The Enemy Of My Enemy Is My Friend

Or anti-LGBT fractions make strange bedfellows.

The emerging alliance between Putin and Trump’s God squad
The unlikely partnership is years in the making.
ThinkProgress
By Jack Jenkins
July 12, 2017

As evidence continues to emerge of Russia’s alleged attempts at the direction of Vladimir Putin to disrupt the 2016 election through nefarious means, President Donald Trump has endured fiery criticism from all sides regarding his ties to the authoritarian leader. In addition to an avalanche of progressive detractors, Republican senators such as Lindsay Graham (R-SC) have expressed unease about the connection, and Pope Francis declared the budding alliance between the U.S. and Russia “dangerous.”

But as Trump prepared for his first face-to-face meeting as president with Putin this past weekend, his attempt to thaw relations with Moscow was blessed by a seemingly unusual source: Rev. Franklin Graham, a prominent member of the Religious Right and the son of evangelist Billy Graham. Days before the meeting, the younger Graham — a longtime Trump supporter who led a prayer at the president’s inauguration — published a Facebook post voicing optimism about a potential Trump-Putin partnership.
[…]
An evangelical heaping praise on a U.S.-Russian partnership may surprise some, but the pastor’s prayerful post belies a deeper history that is already shaping American politics: Graham, working tandem with Russian church officials and select few of his right-wing Christian colleagues, has already formed an alliance with the Russian president — all while Putin continues to use faith as a tool to accrue power.

When did the conservative movement become communist?

It seems like more and more conservatives are moving into the communist bed because Putin is anti-LGBT and these religious conservatives are happy to embrace Putin.

In the Washington Post article about Trump Jr. meeting with the Russian spy and lawyer and Sr. tweet about how any Republican would had also met with the Russian agents, they write…

 This is a remarkable claim for a Republican to make. Republicans used to compete with each other over who was tougher on Russia (or, more precisely, the Soviet Union), and to condemn Democrats for their purported softness. Now, Trump sees nothing wrong with his son meeting a person who had been described to him as a “Russian government attorney,” in order to provide “high level and sensitive information” that was described as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Here’s how dramatically the Republican position has changed.

Being tough on Russia was once the name of the game

During the Cold War, anti-communism was the glue that held the GOP together. In the 1970s and 1980s, Republicans of all stripes took great political advantage in criticizing Democratic presidential candidates, such as George McGovern and Michael Dukakis, as being too weak to stand up for U.S. interests in the face of the threat from Moscow.

Conservative Republicans saw it to their advantage to criticize not just Democrats but members of their own party for showing any signs of appeasement of Moscow.

And now the Republicans are mostly silent with only a few with the courage to speak up against Trump Sr.

So why hasn’t the GOP spoken up? Yes, there are occasional remarks by Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey O. Graham suggesting Donald Trump is getting hoodwinked by Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose efforts working with the Trump campaign to swing the 2016 presidential race are under daily scrutiny.

My guess is that they don’t want to go against Trump supporters.