You would think after five years of the Republican standard-bearer telling anyone who will listen that the United States is "stupid" and that "the whole world is laughing at us" while kissing up to dictators and insulting U.S. allies, that members of the GOP would now be embarrassed to fall back on their old playbook of calling Democrats unpatriotic and soft of defense. But as we know, they are shameless so that isn't something that would stop them.
As it stands, after a few weeks of confusion and disarray (which I wrote about here) — not really sure if their supporters' adoration for that gorgeous hunk Vladimir Putin was so deeply felt that they would support the invasion of Ukraine — GOP leadership has mostly come around to the idea that Russia probably shouldn't be ruthlessly murdering massive numbers of civilians. Being the timorous followers these leaders really are, they couldn't just take a moral and principled stand at the outset, particularly since the leader of the party, Donald Trump, was out there saying that Putin was a genius and very savvy for just going in and taking the prime property he coveted. (Perhaps it reminded him of the good old days when he would take elderly widow's land under eminent domain to build parking lots for his casinos.) But they needn't have worried too much. The muscle memory of right-wing anti-communism is still viable in the GOP's body politic.
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