Both as a general election candidate and as president, Eisenhower tried to

minimize his public conflicts with his party’s “old guard.” But he
unmistakably steered the party (and the nation) toward acceptance of
American global leadership within a robust international system of alliances.
With only modest variation, that became the dominant foreign policy ideology
of the GOP for the next 60 years under Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford,
Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Late in that period, George W. Bush
offered a different emphasis by stressing unilateral American action over
coordination with allies, but even he emphasized the need for the US to remain
engaged with the world. “It’s a pretty unbroken streak,” said Geoffrey
Kabaservice, author of “Rule and Ruin,” a history of the struggles between
GOP conservatives and moderates.

Taft-like isolationism, coupled with nativist opposition to immigration and

protectionist opposition to free trade, first resurfaced as a major force in the
GOP with the long-shot presidential campaigns of conservative commentator
Patrick J. Buchanan in 1992 and 1996. Two decades later, Trump revived that
same triumvirate of isolationism, protectionism and nativism – what scholars
sometimes call “defensive nationalism” – in his winning drive for the 2016
GOP nomination.

Though some traditional GOP internationalists had hoped that Trump in office
might moderate those impulses, as president he barreled down all those roads,
repeatedly clashing with traditional allies. Now, DeSantis’ choice to echo
Trump in devaluing Ukraine – following the calls from so many House
conservatives to reduce the US commitment there – is deflating another hope
of the GOP’s beleaguered internationalist wing: that Trump’s ascent
represented a temporary detour and the party would snap back to its traditional
support for international engagement once he left office.

“Trump-ism has to be taken seriously,” as a long-term force in GOP thinking

about the world, Haass said. The foreign policy center of gravity in the
Republican Party, he added, has moved toward “a much more pinched or
minimal American relationship with the world, [with] not a lot of interest in
contributing to global responses to challenges like climate change or
pandemics.”

Even before DeSantis qualified his comments in the interview with Morgan,
Feaver believed the Florida governor was trying to find a position on Ukraine
somewhere between Trump’s undiluted skepticism and the unreserved support
of Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Mitch McConnell of
Kentucky. But, Feaver said, by including such inflammatory language as
“territorial dispute” in his initial comments, DeSantis demonstrated the risks of
pursuing such a strategy of “triangulation.”
“Triangulation is a risky game because if you get the language off, you may
commit yourself in a campaign to a line that makes no sense when you are
governing,” Feaver said. “This is one of the hardest problems for newcomers
and challengers when they are campaigning for president. By giving applause
lines that work for the narrow segments of ideologically hardened factions that
they are trying to win over for the primary, they can lock themselves into
policy positions that are not sound when they actually win.”

As an example, Feaver said DeSantis’ insistence that the US should shift more
attention from countering Russia to containing China – an argument he
repeated with Morgan – was illogical because “abandoning Ukraine assists
China’s most significant ally, Russia.” Haley made a similar case in her
recent Wall Street Journal  article criticizing DeSantis (though not by name) for
his comments to Carlson. “It’s naive to think we can counter China by
ignoring Russia,” Haley wrote.

Daalder points out another logical flaw in the updated “Asia First” arguments
from DeSantis and Trump. “If the US were to abandon its allies in Europe …
our allies in Asia are going to ask, ‘What’s to say they are not going to do the
same with regards to China?’” Daalder said. “By demonstrating your
willingness to stand up to Russia you are also strengthening the view that in
Asia that when it comes to it that we will be there to help them.”

But polls leave no doubt that both prongs of the modern Robert Taft position –
that the US should reduce its commitment to Europe-focused international
alliances and harden its resistance to China – have a substantial base of
support in the contemporary Republican coalition. In a Gallup
poll released  earlier this month, by a lopsided margin of 76% to 12%,
Republican voters were more likely to identify China than Russia as the
principal US adversary in the world. (More Democrats picked Russia than
China.) Polls have also found a steady decline in Republican support for US
aid to Ukraine: polls this year by both the Pew Research
Center and Quinnipiac University  found that the share of GOP voters who
believe the US is doing too much now equals the combined percentage who
think it is doing too little or the right amount. (Quinnipiac found big majorities
of Democrats and independents still believe the US is doing the right amount
or not enough.)

The latest Chicago Council on Global Affairs  annual survey also tracks a

broader retreat from the world among GOP voters. In that poll, conducted last
November, the share of Republicans who said the US should take an active
role in world affairs fell to 55% – the lowest the survey has ever recorded.
Underscoring that erosion, a slight majority of Republicans in the poll said the
costs of an active US international role now exceed the benefits.
Opinions in the GOP about whether the US should do more or less in Ukraine
don’t vary much along lines of education or age, the Pew poll found. But
generally, these surveys show that the turn away from global leadership is
most powerful among two distinct groups of Republicans: those who are
younger, and those who lack college degrees. While a solid three-fifths of
Republicans with a college degree in the Chicago Council poll said the
benefits of US leadership exceed the costs, for instance, a majority of non-
college Republicans disagreed. Younger Republicans were also much more
likely than those over 60 to say the costs exceed the benefits.

It’s probably no coincidence that those two groups – Republicans without a

college degree and those who are younger – have consistently registered as
Trump’s strongest supporters in early polls about the 2024 race.