Ukraine or Trump?

As things turn nasty on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine, the question of American aid for Ukraine seems finally to be coming to a head in Congress. After several days of manoeuvring, Mike Johnson, Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, announced overnight that he was pushing ahead with a series of bills on foreign aid, including most significantly US$60 billion for Ukraine.

Readers will recall that at the 2022 mid-term election the Republicans won a narrow majority in the House, 222 to 213; by-elections and vacancies since then have reduced that slightly to 218-213. Given the deep divisions within the party that was always going to be much too close for comfort, as was demonstrated immediately when it took several days and fifteen ballots to elect Kevin McCarthy as Speaker in January 2023.

To finally get the requisite support from his own caucus McCarthy made a number of concessions, including a rule change to make it easier to remove him. And it only took nine months for that to be invoked; in October, after he had done a budget deal to avert a government shutdown, a handful of Trumpist members moved a vote of no confidence, which, with solid Democrat support, was carried 216-210.

Further chaos then ensued, with two Republican nominees failing to get the necessary votes for a majority. Eventually a little-known but apparently innocuous Trumpist, Mike Johnson, was chosen and confirmed on a vote of 220-209. And from there, as could easily have been predicted, the cycle began afresh.

Aid to Ukraine has been a divisive issue, but not because the division of opinion is particularly even. The Democrats are almost unanimously in favor, and so is a substantial majority of Republicans (backed even more strongly by Republican opinion leaders, if not by their voters). Even Donald Trump has avoided explicitly condemning the aid package, allowing many of his supporters (including apparently Johnson himself) to remain in denial about Trump’s obvious hostility to Ukraine.

But because of the narrowness of Johnson’s majority, the relatively small number of pro-Russian Republicans have unusual power. If the aid package goes through they will almost certainly move to unseat him, and they will succeed unless the Democrats – or at least some of them – are willing to help prop him up.

As I’ve pointed out before, parliamentary systems have mechanisms that tend to prevent things getting out of hand in this fashion. Imagine, for example, that Anthony Albanese, who also has just a narrow majority in the House of Representatives, was being held hostage by a handful of left-wing members of his caucus who objected to some government policies.

For a time, that could make life difficult for the government; some legislation might have to be shelved or be subject to negotiation with the opposition. But at some point the bluff would be called, and the dissidents would then have to decide whether they really wanted to force either an early election or a change of government. And if they did, their voters could make a judgement on whether that was what they expected from their representatives.

But in the United States, changing the majority in the House doesn’t change the government. The Democrats can’t make a deal with moderate Republicans to form a coalition government; at best they can share out legislative positions like committee chairs. Even if the Speaker’s chair is vacant for a prolonged period, government goes on regardless. And no-one can call an early election: if the voters choose a dysfunctional Congress, they’re stuck with it for two years.

America’s institutionalisation of the two-party system, helped by first-past-the-past voting, means that rogue members are only distantly responsible to the electorate at large. For most of them, it’s much more important to cultivate the small number of people who vote in their party’s primary, who almost invariably are more ideologically extreme than the average voter. This has become an especially acute problem for the Republicans as, aided by media confusion, they have come to believe that a word from Trump can unleash successful primary challenges against them.

In Australia too a party leader could be at odds with the majority of their party on a key policy issue (think, for example, Malcolm Turnbull on climate change). But because our executive and legislative branches are tied together, the potential for destructive conflict is reduced. Sooner or later things are brought into alignment, usually by the departure of the leader who is out of step.

But there’s nothing the Congressional Republicans can do to get rid of Trump – the time for that has passed, and they were too cowardly to take the chance when they had it. They can pass a policy that he disagrees with, although they will need the Democrats’ help, and they can even keep telling themselves that another Trump presidency would not in fact be the gift to Vladimir Putin that all the evidence suggests.

They can’t, though, stop their own extremists from holding a gun to their heads.

UPDATE, Thursday 25 April: The aid bills were duly passed by both houses, and Joe Biden signed them into law last night. But although I suggested above that aid for Ukraine was backed by “a substantial majority of Republicans,” the vote in the House didn’t bear that out: 112 Republicans voted against the bill, with only 101 in favor. (With the Democrats voting solidly in support it was passed 311-112.)

In the Senate, 39 Republicans supported aid with 15 against. By that stage the measures were combined into a single bill, so two Democrats (plus independent Bernie Sanders) also voted against because they were opposed to increased aid to Israel. The combined bill passed 79-18.

This doesn’t mean that 112 House Republicans are actually pro-Russia; some would just have been swayed by the right’s argument that they should have extracted more concessions from the Democrats in return. But clearly there’s a solid Trumpist bloc that is opposed to helping Ukraine and will now be gunning for the Speaker who pushed the measure through.

Indications are that the Democrats will be willing to support Johnson against a no-confidence vote, although there’s no telling what price they might try to extract in return. Trump himself has been otherwise occupied in the last week, but if he should come out openly against the Speaker then things could get very interesting.