The Speaker And The Bishops

I can't avoid thinking that perhaps over the past year, the US Bishops came proactively to an agreement-to-disagree on how to handle the issue of barring Catholic politicians from communion if they advocate abortion -- I can't help but wonder if Abp Cordileone was implicitly referring to such a thing in this passage from his interview with America magazine:

I suppose there will be a variety of opinions, but I think as bishops, we respect each other’s decisions and matters like this. Each bishop has to decide in accordance with his conscience in these and other types of situations as well. And they’re usually very complex. There are a number of different values and priorities to weigh in taking an action or not taking an action. What good will it do? What evil will it avoid? What might be the side effects? All these things have to be weighed, and we can come to different prudential judgments, using our conscience.

I note that while a number of conservative bishops have supported Abp Cordileone's action, liberals like Cardinal Cupich have remained silent, while Cardinal Gregory of Washington, who permits Pelosi to receive communion there, has said nothing publicly, and the archdiocese has so far not answered inquries from the press. As a result, there have been no public squabbles, which I think is a positive development. On the other hand, Speaker Pelosi on Tuesday did make public statements about Abp Cordileone's action:

“This is not just about terminating a pregnancy,” Pelosi said. “These same people are against contraception, family planning, in vitro-fertilization. It’s a blanket thing. They use abortion as the front man for it while they try to undo so much. That’s what they tried to do in the Affordable Care Act, which didn’t have anything about terminating an abortion — a pregnancy.”

. . . “Now, our archbishop has been vehemently against LGBTQ rights, too, in fact, he led the way in some of the initiatives on — an initiative on the ballot in California. So this decision, taking us to privacy and precedent, is very dangerous in the lives of so many of the American people.”

The first part of the statement is misleading in several ways. The Catholic Church is not against family planning; it's against artificial birth control but not against natural methods. In vitro fertilization at minimum involves discarding in vitro fertilized embryos, but it may also involve aborting multiple pregnancies in the mother as a result of the procedure. These aren't small issues.

In effect, Pelosi's statements imply that she's continuing to hold what Abp Cordileone in the interview calls her "more and more extreme and more and more aggressive" views on reproduction and sexuality, attacking the Church's views on matters beyond abortion, bringing in by implication the issue of same-sex marriage and using the political shorthand LGBTQ. Abp Cordileone says, "I know I’m going to be accused of being punitive, of being political," but the problem for the bishops and indeed Pope Francis is that Speaker Pelosi is a politician, a very senior and influential one, and she herself is addressing the problem on a political level.

This brings me to Bp Barron's op-ed in the New York Post almost a year ago (I don't believe he's made any public statement on Abp Cordileone's specific action over Pelosi):

The Catholic bishops of the United States are facing a great deal of political pressure these days. We are told that we must pursue dialogue with those who disagree with the divine and natural law on the issue of abortion — or who agree privately as Catholic believers but decline to govern according to this moral teaching.

So he's acknowledging it's a political issue, and the bishops are more or less forced to be involved with it.

I’m the son of a dyed-in-the-wool Chicago Catholic Democrat. My father, whose family was very involved in city politics, would sooner have become a Lutheran than vote Republican. But my trouble with modern Democrats, I explained, has to do with abortion policy, where the party has lately staked out an especially extreme position.

My interlocutors insisted upon the necessity of an ongoing dialogue between pro-choice politicians and the Roman church. I replied, “OK, I’m with you. In fact, the Catholic Church, though it opposes all abortions, would be willing to support legislation that sets at least some limits to the procedure. If you’ll give even a little bit, we’re happy to talk.”

The problem is that Democrats have been locked into what Bp Barron calls an extreme and intransigent position, to the point that they won't even support protection for infants who survive abortion and are born alive. And while he doesn't go this far in the op-ed, nevertheless, over the past year, Democrat politicians have become more extreme over other areas of sexuality, advocating "gender affirming" surgery for pre-teens and insisting that transgendered men should compete in women's sports.

Abp Cordileone echoes Bp Barron in saying of the speaker, "her advocacy for codifying the Roe decision into federal law [is] becoming more and more extreme and more and more aggressive". And insofar as it's a legislative effort, it's political, and it's hard for Catholics, especially bishops, not to get involved in it. The positive side, though, is that Pelosi's position is looking more and more like a political loser, and it's a major reason why she'll likely lose the speakership in November.

