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There are few principled peace-lovers on either side. Now that progressives are in charge, they push their wars and conservatives are for peace. When Republicans were dominant in the George W. Bush years, it was the opposite.
Many in the French Revolution were for abolishing the death penalty. It wasn't long before these same idealists were drowning priests in the Vendée. The Soviet congress actually did abolish the death penalty in 1917 before reversing course three months later.
The principled idealists are always in the minority against the bloodthirsty majority for whom there are no bad tactics, only bad targets.
But then the question becomes “why is this particular war Theirs?” A priori, I would expect the Cold Warriors and the Reaganites to be all pro-Ukraine. I think @Skibboleth has the right of it, and it crystallized around Biden’s stance. Once he signal-boosted the neoliberal stance, his opponents could score points by playing the opposite. Up until that point, either side could have adopted the war.
Things like this always make we wonder how much Republicans could drive policy by just adopting the opposite view of what they want as their stance. How many fewer dollars sent to Ukraine if the right demanded aid to Ukraine right at the start? Mostly just a silly thought, but the effect is so strong that sometimes I wonder.
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I generally like this line of reasoning. After all, Trump had first dibs on whether to make Covid right-coded or left-coded. He chose the wrong side, the Democrats went Covid-maximalist, and Trump lost the election as a result.
I don't think the same logic applies here. Republicans couldn't have owned the Ukraine issue. For one, a Democrat is commander in chief. But even more importantly, the Democrats have been making anti-Russia their thing ever since the bogus Russian election interference claims in 2016.
As the opposition party, it's tough to make headway by jumping on the bandwagon led by your opponents. Ukraine was always going to belong to the Democrats.
You could be right. I agree that once the Democrats were flagposting, there was next to no benefit for Republicans to play along. And Biden's position as CiC meant he got to make the decision.
But the anti-Russia messaging during the Trump presidency is exactly why I think it could have caught on. Especially because it was so underwhelming. Dems R the Real Russians--or, more tactfully, accusing them of being all bark and no bite. If that narrative got enough traction, helped along by the neocons who'd been blue-balled for the last four years, I could see the Democrats crystallizing against it, leading to an eventual Biden decision of non-intervention.
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