Putin's Poor Planning

and the Right's miscalculation

Ukraine should have been a done deal by now from Putin’s point of view.

But Ukrainian resolve and logistical things like fuel and food have stymied him.

Meanwhile the worldwide pile-on continues. Much of Asia seems ready to close the doors on Putin as well.

As things stand, three possibilities exist

The invasion succeeds - Putin gains control of Ukraine and declares it to be part of the Russian Federation. This won’t happen without costs both political and militarial and it is a certainty that a Ukrainian Underground supported by the West will make this victory costly and dangerous.

The invasion is stalled by months of war - A far more likely scenario than the above and one that gets more realist by the hour. There appears to be no planning for a supply line to deliver fuel and food to Russian troops. And given the complete devaluation of the ruble — a huge morale problem come payday. Wars create two fronts by definition, one military and the other political. Putin’s military position in Ukraine is being undermined by his political position at home

The invasions fails - Highly unlikely, but devastating if Ukraine manages to push back enough to induce a retreat of any kind.

For Trumpists, being puppets of Putinism has produced three responses.

Being Pro-Ukraine and ignoring the fact that Donald Trump has been a Putin supporter for decades - This is less about the Right ignoring the fact that being pro-Ukraine means being anti-Trump, but a case of politics making liars of them all. Even noted far-Right Trumpist J.D. Vance, a GOP candidate for an open Senate seat in Ohio, went from not caring about Ukraine “one way or another” to declaring Putin to be an “evil man” for invading it. It would be political malpractice for Democrats to not nail every Republican to Trump’s position on Ukraine and Putin, regardless of any current political epiphanies.

Being anti-intervention in Ukraine for basically isolationist reasons - Pure Trumpism actually. If there is ever a Republican revolt against Trump, it will be less about social and economic views and more about the fact that Donald Trump has shifted the GOP back to the Robert Taft position. Senator Robert Taft, known as “Mr. Republican”, was the front runner for the GOP presidential nod in 1952 until Dwight Eisenhower entered the political fray. The GOP, which had been isolationist internationally from its inception until sometime between the Soviet invasion of Poland and the attack on Pearl Harbor, was split in 1952 between returning to its isolationalist roots or becoming a party with some realist bona fides. Eisenhower got the nod and from Ike to Nixon to Reagan to both Bushes, the GOP seemed to eagerly take to leading the U.S. on the international stage.

International interventionism has been the political cornerstone of the GOP presidential mantra since Eisenhower’s election - the Democrats were not to be trusted in foreign affairs, that the GOP were the realists, and that idealism from the Left was naive and dangerous. That is until Trump’s election in 2016. Since then the schism on the Right has been an open wound created by the far-Right forcing those closer to the political center to cede much of their ideological ground in a post-Cold War world.

The third response has been pure hypocrisy - One need only to look at Tucker Carlson of late. His skirt, sweater, and pom-poms for Putin’s actions have been tucked carefully away as he tows the company line. When too many Republican politicians take a decidedly anti-Trump position and the events are literally front page news, the noted cable entertainment company FoxNews does a “little side step” that would make the Governor in “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” green with envy.

If Putin succeeds (or loses), the Right’s response to it will be fairly predictable. The only curiousity that exists is whether a lengthy and expensive war in Ukraine will turn that open wound to a gangrenous one requiring amputation.