The remarkable transformation of the Republican Party, begun with Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, reached a historical milestone last week with the president’s embrace of Vladimir Putin and his warm Helsinki overture to the Russian president.
For three-quarters of a century, the Republican Party has been the bulwark of skepticism about Russia. Three Republican presidents in a row refused to extend diplomatic recognition to the young Soviet Union in the 1920s, and when the United States, under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a Democrat, became the last major power to recognize the Soviet Union, he did so against the opposition of many Republicans.
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