Putin Loves Trump

Putin says he likes Trump.   This is very good for Trump.

As I wrote yesterday, Trump has to show he is plausible and "presidential".   The Putin comments are a gigantic repair strategy for Trump.  Putin validates Trump as peer, a fellow leader, a man to be respected, the potential leader of a country to be reckoned with.  

This is exactly what Republican audiences have been asking for and cheering for: an American president who sounds as tough as Putin.   

I consider this a major triumph for Trump.  It demolishes Jeb Bush's comments about Trump being "a joke", and "not a serious candidate".   Trump understood that Putin was to be embraced, not rejected.   "I think I'd get along very well with Vladimir Putin.   I just think so."

Two tough men of the world, men who understand and respect each other.  

Beginning in March of this year the  idea gathered currency among the Republican candidates and it resounded on Fox News:   Putin was admirable.   He was bold, firm, nationalistic, a bully on behalf of his team, and manly.  

Putin was the opposite of Obama, a key to why he seemed ideal.   Obama was calm, deliberate, cautious.  Obama saw how American initiatives in Iraq, Egypt, and Libya created backlash and chaos and spoke of allies, partners and leading from behind.   Putin was moving the other direction--seizing territory in Crimea, using proxies to expand Russia in Ukraine, and inviting himself into Syria.  Putin expresses strong, muscular nationalism.  

Sarah Palin expressed it nicely on the Sean Hannity show:

Obama in "mom jeans"

  “People are looking at Putin as one who wrestles bears and drills for oil.   They look at our president as one who wears mom jeans and equivocates and bloviates."

At the same time Fox News host Bill O'Reilly said Putin was "smirking at the world" and watching the US and other "Western powers kneel."   

The real thing

The speeches at the Republican debate Tuesday exemplified that consensus.   Even though the actual policy prescription for Syria is essentially to do exactly what Obama is doing, the rhetoric around it is vastly different.  Candidate after candidate assailed Obama-Hillary for speaking weakly, acting tentatively, for leading from behind, for failing to bomb harder, smash harder, fight harder, destroy harder.   And especially for failing to condemn "Islamic terror "rather than terror as a "perversion of Islam."

The solution to America's weakness, they say, starts with a "strong" Commander in Chief.   Look tough and sound tough and  bullies will back off.   Image, not policy, is the key.  (I acknowledge that Ted Cruz says he would carpet bomb areas hoping to kill only "the bad guys"within the carpet,  and Trump says he would target family members of ISIS--ideas I believe intended only to express resolve, not actual behavior, given that both are prohibited by Geneva Convention treaties we have signed.)

Putin has put Russia back as a major player on the world stage.   Putin is important to Republican audiences for good reason.   He is in fact a powerful leader with complete control of his government and he is reasserting Russia's leadership in the world.  Putin saying that he understands and respects Trump is the first big international validation of Trump.  

It validates Trump as a Putin peer, and that is exactly what Republican candidates are positioning themselves to be.   Putin peers. 

Ted Cruz's:  Machine Gun Bacon.  A good try.

Trump's opponents would have been thrilled to have gotten this endorsement from Putin.  They want to be strong, so they show themselves to be comfortable with guns.  But the endorsement went to Trump, a major advance toward getting the nomination.