{"id":1494108,"date":"2022-05-27T08:00:47","date_gmt":"2022-05-27T12:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1494108"},"modified":"2022-05-27T08:01:39","modified_gmt":"2022-05-27T12:01:39","slug":"mitch-mcconnells-media-tour-to-brag-about-defeating-gop-opponents-of-bidens-foreign-policy-was-remarkably-ill-advised","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/mitch-mcconnells-media-tour-to-brag-about-defeating-gop-opponents-of-bidens-foreign-policy-was-remarkably-ill-advised\/","title":{"rendered":"Mitch McConnell\u2019s Media Tour To Brag About Defeating GOP Opponents Of Biden\u2019s Foreign Policy Was Remarkably Ill-Advised"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">34<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fmitch-mcconnells-media-tour-to-brag-about-defeating-gop-opponents-of-bidens-foreign-policy-was-remarkably-ill-advised%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1494108&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky went on a big media tour to praise President Biden\u2019s foreign policy, to take credit for a massive additional spending package for Ukraine, and to virulently attack the 11 Republican senators and 57 Republican members of Congress who voted against it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMcConnell Casts Ukraine Vote as Victory Over Republican Party\u2019s Isolationist Wing,\u201d touted the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/mcconnell-casts-ukraine-vote-as-victory-over-republican-partys-isolationist-wing-11653065154\">Wall Street Journal<\/a>, using a derogatory and inaccurate term to describe the growing coalition that opposes Biden\u2019s non-strategic foreign policy that appears untethered to any long-term national security interest.<\/p>\n<p>McConnell wants to be associated with the Democrats\u2019 bill, and he should be remembered as having helped its passage. In fact, he worked with Democrats to expand the bill from President Biden\u2019s initial request of $33 billion and to smooth legislative hurdles for easy passage. The passage of the bill brings the total U.S. funding for Ukraine\u2019s defensive war against Russia to more than $50 billion.<\/p>\n<p>McConnell\u2019s victory tour was lapped up by a D.C. media establishment that shares his goal of returning the Republican Party to its Bush-era foreign policy, and to disparage any voices supportive of former President Donald Trump, who had expressed concern about the costs and national security risks of escalating the war in Russia. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy are we giving more than $40 billion to Ukraine while Europe, by comparison, is giving very little, and they are greatly more impacted by a Russian invasion, obviously, than the U.S.,\u201d Trump wrote on Truth Social.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/HawleyMO\/status\/1526323885515448321\">Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri<\/a> tweeted, \u201cSpending $40 billion on Ukraine aid \u2013 more than three times what all of Europe has spent combined \u2013 is not in America\u2019s interests. It neglects priorities at home (the border), allows Europe to freeload, short changes critical interests abroad and comes w\/ no meaningful oversight. That\u2019s not isolationism. That\u2019s nationalism. It\u2019s about prioritizing American security and American interests.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>By contrast, National Review praised the passage of the bill and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/2022\/05\/senate-was-right-to-pass-ukraine-aid-bill\/\">mocked concerns<\/a> over the dollar amount.<\/p>\n<p>Still, nearly one in four Republican senators declined to support the massive spending package. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a small isolationist group, somewhat encouraged by the former president. But it\u2019s not widely held among Republicans in Congress, and I don\u2019t think among the public in general,\u201d McConnell told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2022\/05\/20\/mcconnell-ukraine-republican-isolationist-00034110\">Politico<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOpposing big government spending is not isolationism, it\u2019s common sense,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/news\/senate\/3495577-paul-responds-to-mcconnell-says-opposition-to-ukraine-aid-is-common-sense\/\">Paul responded<\/a> dryly. \u201cOur country faces an inflation crisis and adding more debt now is a mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Working to avoid quagmires and nuclear wars during a time of economic malaise is not \u201cisolationism,\u201d but it\u2019s also not true that the group opposing McConnell and Biden is \u201csmall.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Just a few weeks ago, the D.C. establishment went all out to prevent the nomination of Ohio\u2019s J.D. Vance for the Senate. He had expressed strong opposition to neoliberal foreign policy, including in its application in Ukraine. Vance won. One of the 11 senators who voted no \u2014 John Boozman of Arkansas \u2014 almost certainly did so bolstered by a desire to win his looming primary.<\/p>\n<p>Paul and Boozman were joined by Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Mike Braun of Indiana, Mike Crapo of Idaho, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Mike Lee of Utah, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Roger Marshall of Kansas, and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama in voting against the bill. McConnell was able to get Ted Cruz and others to join Mitt Romney and John Cornyn in voting for the war package \u2014 and get each of them to put out defensive statements about why they did it \u2014 but the response from voters was <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SenTedCruz\/status\/1528549769630691328\">not what they hoped for<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The Republicans cast their vote just before polling showed that Republicans were beginning to seriously sour on McConnell\u2019s plan to embroil them in another lengthy war, just months after the disastrous end of the poorly managed Afghanistan war.