“They … didn’t blame Cuba or the communists for threatening American students and murdering Grenadians – they blamed the United States instead.
“But then, somehow, they always blame America first.
“… the ‘blame America first crowd’ didn’t blame the terrorists who murdered the Marines, they blamed the United States.
“But then, they always blame America first.
“… the San Francisco Democrats didn’t blame Soviet intransigence. They blamed the United States.
“But then, they always blame America first.
“… the San Francisco Democrats don’t blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies, they blame United States policies of 100 years ago.
“But then, they always blame America first.” – Jeane Kirkpatrick, addressing the Republican National Convention, 1984
What a difference forty years make. The chyrons at the bottom of the screens insisted the speakers were Republicans in Milwaukee, but to those of us who remember Ambassador Kirkpatrick, they sure sounded like the San Francisco Democrats.
The first feint towards political cross-dressing came with the completion of the Republican ticket. Instead of a traditional conservative like Mike Pence, Trump went for a Kremlin-loving mini-me [1] best known for “his habit of repeating Moscow’s foreign policy talking points” (Kevin Williamson via NYT [2]) and insisting, “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.”
The speakers piled on the isolationism. Marjorie Taylor Greene (that’s right, they gave Marjorie Taylor Greene a speaking slot) complained about helping Ukraine defend itself. Ron Johnson, who was arguably Moscow’s favorite Senator until Vance showed up, revealed his teleprompter dependency by claiming he read the wrong speech.
Then came David Sacks (Washington Post [3]).
The tech-mogul-turned-Kremlin-mouthpiece took the stage and “spent much of his speech … deriding U.S. involvement in a ‘forever war’ and even saying Biden ‘provoked — yes, provoked — the Russians to invade Ukraine with talk of NATO expansion.’ ”
… and there you have it. The party that rallied America to win the Cold War in the 1980s is demanding we give up the fight in the 2020s.