Thanks to the incompetence of Paul Manafort's lawyers, we know that he provided voter rolls to Russian-Ukranian operative Konstantin Kilimnik while he was the campaign chairman for Donald Trump.
Despite these revelations and it's implications, the GOP has chosen to rollback sanctions on Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska:
Here were four names of people who have been considered "Russia skeptics or hawks" in the past:
Former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, pretty much sums up the decision by Republican Senators to voted for loosening sanctions on Russian oligarchs:
I'm by no means a cold-warrior, nor would I want to see U.S.-Russian relations to go back to that place, but I'm also pro-democracy, and whether or not Russia's attempts to manipulate the 2016 elections worked, we should be defending the integrity of our elections, and not letting Russian oligarchs off the hook.
In order to have a functioning democracy, the voters need to understand the reality of a situation. Today, the GOP is saying that foreign governments are free to help them, that anything goes if it can help them maintain power, and in doing so, causes confusion amongst the public.
David Klion of The Nation has pointed out that the story with Russia isn't just about Donald Tump, but that the GOP has acted indifferent from the moment the intelligence community began understating that Russia was trying to meddle in our elections.
"When Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell was informed of Russian interference in September 2016 in a meeting with President Obama and other senior officials," writes Kloin, "he threatened to cast any public announcement of the threat as partisan politics."
"It’s not a stretch to say McConnell deliberately undermined national security for partisan advantage," continues Klion, "a decision that has paid off with the signing of a massive tax cut for the wealthy and the looming establishment of a durable right-wing majority on the Supreme Court."
For some time it's been ridiculous to call the Republican Party, "the party of Lincoln," but it's gone so off the rails that it can no longer even call itself "the party of Reagan."
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