for The Hill
 

Republicans seem to be racing backward in time, resurrecting old tenets that defined their party’s outlook in the 1920s and 1930s: Christian fundamentalism, nativism, protectionism and isolationism.  

Long discredited by events, these reactionary shibboleths are risen from the dead and lurching like zombies across the U.S. political landscape. We hear their echo in today’s red state crusade to stamp out women’s reproductive rights, the hysteria over immigrant hordes “replacing” whites and the Trump administration’s high tariff policies, which remain on the books despite having failed to reduce U.S. trade deficits.  

The former president also dredged up the hoary isolationist slogan, “America First” to signal his rejection of key pillars of America’s post-war internationalist strategy — open trade, security alliances and the formation of world bodies dedicated to collective problem-solving.  

Trump’s push to replace that strategy with selfish and transactional U.S. diplomacy has opened a deep foreign policy rift within the GOP. The crux of this dispute is Ukraine: While mainstream conservatives in Congress support U.S. aid to Ukraine’s resistance to Russian imperialism, the MAGA right insists that America has no dog in that fight.