Novertheless, the silence of both the liberal US bishops and the vague signal from Pope Francis that issues of life and death can't be defined down to matters of "choice" suggest that the balance is shifting even there.

Why Is John Kirby Really Going To The White House?

According to Politico,

Not even a week into press secretary KARINE JEAN-PIERRE’s time at the lectern, the White House brought in her Pentagon counterpart JOHN KIRBY, a runner-up for the podium, for a communications role.

. . . For about 24 hours, no one at the White House could answer whether Kirby would be working at the National Security Council or the press office and how often he would be appearing at the podium, if at all.

Several White House officials and insiders told West Wing Playbook that they felt the move put a damper on Jean-Pierre’s first week, and undercut her credibility at a moment when conservative media has targeted her.

Indeed, according to Red State,

Suddenly, we started hearing reports about a new shake-up in the Communications department at the White House — that John Kirby, the Pentagon spox, who had been considered for the Press Secretary job was going to be brought in, in a communications role, and saying that he would be doing some briefings.

. . . Not good, when it looks like you’re bringing in the white guy because you think he’ll help the situation. But as we saw during the Afghanistan debacle, Kirby was a horror. He and the Biden Administration still haven’t been held to account for lying about the number of Americans that they left behind in Afghanistan.

Regarding Afghanistan, I got the impression that Kirby, a retired admiral, understood the chain of command and was saying precisely what he'd been told to say. Indeed, the position of the Pentagon from Secretary Austin on down was that in Afghanistan, they were doing what they'd been ordered to do. This in fact seems to have been the subtext of President Biden's own remarks. Kirby was doing the absolute best he could with the cards he'd been dealt, and I can't really fault him for that.

I would say this has been Kirby on Ukraine as well. Among other thngs, he appears to have been acutely aware of the need to minimize any implication in his public remarks that the US has been sharing intelligence with Ukraine, though it's hard to avoid concluding this has been the case in situations like targeting Russian generals or sinking the Moskva. The advantage to the Pentagon is that, as someone who's previously been an admiral, nobody has to bring him up to speed on how the whole system operates. They trust the guy.

The Politico link above is intriguing farher down:

In theory, the move was meant to add a strong foreign policy voice at a moment when crises abroad occupy a huge portion of the president’s time. Kirby’s experience in the Pentagon, and the State Department, and his strong relationships with many reporters and broadcast network higher-ups serve as useful tools for a White House fielding numerous thorny foreign policy questions every day[.]

. . . In addition, there was confusion over what exactly Kirby would do in the White House.

. . . There were also discussions about whether he would have the responsibilities and receive the same title held by BEN RHODES, former deputy national security adviser for strategic communications and speechwriting.

. . . “The thing about describing models like that — the Ben Rhodes model — they tend to be unique to an individual,” JAKE SULLIVAN told reporters on Air Force One Sunday. “John Kirby will have the John Kirby model of the role of coordinator for strategic communications at the NSC.”

I think it's safe to say that Kirby is absolutely trusted by Secretaries Austin and Blinken, including on the basis of his down-the-line performance on the Afghan withdrawal. At the same time, I have the impression that Austin and Blinken have managed to carve out a field of policy discretion for themselves over Ukraine. Observers like retired Gen Jack Keane have made the point that after the first weeks of the Ukraine invasion, the administration made a 180 degree policy turn, moving to full support of Zelensky, shippinig him heavy weapons and allowing the transfer of old Warsaw Pact aircraft from NATO countries.

I've got to assume this was at the initiative of Austin and Blinken, while I've also got to note that this is just about the only policy Biden hasn't [messed] up. I've also got to assume Austin and Blinken recognize that Biden is the creature of his handlers, and they need to have a credible figure on site at the White House to further their interests and act as a Biden handler on the specific issue of Ukraine. Otherwise, the risks of Biden himself trying to take control (as he did with Afghanistan) or some other unqualified handler getting involved are too great.

Kirby is the utterly trusted catspaw for Austin and Blinken to carry out the Pentagon's day-to-day interests in the White House. They couldn't care less about Karine Jean-Pierre; that problem will deal with itself soon enough.

The Pelosi Fallout Is Predictable

Other than rants from figures like AOC and Whoopi Goldberg, reaction to Abp Cordileone's banning of Speaker Pelosi from communion has been largely muted and predictable. As of yesterday, "Pelosi's office did not immediately respond to Insider's request to comment."

