They didn’t listen to him in Congress this week….
Foreign Aid PASSED OVERWHELMINGLY…..
Just what President Biden WANTED…
…
The foreign aid bill—$95 billion for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, plus other sundries like a possible ban on TikTok—is headed to Joe Biden’s desk after the Senate approved it 79-18 last night.
A quick reminder: It was only months ago that congressional Republicans, in a fit of pique spurred by Donald Trump, killed a nearly identical aid package that also contained a number of border security measures. Those measures had been endorsed by the Border Patrol Union, but Republicans sniffed that they weren’t nearly enough to solve America’s border woes. So instead they get nothing on the border, and the aid passed anyway.
In three months, the Republican party will nominate Trump as its presidential candidate for a third consecutive time. This is unusual in American politics.
Yesterday Republicans in the United States Senate voted 31 to 15 for aid to Ukraine. House Republicans had divided 101 to 112 a few days earlier. So a (slight) majority of all Congressional Republicans voted for aid to Ukraine. Most Republican members of Congress took a position on a very important issue against their presidential nominee. That too is unusual in American politics. I can’t offhand think of another recent instance of such a break from a party’s nominee in an election year by that party’s elected officials.
So in 2024 the GOP is still Trump’s party. But it’s somewhat less so than it was before this week. Maybe significantly less so.
Some will hasten to say that Trump didn’t speak up as clearly as he might have against the aid package, that he made it somewhat easier for Republicans in Congress to vote as they did. There’s some truth to this. Still, Trump hasn’t budged in any fundamental way from the anti-Ukraine, pro-Putin, and anti-NATO stance that he’s embraced for years. So the congressional vote couldn’t help but be a statement of independence from Trump.
Many Republican elected officials will do their best to paper over this difference. They’ll hurry to leave behind this brief moment of splitting with Trump over Putin. They’ll scurry back as quickly as possible to their comfort zone of opposing all things Biden and left and woke.
But you know what’s good about having two parties? If one party tries to paper over its differences, the other can try to keep them in the public eye….