March 4, 2025, 2:41 p.m.
If you haven’t heard about the Oval Office blow-up between President Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, I am jealous of your life under a rock. The incident is just the latest—but most striking—illustration of how Trump is shifting U.S. foreign policy, and by extension, the entire world order.
We’ve known for a while that Trump is more sympathetic toward Russia, and particularly its president, Vladimir Putin, than probably any U.S. politician has been toward any Russian leader since the Bolshevik Revolution. During his first term, that relationship caused a lot of debate and turmoil, but there was no grand restructuring of foreign policy. The U.S. public, and most elected politicians of both parties, viewed Russia as an enemy.
So when Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, most people were united on team Ukraine. The American public supported limited engagement—supporting Ukraine with money and supplies. An NPR-Ipsos poll from March 2022 showed that the vast majority of the public thought the U.S. should do more in the situation (39 percent) or that it was doing the right amount (31 percent). Only 6 percent said they wanted the U.S. to do less; the rest were undecided.
Believe it or not, Republicans were more hawkish than Democrats at the time: 37 percent of Democrats said the U.S. should do more, but nearly half of Republicans—46 percent—said that. Sixty percent of Republicans, compared to only 35 percent of Democrats, said President Biden was too cautious in supporting Ukraine.
So will Republican opinion push back against Trump’s second-term moves? Probably not.
For one thing, pro-Ukrainian opinion among Republicans had already eroded—Gallup surveys show that in August 2022, 46 percent of Republicans said the focus should be ending the war quickly, even if Ukraine has to give up territory. By December 2024, that had increased to 74 percent. According to the latest CBS News-YouGov poll, 41 percent of Republicans say Russia is friendly or an ally, compared to 26 percent of Democrats and 29 percent of independents.
I expect the Republican numbers to move even more. Trump has a way of getting Republican opinion to follow him like a lost puppy, even on long-held planks of the platform and enduring principles of conservatism.
The Republican Party looked a lot different on that June day in 2015 when Trump announced his presidential candidacy. The party was focused on morality, on ending abortion, on hawkish foreign policy, and on the deficit. One by one, each of these key pillars have fallen under Trump.
Perhaps the first to fall was the veneer of morality. In 2011, PRRI asked whether an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life. Only 36 percent of Republicans said yes. When they asked the same question again in October 2016, suddenly 70 percent of Republicans agreed. No group shifted more than a key Republican base group—white evangelical Protestants—who went from 30 percent to 72 percent.
Abortion largely dropped out of the Republican platform in 2024. Instead of campaigning for a national set of restrictions, as one might have expected Republicans to do with Roe v. Wade no longer in place, it was practically a non-issue on the Right. This was less a shift in opinion than a shift in behavior among the politicians—led by Trump. The comparison between the 2016 and 2024 Republican platform statements on abortion is stark, moving it from a national issue to a state issue.
Also gone? Promises to cap spending and repay the national debt that featured in the 2016 platform. Yet 66 percent of Republicans still say the national deficit is a major problem, according to Pew. Historical data suggests Republicans will worry less about it when a Republican is in office—demand for the president and Congress to focus on the issue dropped from an 82 percent peak under President Obama to 54 percent during Trump’s first term.
That brings us back to foreign policy and Ukraine. Trump has embraced an America First policy of isolationism, with which Republicans are now largely aligned. More Democrats than Republicans support strengthening NATO and the United Nations, limiting the power of Russia, solving the Israel-Palestine conflict, and promoting democracy in other nations.
This ain’t your parents’ Reagan conservatism. But the party and its voters have followed Trump, and they’re likely to continue.
Contributing editor Natalie Jackson is a vice president at GQR Research.