However, according to the Red State agggregator-blog,

The California Democrat attended mass on Sunday at Holy Trinity in Georgetown where she received Holy Communion, Politico Playbook reported. Pool reports show that President Joe Biden often attends evening masses at the parish as well.

It also cited this tweet, apparently sent to the press in error:

WOW. Washington Archdiocese accidentally sent this email to @dcexaminer admitting that it is ignoring press inquiries about whether @WashArchbishop will "bring down the hammer on Pelosi." pic.twitter.com/KPtY6gpZzu

— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) May 23, 2022

Basically, nothing has changed. Catholic politicians like Sen Durbin and President Biden have been able to avoid prohibitions from their home bishops by receiving the sacrament in Washington or, in the case of Biden, simply relying on Cardinal Gregory's continuing willingness to allow it. Pope Francis seems unwilling to step in directly:

Pope Francis today: "Sadly, there has been a change in the common mentality, and we are more led to think that life is a good at our complete disposal, that we can choose to give birth or to take a life as we please, as if it were the exclusive consequence of individual choice" pic.twitter.com/zxUUJOmdcw

— Catholic Sat (@CatholicSat) May 22, 2022

In LA, there's been no direct comment from Abp Gómez, who is President of the USCCB and has been generally aligned with Abp Cordileone on state issues like Catholic school legislation and COVID lockdowns. However, our local pastor's homily this past Sunday referred to the need to "walk the talk" in claiming to be Catholic, but he made no reference to Abp Cordileone or Speaker Pelosi. This seems to be the Church's overall approach for now, not to stoke direct controversy but as applicable to use it as a teachable moment.

It seems to me that Pelosi can finesse the issue as long as she continues to spend most of her time in Washington, and so far, she seems to show no willingness to retire, although she's 82 and likely to lose the speakership after the November election. It's hard not to conclude that she's been used to getting her own way all her life -- she is the daughter of Maryland political boss Thomas D'Alesandro Jr., who was a US representative from Maryland and mayor of Baltimore.

I suspect this will simply be another incentive for her to remain in Washington and not to retire. If she can control people like the US president, it won't be much of a stretch for her to control the Almighty as well.

Poland Wastes No Time

The map above shows the Poland-Lithuanian Commonwealth as of 1619, overlaid on present European borders. It covered much of Ukraine, as well as the Baltics and Belarus. Two weeks ago, I posted on the likely outcome for Poland under conditions resulting from a militarily weakened Russia in the region and suggested Poland might be aiming for some type of return to the Commonwealth.

Deveopments since then make this seem more and more likely. Yesterday, Polish President Andrzej Duda addressed the Ukrainian parliament, and he and President Zelensky appeared ready to establish closer ties between the countries:

"We have agreed to implement this in the near future in a respective bilateral agreement. First [the agreement] on joint border and customs control, and later [the agreement] on a single conditional border - when Ukraine becomes a member of the European Union," Zelensky said.

He expressed confidence that all the necessary decisions will be made first for Ukraine's candidate status and then for full membership, including thanks to Poland's many years of protection of Ukrainian interests on the European continent.

"And I am grateful for your willingness, Andrzej, to pay a visit to European capitals together with Slovakia's President Zuzana Caputova in order to lobby for Ukraine's membership in the European Union in "sceptical" countries. "In fact, they are not skeptics, but future optimists. That is how I see our common task in this area," Zelensky said.

In my previous post, I noted that Poland and Ukraine had already concluded a defense agreement that links their interests irrespective of the outcome of NATO's decision on admitting Poland, and what we're seeing now is an economic pact that claims to anticipate Poland's admission to the EU but nevertheless will establish an EU-like environment between the countries regardless of that outcome.

Yesterday, Zelensky also announced a draft law that would reciprocate the special legal status Poland has granted Ukrainian refugees in that country.

“We have to look into the Polish law about the people temporarily displaced to Ukraine that, in fact makes Ukrainian citizens equal to the Polish citizens, except for the voting right. On the president’s initiative, a similar bill (concerning the Polish citizens) will now be adopted in Ukraine,” said Zelenskyy’s press secretary Sergey Nikiforov, as reported by the Polish PAP agency after UNIAN.

. . . Appreciating “the respect and support that we receive from the Polish people and the Polish government,” Zelenskyy said that under the new law, Poles on Ukrainian territory would be granted “the same rights that Ukrainians received in Poland.”

