MAGA Hawks and Doves

In the span of 20 years, the GOP has developed a strong non-interventionist wing, and it's making noise as hawks cheer for attacking Iran.

In late summer 2004, I covered the Republican National Convention in New York City. A large percentage of speeches at Madison Square Garden that week strove to defend the Bush-Cheney administration’s war-making in Iraq, which by then had been badly exposed as utterly misguided. John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Zell Miller, Dick Cheney and others opined that the toppling of Saddam Hussein was good and necessary, notwithstanding Iraq’s irrelevance to 9/11 and the failure to find the promised weapons of mass destruction.

At the time, this was the rock-solid position of Republicans nationwide, as well as in the building. The GOP was the interventionist party; their opponents were painted as weak isolationists. (Never mind that Democrats had nominated a decorated combat veteran who had voted to authorize the Iraq War.) There were surely dissenters from the hawkish position within the party, but they had little representation in government or right-wing media.

As I write, Tuesday evening June 17, the United States has not launched an attack on Iran. That might change before you read this; indications are strong that Donald Trump has decided to enter the fray—although who knows what actions he intends to take, or how many times he’ll change his mind before pulling the proverbial trigger.

The GOP and the conservative/MAGA movement is much changed, however, from 20 years ago.

A great divide has formed between the Iran hawks (derided as neoliberals) and doves (sneered at as isolationists). The two sides are rhetorically led, respectively, by Mark Levin and Tucker Carlson, two blowhards who have grown wealthy and powerful by convincing consumers in the conservative marketplace that they are intellectual leaders of the movement. I have long observed with some fascination the very different techniques and styles these two men have used to conquer and maintain their positions in this space, but suffice to say that it is no surprise that both are vehemently wedded to their current views and full of contempt for a market competitor staking an opposing position.

Carlson, reveling in the relevance, recorded an interview Tuesday with hawkish Senator Ted Cruz—a rare opportunity, in his post-FOX days, for Carlson to display his antagonistic interview skills—and naturally pre-released select excerpts in which he arguably bested Cruz. To me, it’s just two assholes snarling at each other over positions they would gladly change tomorrow if they found benefit in doing so. But your experience might be different.

Carlson is hardly the only MAGA type opposing U.S. involvement in Israel’s assault on Iran. There are actually lots of names, big and small, including Steve Bannon, who take America First to mean, at least in part, extreme restraint from military involvement beyond our borders.

Many of them ascribe this belief to Trump himself, although that’s pretty clearly a fallacy. For one thing, America was, literally, at war abroad every day of Trump’s first four-year term. Since re-taking office he has talked rather blithely about using military force wherever it might suit him—Greenland, for instance. Like pretty much all things, Trump’s view is that the proper function of the U.S. military is to get whatever he wants at a given time.

Thus, as the hawks have been pointing out a lot lately, Trump has been pretty consistent for some time in insisting that Iran cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons, and he has put no limitations on what he would be willing to do in that regard. Iran becoming a nuclear power under his watch appears to be on his list of legacy-killers, and I for one believe that his Presidential legacy drives a good bit of Trump’s decision-making these days.

The hawk-dove divide on Iran is not entirely breaking down on neat lines of demarcation. Opinions are tainted in some cases by views on Israel: conservative Jews (like Levin) and evangelicals who strongly defend Israel and Bibi Netanyahu are particularly eager to see Iran removed as a threat. Others, such as the intensely WASPy Carlson or the anti-Israel conservatives such as Candace Owens, are often found taking the other side. I also see a significant effect of the intraparty feud over Ukraine support, which the non-interventionists felt they won—meaning that Donald Trump seemed to embrace their position. That left them emboldened, which fueling resentments among the Russia hawks, particularly given their well-founded suspicions that many of their counterparts were taking money from Russia state media.

The divide runs beyond those jostling for supremacy and dollars in the right-wing media. There are more than a few Republican members of Congress who are vocally opposing U.S. hostilities in Iran.

Nor is it a clean pro/con split. There is a substantial third wing, of important MAGA folks who want to be aligned with whatever Trump does, but don’t know what that is. It’s a real pickle. I’ve seen some marvelous rhetorical meanderings calculated to praise how Trump is handling the situation, without staking out a recognizable view of any kind.

In any event, the Republican Party is much more divided on this foreign adventure that the GOP I watched at the 2004 convention. Which might have been where the split began.

The MAGA doves are certainly making a lot of references to the Iraq War—especially using the famous line about being greeted as liberators to denounce ideas of regime change in Iran. One could easily imagine a large number of disillusioned younger conservatives embracing non-interventionism along with various populist principles over the following two decades.

Or, they could just be grasping at an easy past example to support an isolationism arrived at by very different paths/ I can’t answer that.

Regardless, I would caution Democrats against theorizing, as I have started to see, that this MAGA internal rift will cost the GOP electorally. It could happen. More likely, I think, is that they’ll find ways to unite against the horrible Marxist Antifa DEI woke Democrats. They always have that common ground.