the expense of prosperity at home; those who believe it comes at the expense of liberty at home; and those who oppose it due to anti-immigrant sentiment. All of those factors, he said, are at play right now.

In the House, many opponents of the foreign aid bill are, like Graham, demanding it be coupled with new border security even though Senate Republicans overwhelmingly rejected a bill earlier this month that did exactly that.

“I think the brainwashing, if you will, that we have to choose between our southern border and Ukraine has been out there,” said Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, the Republican chair of the House Foreign Affairs committee, at a breakfast with reporters hosted by the Christian Science Monitor on Friday. “I think we’re a great nation and we can do both.”

At times, the bedfellows buttressing isolationism in the House of Representatives can seem somewhat odd, marrying old-school isolationists who once seemed out of step with their party with newer lawmakers cast directly in the MAGA mold.

“I’m a big believer that the neoconservative movement has stepped away from the traditional conservative movement. I tend to be a realist in international relations,” said Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, who is deeply opposed to the the Ukraine aid, but conceded last week in a radio interview that it would probably pass if it were brought to the floor.

And Representative Chip Roy of Texas, who endorsed the presidential campaign of Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida and has at times been fiercely critical of Trump, said he embraced the former president’s view of foreign policy in this case.

“To the extent that this is America First with respect to securing the border of the United States… I 100 percent agree with that perspective,” Roy said in an interview.

Jess Bidgood can be reached at Jess.Bidgood@globe.com. Follow her @jessbidgood.