Republicans Guilty of Suppressing Voters—Their Own

House GOP set to borrow and spend $61 billion for Captain Undershirt and prolong Ukraine crusade

An optimistic cynic might say that at least Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) is the most conservative Democrat Speaker of the House since Sam Rayburn (D-Texas) held the job on and off in the 1940s and 50s.

On Friday, Speaker Johnson used more Democrat votes than Republican ones to get foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel, and sort of Taiwan through the House Rules Committee and set for likely passage this weekend. The only bone thrown to Republican opponents of the additional deficit spending is a bill to Americanize or ban TikTok, the app that currently enables a Chinese-controlled corporation to track the movements of Americans and manipulate the information they receive. Johnson has constructed the four components to receive individual votes in the House but pass to the Senate as a single package, thus preventing that body from picking and choosing what to send to President Joe Biden for his signature.

The amounts are staggering. In the 1980s, there was an ugly, long-running food fight in Washington over aid to the anti-communist Contras in Nicaragua. (American Dad did an explainer.) The high-water mark for that aid was $100 million in 1986. Adjusting for inflation, that amount would be $285 million today. Congress is set to appropriate $61 billion for Ukraine, on top of at least $113 billion that Congress has already blown on the corrupt, authoritarian, non-ally, irrelevance to definable U.S. national interests that is slowly losing a war of attrition with Russia. To put this further in perspective, much-criticized U.S. aid to Israel totaled an inflation-adjusted $300 billion over nearly eight decades from 1946-2023.

Contra aid and Ollie North, as explained by American Dad.

The rest of the $95 billion the House will borrow and spend includes $26.4 billion ostensibly for Israel, but some of which will go to rebuild areas currently or formerly run by Hamas. Then there is also what is touted as $8.1 billion for “Taiwan,” but which only provides for $2 billion in what is known as “foreign military financing”—handouts to buy U.S. weapons—for “assistance to the Indo-Pacific region and for related expenses.” Who knows if Taiwan’s military will actually see a dime given the deep state’s expertise at tripping up anything that is helpful to Taiwan and harmful to China. (The additional oddity of this spending is that Taiwan has historically paid for its own weapons and is being pushed onto the dole by Washington—losing a key selling point to an American public skeptical of additional foreign obligations.)  

Public support for throwing more money at Ukraine has declined steadily and is now underwater among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. There are many reasons, but surely one of the best is that virtually the entire national security establishment, from left to right, from current and former officials, from think tanks to almost all media outlets, has misled the American public about Ukraine’s virtues, relevance to American security, and chances for winning. To a man, the experts predicted last summer’s Ukrainian “counteroffensive” would push back Russia and possibly topple Russian President Vladimir Putin. They were wrong. Russia defeated the Ukrainian assault, now has the initiative, and is taking ground.

The aid is tragic in a sense. What is needed now in the war is a stalemate in which both sides have a strong incentive to reach a peace deal. Like all deals in history, both sides would have to come away thinking they benefitted, which means that Ukrainian demands that Russia surrender all of its gains since 2014 and leave as a precondition to talks are unrealistic. In fact, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is talking up plans for a “new counteroffensive.”

Vaya con Dios Captain Undershirt.

Replacing Johnson would be pointless and distracting from the presidential election. Johnson’s speakership was born in captivity: he took the gavel after his caucus fired his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, with the barest of margins over Democrats in the chamber and after the appropriate time to pass appropriations bills that would at least differentiate Republicans from Democrats to the public, even if they did not become law due to the power of the Democrat-controlled Senate and White House.

Some new aid to Ukraine was always likely for the simple reason that majorities of both parties in Congress support more aid. The congressmen hold this view even though U.S. sanctions related to the war raise the cost of gasoline and other energy products for Americans, while affording China and India big discounts on oil and gas. U.S. actions have also pushed Russia and China closer together—an extreme risk for the USA. Republicans also have a political incentive to provide at least some additional aid to avoid taking the blame for Mr. Biden’s botched handling of Ukraine from before the war started through today—and likely Russian gains this summer.

Johnson ultimately had to bow to his colleagues in both parties. He also benefits from opponents within the GOP who might be right on policy pertaining to war and spending in this case, but who come across like weirdoes.

However, Republicans could have trimmed the package significantly, limited it only to military aid instead of also including general support for the corrupt Kiev government, and demanded as a precondition that Biden reinstate Trump-era policies to control the U.S. border with Mexico. They could have also avoided the House’s recent vote to extend the national security bureaucracy’s unconstitutional ability to spy on Americans without a search warrant.

Johnson could have used the past several months to pass bills that would help Republicans and harm Democrats as they prepare to face voters this fall. Even with bills that have no chance of passing the Senate, he could have forced House Democrats to take unpopular votes on late-term taxpayer-financed abortion, transgender radicalism, wokeness in corporations and academia, taxes, preserving social security, China, tariffs, etc. Republicans could have also made the case for reining in America’s out-of-control deficit spending, thus attracting voters to the GOP who care about an issue unlikely to be addressed in the presidential campaign by either Biden or Trump.

Instead, Democrats have driven the agenda and distracted from Trump, who is more effective than congressional Republicans at making arguments and winning over new voters. The House GOP appears to be the victim of events that could suppress enthusiasm by Republicans and cause Trump voters and donors to ignore congressional races.

Lucky for Congress, voter suppression is not illegal if it suppresses Republican votes.

Parting Shot

Mark Simon writes on his Substack about how the mediocrities running Hong Kong are impeding Beijing’s wishes to have its cake and eat it too, implementing severe repression but somehow maintaining Hong Kong as a cash cow:

Hong Kong is being led by men who are economically ignorant in terms of what a modern international city requires for it to attract capital, talent, and most importantly a confidence that the city operates on free market principles and not dictates from communist apparatchiks.

Read the full column from Mark: The Emperor Is Not That Far Away.