Joe Biden plans to deliver what the White House is billing as “a major speech” designed to “convince doubters” about the value of the Ukrainian cause. The move comes after Congress reluctantly consented to a continuing resolution that striped $6 billion earmarked for Kyiv amid a fight over funding the government — a fight that cost Kevin McCarthy the speakership despite his efforts to mollify anti-Ukraine elements in his party’s conference.
The Biden White House believes that the federal legislature’s decision to balk at additional requests for support for Ukraine’s defense represents a political opportunity. And they’re probably not wrong. The Ukrainian cause is broadly popular. “Overall, the Chicago Council poll found that 63 percent of U.S. adults support providing additional arms and military supplies to the Ukrainian government,” the Washington Post reported on Wednesday. “That is comparable to 65 percent last November but down from 72 percent in July 2022.” Any politician’s instinct would be to maximize the opportunities accompanying the opposition’s endorsement of a minority proposition.
Moreover, the issue unites congressional Democrats behind Ukraine while splitting the GOP conference. Highlighting this discrepancy may expose the extent to which even the GOP’s Ukraine skeptics are of two minds on the matter — at least, in private. “I’m against that,” Representative Jim Jordan told reporters of a new package of Ukraine aid. “The most pressing issue on Americans’ mind is not Ukraine — it is the border situation, it’s crime on streets.” But that sentiment departs from what Representative Mike McCaul heard from this prominent lawmaker. “That’s not what he told us,” McCaul said of Jordan’s remarks. One Politico reporter revealed that Ukraine’s cause was no sticking point but a source of leverage “for border security concessions.”
But while Biden’s intervention into this intra-Republican debate would likely boost his own political prospects, it’s almost certain to harden the GOP’s theatrical opposition to the Ukrainian cause into something more concrete. The logic of negative partisanship all but ensures that Biden’s attempt to take ownership of Ukraine’s defense as an issue will compel Republicans to unite against it — not because they oppose Ukraine’s defense against a murderous Russian onslaught but because they oppose Joe Biden and all his works.
If the president truly cares about Kyiv’s independence, European security, and the interests of the U.S. and its allies on the Continent, he’ll subordinate his political instincts to his better judgment and lobby lawmakers behind closed doors. A table-pounding attack on the GOP’s intransigence will only beget more intransigence, and it’s the Republican Party that controls the purse strings.