Since 24 February, around 3.53 million Ukrainian refugees have crossed the Polish border, tweeted the border guard. In March, the Polish embassy in Kyiv roughly estimated the number of Poles living in Ukraine at “several hundred, probably nearly a thousand.”

The Russo-Ukraine war has clearly brought back the uncertain conditions that resulted from the formation of the Soviet Union after World War I and anticipated realignments before World War II. For instance, according to Wikipedia,

The Polish–Lithuanian War was a conflict between the newly independent Lithuania and Poland in the aftermath of World War I.

. . . Due to Polish-Lithuanian tensions, the allied powers withheld diplomatic recognition of Lithuania until 1922. Poland did not recognize independence of Lithuania as Polish leader Józef Piłsudski hoped to revive the old Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (see the Międzymorze federation) and campaigned for some kind of Polish–Lithuanian union in the Paris Peace Conference. Poland also did not intend to make any territorial concessions, justifying its actions not only as part of a military campaign against the Soviets but also as the right of self-determination of local Poles.

. . . In April 1920 Poland launched the large-scale Kiev Offensive in hopes to capture Ukraine. Initially successful, the Polish Army started retreating after Russian counterattacks in early June 1920. Soon the Soviet forces began to threaten Poland's independence as they reached and crossed the Polish borders.

Clearly the relations among Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania become extremely complex whenever Russia is weakened in the region, and Poland is attempting to create conditions where it can reassert itself regardless of the EU or NATO, and for now, Ukraine seems willing to cooperate with Poland. However, this thread at Reddit suggests it may not presage the dawning of the Age of Aquarius:

• Just restore commonwealth and be done with it. Always used it to kick muscowy in Europa universalis IV
• No. The commonwealth was a slave state that only pretended to not be primarily a Polish state. In a lot of ways it was the same as Russia, and when Poland regained independence it basically tried to restore the old dynamic.

  Separate and equal partners and allies is an important stepbforward from the past.

It looks like this won't be simple, and the situation after World War I went through the Versailles Conference and the League of Nations before World War II made it moot. I would guess there will have to be a conference similar to Yalta or Versailles that regularizes this and other situations.

More On The Republican Division Over Ukraine

I'm heading this post with another fanciful end-state map for a theoretical partition of Russia, this one after a putative 2037 Treaty of Delhi that ended World War III. This was imagined well before Putin's current invasion of Ukraine, but I think it's pertinent because it represents what antiwar Republicans are refusing to recognize: the Ukraine conflict is likely to force a similar resolution, but at a much lower cost than anyone could have predicted.

As Allahpundit put it at Hot Air more than a week ago,

I’m showing my cards here: I don’t believe that much of the MAGA or MAGA-adjacent caterwauling about the cost of the Ukraine aid bill is on the level. Nationalists have never been sticklers about federal spending, after all. I posted these Mark Levin tweets earlier but let me post them again here.

. . . The populist right and left resent that Ukraine is demonstrating the strength of the prevailing western liberal order on the battlefield at the expense of one of the great enemies of that order. After all, the more effective the American establishment and the EU look in backing the Ukrainians, the less interest American and European voters will have in replacing either with populist regimes of the right or left.

The aid bill has become a cause for populist grumbling because it channels that dubious ambivalence or even hostility towards a Ukrainian victory into a more politically congenial grievance, exorbitant federal spending and the government’s misplaced priorities[.]

. . . [Rand Paul] can’t resist lapsing into libertarian boilerplate about America not being the world’s policeman even though no American “police” are in the field in Ukraine. The Ukrainians are policing their own territory. All we’re doing is helping them defend themselves, a concept that libertarians normally support ardently in the context of the Second Amendment and gun rights.

Once more for emphasis: This bill will pass. [It did.] And because it will, Paul knows that holding it up won’t achieve any of his stated goals but might hurt the Ukrainians at the margins. The fact that he chose to hold it up anyway speaks volumes about his intentions. I hope McConnell exacts some revenge the next time Paul needs something from him.

And McConnell is playing to his advantage now. Allahpundit quotes an interview in the New York Times behind a paywall:

Why did you decide to make the trip to Europe last weekend?

One was to try to convey to the Europeans that skepticism about NATO itself, expressed by the previous president, was not the view of Republicans in the Senate. And I also was trying to minimize the vote against the package in my own party.

We have sort of an isolationist wing, and I think some of the Trump supporters are sort of linked up with the isolationists — a lot of talk out in the primaries about this sort of thing. And I felt this would help diminish the number of votes against the package. I think that worked out well.

