ROMNEYISM ADVANCES, MAGA RETREATS — In the hours after Russia first invaded Ukraine, the GOP responses to the U.S. handling of the aggression tookthree basic shapes: the “establishment” line, which supported a muscular response to Vladimir Putin without directly condemning President Joe Biden; the Blame Putin and Biden camp; and the isolationist MAGA/America First crowd. And after spending a Trump term on the ropes, the GOP establishment is back on the upswing, for now. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), the lone GOP senator to vote to remove Donald Trump from office for withholding military aid from Ukraine, have stepped forward early and vocally on the importance of a tough line against Moscow without going after the current president by name. For a classic example of the Blame Putin and Biden GOP response, on the other hand, here’s House Republican Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik: “[Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy is leading his people and the entire West from the frontlines. Meanwhile Joe Biden is on vacation in his basement bunker in Delaware.” The MAGA/America First position on Putin can vary from minimizing his bad behavior on the world stage (which Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson did ... until the last few days ) to praising the Russian leader in one fashion or another, to disavowing real engagement with geopolitics in the region. Or as former Trump adviser Steve Bannon put it to POLITICO last week, “no one in the Trump movement has any interest at all in the Russian-speaking provinces of eastern Ukraine. Zero.” Yet now, the former president, as well as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), appear to be trying to vault themselves out of the pure MAGA camp and into the more vocally hawkish, anti-Biden/anti-Putin one. Let’s start with Greene. Over the weekend, she appeared at the America First Political Action Conference alongside its white nationalist organizer, Nick Fuentes. Before Greene’s remarks, Fuentesasked the audience to give “a round of applause” for Russia during its brutal invasion of Ukraine, which prompted a chant of “Putin” from the crowd in support of Moscow’s leader. As criticism of her appearance began to mount, including from Trump’s former secretary of State , Greene sought to distance herself from Fuentes — who has a record of antisemitism and racist rhetoric — albeit not by name. “I won’t cancel others in the conservative movement, even if I find some of their statements tasteless, misguided or even repulsive at times,” she tweeted. On its face, Greene’s problematic appearance with Fuentes isn’t exactly about Russia. Even so, she responded to the first round of weekend scrutiny following her America First remarks by calling Putin a murderer — the sort of direct criticism of Putin that isn’t quite visible on her Twitter feed, where the closest she’s come recently is citing Ukrainian unity as a model for Americans. Read it as a step away from the pro-Putin MAGA camp toward the Blame Putin and Biden camp. In a similar vein, she tweeted Thursday that “Americans don’t want to be dragged into more never ending foreign wars on another continent no matter how many neocons and neoliberals demand it” after a dig at “the endless violent images of war on TV in a foreign country as Biden’s excuse for his FAILED and WEAK policies.” As for Trump, the former president called Putin “smart” during his own CPAC speech this past weekend, days after describing the Russian leader as “savvy.” Trump also called the invasion of Ukraine “an outrage and an atrocity,” but his basic argument on stage in Florida on Saturday was his motto: “I alone can fix it.” “I stand as the only president of the 21st century on whose watch Russia did not invade another country,” Trump said at CPAC. The tone of Camp One is more straightforwardly anti-Putin, without taking a dig at the current president. When McConnell got pressed on Trump’s warm words for Putin last week, he reverted to his longstanding position: “Look, I just told you how I feel about the Russians. Vladimir Putin is a bad guy.” No less an anti-Biden hawk than House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, notably, did not mention the president by name in his own initial response to the Russian invasion. “Putin must be held accountable for his actions,” McCarthy said. It's enough to make Trump look like something less than the putative leader of the GOP. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at eschor@politico.com, or on Twitter at @eschor.
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