Congress has not authorized a war with Ukraine, and the American people have never been asked to approve it. Public support for sending American weapons to Ukraine has dropped from 60% last year to less than 50%, according to a poll by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. An NBC News poll showed that merely 41% of Americans approve Biden’s approach to this war. Young voters are more opposed to this entanglement, and they are a key swing demographic in elections.
One of the few Republicans who did well in a swing state last November was the one who spoke out against continued American involvement in this war. JD Vance won by a near-landslide with that campaign position in Ohio, where there are many immigrants from Ukraine. Polls today show that only a tiny percentage of voters are undecided as to which of the two major parties they will support in the next election. Republicans would do well, as Nixon did in 1968 and JD Vance did last year, to focus on young voters who do not support perpetual war.
The phony advice that wars are great for reelection may have been true in 1944 when FDR called for Americans not to “swap horses in midstream,” but we can be thankful that the conflict in Ukraine has not provided America with a Pearl Harbor around which to rally our citizens. Instead, we find ourselves much closer to President Woodrow Wilson in 1916, who’s less-than-creative slogan was “He kept us out of war.”
The American people have no interest in a distant war with Russia fought on Ukrainian soil, and why should they? One corrupt regime targeting another is hardly a concern of ours. The American people support keeping our homeland safe, so that is what our leaders should be focusing on right now. Drop the phony diversity rhetoric from military recruitment efforts and prioritize actual combat readiness. The surest way to ensure peace in the west is to make ourselves a giant that neither Russia nor China would dare to awaken. Peace wins elections, and military superiority wins peace.