<\/p>\n<p>Wars are always popular initially, and the U.S. involvement in Ukraine\u2019s battle against the Russian invasion was no exception. Pollsters liked to trumpet that fact when only a few brave pundits and analysts were pushing back against the D.C. groupthink in favor of escalation.<\/p>\n<p>But left-wing pollster <a href=\"https:\/\/morningconsult.com\/2022\/05\/19\/republicans-skeptical-us-role-ukraine\/\">Morning Consult<\/a> showed that \u201cRepublican voters are increasingly skeptical of America\u2019s role in Ukraine,\u201d and that \u201cThe share of GOP voters who say the U.S. is doing \u2018too much\u2019 in Ukraine has doubled since early March.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For the first time in the poll, the share of Republicans who say the United States is doing \u201ctoo much\u201d exceeded the percentage that said the United States was doing \u201ctoo little.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Screen-Shot-2022-05-24-at-1.37.32-AM-1024x743-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-272854\" width=\"735\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Screen-Shot-2022-05-24-at-1.37.32-AM-1024x743-1.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Screen-Shot-2022-05-24-at-1.37.32-AM-300x218-1.png 300w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Screen-Shot-2022-05-24-at-1.37.32-AM-768x557-1.png 768w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Screen-Shot-2022-05-24-at-1.37.32-AM-1536x1115-1.png 1536w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Screen-Shot-2022-05-24-at-1.37.32-AM.png 1992w\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>And a brand-new Associated Press poll shows that voters across the political spectrum are souring on the Biden-McConnell foreign policy approach toward Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAmericans are becoming less supportive of punishing Russia for launching its invasion of Ukraine if it comes at the expense of the U.S. economy,\u201d the <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/russia-ukraine-economy-inflation-467db62b671b1057ab867cf9a1335c93\">Associated Press reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In March, a majority of Americans polled said the United States should make sanctioning Russia effectively its priority. Now, a majority say that limiting economic damage to the United States should be the priority.<\/p>\n<p>McConnell\u2019s decision to latch himself to Biden\u2019s foreign policy approach \u2014 and bash his colleagues who oppose it \u2014 comes at a time Biden is dealing with the <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/biden-approval-rating-drops-ap-norc-poll-d41bce85e1b062b588a32908b2affa65\">lowest approval ratings of his presidency<\/a>, according to the Associated Press. While Americans continue to support assisting Ukraine, only a minority of 44 percent favor sending funds directly to the scandal-ridden country. Another 32 percent are opposed and 23 percent were neither in favor nor opposed. <\/p>\n<p>And fully 49 percent of Americans polled expressed a desire for the United States to have only a minor role. The United States is far and away the biggest funder of the war effort. <\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<div class=\"article-author-description fst-italic\">\n  Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is the Editor-in-Chief of The Federalist. She is Senior Journalism Fellow at Hillsdale College. A Fox News contributor, she is a regular member of the Fox News All-Stars panel on \u201cSpecial Report with Bret Baier.\u201d Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, CNN, National Review, GetReligion, Ricochet, Christianity Today, Federal Times, Radio &#038; Records, and many other publications. Mollie was a 2004 recipient of a Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship at The Fund for American Studies and a 2014 Lincoln Fellow of the Claremont Institute. She is the co-author of <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Justice-Trial-Kavanaugh-Confirmation-Supreme\/dp\/1621579832\">Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court<\/a><\/em>. She is the author of &#8220;<em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Rigged-Media-Democrats-Seized-Elections\/dp\/168451259X\/\">Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections.<\/a><\/em>&#8221; Reach her at <b><a href=\"mailto:mzhemingway@thefederalist.com\">mzhemingway@thefederalist.com<\/a><\/b><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky went on a big media tour to praise President Biden\u2019s foreign policy, to take credit for a massive additional spending package for<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":605,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1494108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1494108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/605"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1494108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1494108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1494108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1494108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1494108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}