The Putinista movement is deeply embedded in the U.S. Take Senator Tommy Tuberville who is doing everything Putin wants, as he wants it and when he wants it. A hero in the Kremlin.
Tuberville’s concept is to deny more than four hundred military promotions until the U.S. military ensures that the females in its ranks are made wards of the state and deprived of full citizenship as The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision allows.
The idea is to ensure that our military is sharply and permanently reduced in its capability. In effect, turning the country into Putinville.
For Putin, this is a cheap, but extremely valuable, win.
Starting with Brexit and running through Hungary and now the Netherlands, Putin has succeeded in destabilizing Western powers in move after move. Each time it has cost him nothing. Different parts of the GOP coalition are trying to cut U.S. funding for Ukraine. If they succeed, a spectacular zero-cost win for the ‘Lil Guy.
Better still, The Freedom Caucus has done wonders for Putin by throwing U.S. political leadership into utter disarray. With no letup in sight. Total commitment to Putin. Now the GOP has, at the initiative of Jim Jordan, succeeded at forcing the government to allow Russia to use social media to manipulate U.S. elections with impunity.
What is weird is that with staunch allies like Tuberville and The Freedom Caucus doing so much for him, Putin has been unable to capitalize on his huge victories.
Oddly, Putin squandered all his advantages by invading Ukraine and destabilizing his own country. Makes no sense, because in doing so, he has chased away all the huge markets in the E.U. and U.S. that Russia, with its GDP per capita ranking a miserable 72nd in the world, desperately needs in order to grow. He has needlessly reinforced NATO with Finland and Sweden and is trying to expand the E.U. to Ukraine and Moldova which he has spent over 100,000 Russian lives to control. It will take Russia a good century to recover.
This is all so illogical and bizarre that it raises questions about Putin’s mental capacity. Is he just a Russian Dumb Don unable to think through two plus two? Sure looks like it.
What is screamingly obvious is that the big Tommy Putinville winner is not Putin but Xi Jinping. To balance all his peculiar miscalculations, Putin has had to throw himself at the mercy of The Center of Everything (“China” in English). Without Xi at the center of The Center, Putin, tiny already, just vanishes. Having wasted Tuberville and his other Putinista allies, Xi is Putin’s only hope.
For Xi, there have been no costs to the freebies that Putin has thrown him. The Party benefits from everything Tuberville and the others have done for Putin. All while Putin fails, making Xi even bigger. And The Center of Everything has not, yet at least, invaded any of its neighbors.
A big question is, how did Putin pull this off? What does he have on Tuberville, Congressmen Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordan, The Freedom Caucus and others? Does he have Steele Dossiers on all of them? Is he financing their PACs? What is it?
Whatever his methods and no matter how fruitless, Putin is scoring.
American democracy is losing.
That didn't take long!! Only four days after Publius outed Tuberville as a Putinista, he backed down and will now allow 430 of the 445 military promotions that he had blocked.