Government Shutdown Averted For Now

I look forward to seeing Congress provide, in the very near future, financial support for Ukraine which is valiantly struggling against Russian aggression.

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) October 1, 2023

The majority of the majority does not support haphazardly funding war in Ukraine and it was proven this past week when 117 Republicans voted against a stand alone $300 M to Ukraine.

We elected our Speaker, not the Democrats, and our Speaker should not violate the Hastert Rule. https://t.co/mePgloVgNB

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene?? (@RepMTG) October 1, 2023

John Mearsheimer: “Why the Ukrainian counteroffensive was bound to fail from the start”

John Mearsheimer — one of America’s foremost international relations scholars — has published a powerful and damning indictment of Ukraine’s Western-driven counteroffensive, explaining why… pic.twitter.com/uaYqm7ki2X

— Thomas Fazi (@battleforeurope) September 25, 2023

I’m sure everyone heard the news.

I explained it to my wife yesterday on the way home for church.

A year ago, I decided that I would support Republicans in the 2022 midterms. The Biden administration had incited the war in Ukraine and Democrats in Congress were fully on board with funding it. Republican opposition to funding the war was clearly rising, but was not yet a majority. The best chance we had to stop the war was with a GOP Congress with public opinion turning against the war in 2023.

1. Gridlock in Washington and endless investigations in a Republican House was preferable to Democrats having the power to move their agenda.

2. Republican opposition to funding the war in Ukraine was likely to flip and Reaganites were poised to become the minority. It would be a gradual process though.

3. As our views become mainstream, I think it makes more sense to engage in mainstream politics and get some representation than to continue posturing as a dissident.

After voting mostly in state and local races in 2018 and 2020, this is why I thought we should vote in the midterms. The Red Wave didn’t materialize because of abortion though. For over 20 years now, foreign policy has always been one of my top issues and Joe Biden starting a dangerous, endless war with Russia aggravated me to the point where I was willing to hold my nose and vote Republican.

Shortly after the midterms, Mitch McConnell & Co. got together on Christmas Eve and passed the $1.7 trillion dollar Porkulus which included $45 billion for Ukraine. The idea was to push through as much money for Ukraine as possible before 1.) public opinion on the war in Ukraine soured with Republicans in charge of the House and 2.) to fund Ukraine’s counteroffensive which was expected to produce spectacular gains that would keep Americans interested in funding the war in late 2023.

In 2023, the government would have to be funded again in late September. Otherwise, we would enter a government shutdown in October. The Porkulus put Ukraine on life support until now.

Looking back, I have no regrets about my decision.

1. In the Senate, people like JD Vance came in while Mitt Romney announced he was retiring. The True Cons are gradually being eliminated in the Senate. Jeff Flake and Ben Sasse are gone. McConnell will be gone soon. We have more of a voice there now than I can ever remember.

2. In the House, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger went out in the midterms. Nearly half of House Republicans voted to strip $300 million from the defense spending bill to train Ukrainian soldiers and provide weapons. Sure, it passed anyway with unanimous support from Democrats, but the trend in the House is still away from globalism and toward non-interventionism.

3. As I expected, public opinion turned against the war and the overwhelming majority of Republican voters now oppose arming Ukraine.

4. Basically, Marjorie Taylor Greene and JD Vance have followed through on their promises to oppose funding the war in Ukraine. We have gone mainstream.

5. Zelensky was not invited to address a joint session of Congress. The political winds have shifted against the war.

A big development happened this weekend.

For the first time, opposition to funding the war in Ukraine was strong enough in the House to get the Ukraine funding taken out of the bill that temporarily funded the government. It was too controversial to pass the House because Republicans are now so deeply split on the issue. We have gone from having essentially zero power over our foreign policy to flexing some degree of power in the House. We will probably still lose on this round of Ukraine funding, but that is only because the trend is nascent. In the long run, we will become the dominant force in the Republican Party on foreign policy.

If the Democrats were still in control in the House, Ukraine funding would have been rubber stamped and sailed through without even hitting a speedbump. The thing that has changed is that people like Liz Cheney and Ben Sasse are increasingly no longer there. The constituency that once supported those people is vanishing. The “bipartisan consensus” of supporting every dumb war cooked up by the foreign policy establishment and the military industrial complex has been severely eroded.