Photo via kremlin.ru
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin
The virulent, rightwing, anti-communist Republican party of the 1950s with its ugly red-baiting and black-listing of liberal Americans by Wisconsin Sen. Joe McCarthy and California congressman Richard Nixon is gone forever and democracy is better off for it.
But few Americans could ever have expected that a far more serious threat to democracy would be Republicans attracted to the political advantages of communism. Americans feared Russia during the Cold War because Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev was literally threatening communism would bury democracy.
President Biden received the most votes ever cast in American history to defeat Donald Trump for reelection four years ago. But Trump and his most hard-core supporters who violently attacked Congress to try to stop Biden’s election have denied ever since that Trump was ever defeated. Now Trump and his supporters have become openly envious of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s power as a dictator to make elections come out the way he wants.
After decades of Republicans wrapping themselves in the flag on the July 4th to declare their love of democracy and hatred of communism, the party now pledges its allegiance to Trump as their nominee while he promises to let Russia “do whatever the hell they want” to destroy Ukraine and democracy in Europe.
Biden Working Fulltime
Fortunately, despite everything you’ve heard from the media lately, President Biden is an extremely bright and capable American president who is working full time to prevent Trump’s criminal alliance with Putin from escalating into World War III by electing a U.S. president who will let Putin do whatever he wants.
“Can you imagine a former President of the United States saying that?” Biden asked. “The whole world heard it and the worst thing is he means it. No other president in our history has ever bowed down to a Russian dictator. Well, let me say this as clearly as I can: I never will. For God’s sake, it’s dumb. It’s shameful. It’s dangerous. It’s un-American.” That about sums it up.
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If the media ever gets around to focusing on the stakes in this year’s presidential election, reporters really need to do a better job of discovering whether there are more than a handful of Republicans who still support protecting Ukraine’s democracy from Putin’s deadly destruction.
The most surprising thing we learned recently about Senate Republicans was 22 of them actually dared to vote with Democrats in resounding bipartisan support to appropriate $95 billion in military and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine, Israel and Palestinians in Gaza.
Break the Deadlock
Such overwhelming support by nearly three-fourths of the Senate should be terrific news that finally breaks through the blockade by House Republican extremists preventing any more U.S. funding to stop Putin from wiping Ukraine off the map.
But Speaker Mike Johnson’s House could cease functioning again at any moment. The latest Democratic special election victory flipped the House seat previously occupied by fictional Republican congressman George Santos whoever he was. That reduced the Republican House majority to two seats. Three Republican “no” votes can kill any legislation.
Just last Friday after the unexplained death (aka murder) of Putin opposition leader Alexei Navalny in a Russian prison, Johnson sounded surprisingly eager to pass more funding for Ukraine.
“As Congress debates the best path forward to support Ukraine,” Johnson declared, “the United States and our partners must be using every means available to cut off Putin’s ability to fund his unprovoked war in Ukraine and aggression against the Baltic states.”
House on Vacation
But right after Johnson’s nice words, the House went on vacation for two weeks. When Johnson returns, he knows he won’t be able to fund our own government or pass aid to Ukraine without Democratic votes. If he does either one, Johnson could be the next house speaker fired by Republicans.
Trump and Republicans are on the wrong side in Putin’s war in Ukraine and they’re on the wrong side of Putin’s not-so-cold war on democracy around the world. Biden will continue to call Republicans out on all those issues.
“We’ve all seen the terrible stories in recent weeks,” he said. “Ukrainian soldiers out of artillery shells. Ukrainian units rationing rounds of ammunition to defend themselves. Ukrainian families worried that the next Russian strike will permanently plunge them into darkness or worse.”
The 2024 presidential election is the same battle between darkness and light and between democracy and its destruction. The most disturbing part about most media campaign coverage so far is political reporters are treating the election as if it were a normal presidential election. There’s nothing normal about it.
Biden has spelled out the profound difference between their two presidencies for every voter: “Are you going to stand up for freedom, or are you going to side with terror and tyranny? Are you going to stand with Ukraine, or are you going to stand with Putin? Will we stand with America, or with Trump?”
