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On Balance | A Trump-Vance ticket makes Reaganite Republicans’ job harder
- Championing low government regulation, free global trade and the need to face down autocrats worldwide will be an uphill struggle
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Twenty years after former US president Ronald Reagan’s death, the Republican Party has buried his legacy.
That was made clear at last week’s party convention, which officially anointed Donald Trump and J.D. Vance as their presidential and vice-presidential candidates for the November election.
The party has rallied around Trump, who famously dismissed his own intelligence community and sided with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the subject of 2016 election interference, and Vance, who apparently wants Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to cede parts of his country to the Kremlin.
Nikki Haley, who went toe-to-toe against her Russian counterparts while she was Trump’s UN ambassador, forcing them to go along with sanctions against North Korea – attacked the Biden White House with the standard Republican line that Putin fears her former boss and not Biden.
Even if this argument were true – and the enlargement of Nato under Biden would make Putin a fool if it were – the Haley that we knew before her party was transformed by Trump would have ended with a warning to the Kremlin that they could expect the full weight of US military might to stop the Russian advance if necessary.
But, like many in her party, she’s pulling her punches now to ensure her political survival. All direct criticism of Russia has been snuffed out by whatever it is that makes Trump respect the country, and any reference by the Republican Party to the Reagan mantle going forward should be treated as a laugh line.
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