Ron DeSantis Ukraine Comments: Hawks Versus Republican Voters

The news this week has conservative hawks hardening their hearts to the point of brittleness. Russia’s human-wave attacks are wearying the Ukrainian arm y, and American support for sponsoring the conflict endlessly continues to wane . When Ron DeSantis answered Tucker Carlson’s questionnaire on Ukraine, indicating that he did not think that Ukraine was a vital national interest, the hawks’ spirits sank. Many apparently believed that after Obama and Trump, the United States could go back to 2003 again.

But in 2023 many Republican voters trust the foreign-policy establishment to reorder world affairs as much as they trust the diversity, equity, and inclusion consultants to remake social relations between all races and genders. Both gangs are ideological utopians who aim to create a new world, and make misery in the process. People haven’t forgotten. As W. James Antle III reminded u s in the latest print issue of National Review, “In the public’s mind, the Iraq War exceeds the Great Recession and the federal response to Hurricane Katrina as a monument of Republican failure.”

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Michael Brendan Dougherty

Michael Brendan Dougherty is a senior writer at National Review Online.

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The news this week has conservative hawks hardening their hearts to the point of brittleness. Russia’s human-wave attacks are wearying the Ukrainian arm y, and American support for sponsoring the conflict endlessly continues to wane . When Ron DeSantis answered Tucker Carlson’s questionnaire on Ukraine, indicating that he did not think that Ukraine was a vital national interest, the hawks’ spirits sank. Many apparently believed that after Obama and Trump, the United States could go back to 2003 again.

But in 2023 many Republican voters trust the foreign-policy establishment to reorder world affairs as much as they trust the diversity, equity, and inclusion consultants to remake social relations between all races and genders. Both gangs are ideological utopians who aim to create a new world, and make misery in the process. People haven’t forgotten. As W. James Antle III reminded u s in the latest print issue of National Review, “In the public’s mind, the Iraq War exceeds the Great Recession and the federal response to Hurricane Katrina as a monument of Republican failure.”