The reaction to Joe Kent’s principled, patriotic resignation from the Office of National Intelligence—and the numerous MAGA obituaries that appeared shortly thereafter—seem to share in common the idea that Donald Trump’s decision to go to war on behalf of Israel is both (a) surprising and (b) will cause a fissure within the Republican Party from which it might not recover.
There is little reason to believe either assertion: This is what the Republican Party has been since the end of the Cold War. It is not the GOP of Nixon or Kissinger or Reagan or Bush, Sr., or Shultz or Baker or Scowcroft. It is the Party of Bibi and Murdoch all the way through.
As I pointed out exactly three years ago, on March 20, 2023, in the pages of The Spectator, the idea that there is a brewing ‘civil war’ within the Republican Party over foreign policy would be nice, if it were actually true. Then as now, stories appeared in Beltway broadsheets claiming that the GOP was at war with itself over foreign policy. The Washington Post predicted “A Republican ‘civil war’ on Ukraine” on March 15, 2023. Only yesterday, March 19, 2026, POLITICO published a piece warning that …read more
Source:: Ron Paul Institute
