Republicans (used to?) idolize Reagan. But the Reagan administration would likely love the racism of the present day Republican party, and loathe most of the rest of it. Electing a Russian asset president of the US would be inconceivable to them.
If the author of the excerpt below, Andrew Michta, sounds like a Reagan Republican, it's because he pretty much is. He's written right-leaning editorials, blames Biden for the world's problems, etc.
And yet he writes that if Trump hands Russia significant territorial gains in Ukraine—and so far giving Putin everything he wants seems to be the no. 1 goal of this administration—it will essentially undo America's victory in the Cold War:
"In 1991, the Soviet Union lost the Cold War, as it could no longer compete either in the economic, political, or military spheres... Post-1991, the United States exercised its victor’s prerogative, together with its democratic allies, to structure the post-Soviet space in Central Europe and the Baltics in a way that stabilized the region and served the United States’ interests and those of its European allies.
"...it was not the West’s aggressive pursuit of an anti-Russian agenda, but rather the weakness and lack of strategic clarity it communicated at every turn post-Cold War that encouraged Moscow’s revisionism. It was not the West’s alleged geostrategic assertiveness, but its timidity each time Putin used military power to occupy territory—first in Georgia in 2008, then in Ukraine in 2014, in Syria in 2015, and finally in Ukraine for the second time in 2022—that set the stage for the unfolding tragedy in Eastern Europe.
"The West is poised to communicate weakness once again, only this time unabashedly and without pretense that it is doing so because of norms or the 'rules-based international order.' If the final peace agreement on Ukraine simply ratifies the status quo on the battlefield, the Trump administration will hand Moscow a major win, in effect undoing the consequences of the Western victory in the Cold War."
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/the-real-reason-russia-invaded-ukraine-hint-its-not-nato-expansion/
The Republican Party has advertised itself as racist since ~1964. That seems to be its only center of gravity.
![Heather Cox Richardson Government by the Wealthy
3/30/25
That rhetoric that tied racism and taxes elected Ronald Reagan to the White House in 1980, and it has since metastasized until the top seven donors to the 2024 political cycle together gave almost a billion dollars to Republicans, with Elon Musk alone contributing more than $291 million. The list, compiled by Open Secrets, shows that Democratic donors don’t kick in until number eight on the list, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, who gave slightly more than $64 million to Democrats. George Soros, the Republicans’ supervillain, didn’t make the top 25. As those wealthy donors wish, the Trump administration is shredding the post-World War Il government and has prioritized tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.
Trump's government is also firing women, Black and Brown Americans, and gender minorities from public positions and working to erase them from our history. MAGA Republicans have fired up their base against immigrants they claim are “invading” the United States, an exaggerated vision in which White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, for example, claims that “[w]e were invaded and occupied. Entire neighborhoods were conquered. Entire towns were subjugated. Our treasury was in the plundered. [sic]”](https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/114/257/334/196/477/246/original/125e226be374b6e5.jpeg "Heather Cox Richardson Government by the Wealthy
3/30/25
That rhetoric that tied racism and taxes elected Ronald Reagan to the White House in 1980, and it has since metastasized until the top seven donors to the 2024 political cycle together gave almost a billion dollars to Republicans, with Elon Musk alone contributing more than $291 million. The list, compiled by Open Secrets, shows that Democratic donors don’t kick in until number eight on the list, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, who gave slightly more than $64 million to Democrats. George Soros, the Republicans’ supervillain, didn’t make the top 25. As those wealthy donors wish, the Trump administration is shredding the post-World War Il government and has prioritized tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.
Trump's government is also firing women, Black and Brown Americans, and gender minorities from public positions and working to erase them from our history. MAGA Republicans have fired up their base against immigrants they claim are “invading” the United States, an exaggerated vision in which White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, for example, claims that “[w]e were invaded and occupied. Entire neighborhoods were conquered. Entire towns were subjugated. Our treasury was in the plundered. [sic]”")
The 