The current strategic situation in Ukraine represents a resurgence for Reaganite and neoconservative foreign policy, to the point that even Mitt Romney is regaining credibility:

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney suggested in a New York Times essay that "NATO could engage" in Ukraine, "potentially obliterating Russia's struggling military" as an option against Russian President Vladimir Putin were he to deploy nuclear weapons.

. . . "Russia's use of a nuclear weapon would unarguably be a redefining, reorienting geopolitical event," Romney continued. "Any nation that chose to retain ties with Russia after such an outrage would itself also become a global pariah."

Romney warned that a "cornered and delusional" Putin could use nuclear weapons in the war against Ukraine, citing warnings from former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Russian ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov, and CIA Director William Burns.

I think the problem for populist opponents of Ukraine aid is that the war is already a "redefining, reorienting geopolitical event" -- consider only that Sweden and Finland have applied to join NATO, and irrespective of NATO's specific composition, Sweden, Finland, Ukraine, and some NATO countries are already concluding side security guaranatees against Russia, while even Austria and Switzerland are beginning to reconsider their prior neutrality.

If Putin were to use nukes, it would only hasten the eventual outcome, which is going to wind up looking something like the map above no matter what. And an attempt to delay the inevitable outcome by forcing a smaller withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine than Ukraine wants will only result in renewed conflict later and continuing war at higher cost.

Neoconservative policy foundered on Iraq and Afghanistan, advocating disastrously costly and inefficient endless wars -- it bothered me from the start that the US was using multimillion-dollar helicopters on missions that alone cost six-figure amounts in fuel, ammunition, and personnel to shoot at insurgents riding motor scooters. This had to end somehow; Biden ended it clumsily. Ukraine reverses the cost-benefit ratio; it's Ukraine that's the low-cost combatant fighting the wasteful Russians.

And the benefit nobody has so far mentioned is that somehow Biden has gained nothing in the polls for his support of Ukraine.

Abp Cordileone Bars Speaker Pelosi From Communion

The odd thing is how little intelligent coverage this development has had on the right-wing aggregators. As of this morning, it's well below the fold on the Red State blog, although there's an unusually thorough story on Breitbart.

However, the interviewer above from the Jesuit AMERICA magazine draws Abp Cordileone out in some detail on the precise implications of his action. It is not, in his view, excommunication, which he believes would be more severe. Instead, she may attend mass, but she may not present herself for the sacrament, and he has instructed his priests not to admit her to the sacrament if she presents herself for it.

However, Hot Air reports that "Pelosi has a second home in Santa Rosa, and the bishop there plans to honor Cordileone’s declaration." The story quotes The Pillar:

After Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s archbishop said Friday she is barred from receiving the Eucharist, the bishop of the California diocese where Pelosi has a vacation home says he will uphold the prohibition when Pelosi attends Mass in his diocese.

Bishop Robert Vasa of the Diocese of Santa Rosa told The Pillar May 20 he has instructed priests to observe the decision of Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone when Pelosi attends Mass at the parish nearby her Napa Valley vacation home and vineyard.

“I have visited with the pastor at [Pelosi’s parish] and informed him that if the Archbishop prohibited someone from receiving Holy Communion then that restriction followed the person and that the pastor was not free to ignore it,” Vasa said in a statement provided to The Pillar by the Santa Rosa diocese.

Washington’s Cardinal Wilton Gregory has not responded to questions from The Pillar about whether Pelosi can continue to receive the Eucharist when she attends Mass in Washington D.C., where Pelosi and her husband Paul live while Congress is in session.

In the past, Gregory has expressed opposition to prohibiting Catholic politicians from the Eucharist because of the political positions, even on abortion.

In the interview above, Cordileone says the US bishops may differ on individual cases based on their prudential judgment, but they generally respect each other. He notes that the US bishops have discussed the issue extensively behind the scenes, and in particular, he's had discussions with Cardinal Gregory of Washington. So far, there's been no public disagreement with Cordileone's move from other bishops, but the story is still new. At the same time, there's so far been no public reaction from Pelosi.

In addition, as of this morning, I find that an attempt to visit the Archdiocese of San Francisco's website results in a 403 Forbidden message, which I assume is the result of a hacker. I'm sure there will be further developments.

UPDATE: It looks like this was a denial of service attack, and it seems to have been alleviated. The text of Abp Cordileone's letter to the faithful is here.

More Division Over Ukraine On The US Right

The amount of grandstanding on the US Right against aid to Ukraine is disturbing -- I've got to hope it's cynical, because if people like Rand Paul actually believe what they're saying, it's even worse. The good news, though, is that even combined with the tankies on the Left, they're a minority. Here's a piece at the pro-Trump, anti-Ukraine Breitbart News:

The Senate on Thursday passed legislation to give $40 billion to Ukraine in economic and military aid, while Americans suffer from food shortages and inflation.

The Senate voted on H.R. 7691, the Ukraine Supplemental Aid Package, which passed 86-11. The vote featured strong Republican and Democrat support for the bill; however, some populist Senate Republicans opposed the legislation, believing that America should focus its efforts on domestic crises such as 40-year-high inflation and baby formula shortages.

. . . Senate Republican populists could not stop the overwhelming Senate support to stop the legislation, even though it required 60 votes, but Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) managed to delay the passage of the bill until Thursday.

Paul told Breitbart News Daily host Alex Marlow that the United States would have to borrow the $40 billion to send the tens of billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine. The Senate did not vote on Paul’s proposed amendment to have an inspector general ensure the billions were spent wisely.

. . . Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) also became a sharp detractor of the Ukraine aid bill, contending that it is not in America’s interests.

“Spending $40 billion on Ukraine aid – more than three times what all of Europe has spent combined – is not in America’s interests. It neglects priorities at home (the border), allows Europe to freeload, short changes critical interests abroad and comes w/ no meaningful oversight,” Hawley wrote.

In contrast, the Never Trump Hot Air reported,

A surprising meeting of the minds amid a storm of bad-faith populism.

Why are we spending $40 billion on Ukraine instead of on baby formula? the MAGA nationalists demand to know. Well, (a) the baby-formula shortage is a regulatory problem, not a funding problem. And (b) as all but the most pathetic anti-anti-Putinites understand, it’s in America’s own long-term interest to have a highly motivated foreign military smash Putin’s army on a rock for us.

Frankly, the question should be turned around. When was the last time we got as much bang for our buck on defense spending as we’re going to get from this $40 billion outlay on Ukraine? We spent $2.3 trillion on Afghanistan over 20 years and our reward was watching the country fall back into Taliban hands. For a little less than two percent of that amount, we’re helping the Ukrainians destroy fascist Russia’s major-power status on a global stage and set the Russian military back God knows how many years.

. . . Another populist argument against aid to Ukraine is that it’s dangerous to keep this war going given the risks of escalation. I’m sympathetic to that one; there’s no higher-stakes bet than gambling that a humiliated Putin won’t go nuclear. But yanking aid to Ukraine for fear of what Putin might do would be appeasement in its rawest form. It would incentivize him to engage in nuclear brinksmanship in all of his future foreign adventures, expecting that the quivering west will back down. “Provocative weakness” is a thing, especially to a character who obsesses over strength.

My sympathies are populist, but Rand Paul for one is not a populist -- he's a doctrinaire libertarian. Beyond that, the main issue he cites, along with Donald Trump of all people, is that we're sending $40 billion to Ukraine while there's a baby formula shortage at home. The contrast is incredible; Ukraine is dealing with ethnic cleansing on a scale approachling genocide and discovering new mass graves daily. The US has a baby formula shortage.

The Hot Air piece goes on to speculate on why Ted Cruz voted in favor of the package:

He’s a populist, and not just any populist but one who’s hoping to inherit Donald Trump’s voters once Trump retires. He tends to keep pace with Josh Hawley in the Senate, knowing that Hawley covets the same niche. Hawley voted against the Ukraine aid bill, however, while Cruz voted for it. How come?

Maybe he’s enough of a hawk by instinct that his desire to see Putin defeated trumps his electoral instincts to pander to populists. But I doubt it. Cruz always has a plan when it comes to the next presidential primary, and in this case he’s probably expecting that Republican voters will remain hawkish towards Russia through 2024. Further to that point, a new YouGov poll finds GOPers support sending financial aid to Ukrainians by a 58/23 spread and sending weapons by a 65/17 margin. If the Ukrainians win the war, those numbers will balloon after the fact; everyone wants to be on the winning side, after all. If so, it’ll be easy for Cruz to explain why he supported the bill in hindsight. It’ll be hard for Hawley to explain why he didn’t.

On Ukraine, Trump is turning out to be amazingly tone deaf.