While some Republicans in Congress have slammed Vladimir Putin and called for investigations into the Kremlin’s attempts to influence the election, the party’s voters are increasingly fond of him. | Getty More Republicans viewing Putin favorably GOP sympathies for Putin and his homeland are rising

The GOP is warming to Russian President Vladimir Putin — even as evidence of his regime’s interference in the election intensifies.

While some Republicans in Congress have slammed the Russian strongman and called for investigations into the Kremlin’s attempts to influence the election, the party’s voters are increasingly fond of Putin.


The dramatic shift in sentiment — for a party that once defined itself by its staunch opposition to the Soviet Union — comes as President-elect Donald Trump has steadfastly refused to criticize Putin and signaled a different tone with Russia policy.

Trump has downplayed any role Russia played in the election and high profile hacks of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. And some of his top appointments — including his pick for national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and his selection for secretary of state, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson — have longstanding ties to Russia and personal relationships with Putin himself.

The change in views has been swift.

Back in July 2014 just 10 percent of Republicans held a favorable view of Putin, according to a poll conducted by the Economist and YouGov. By September of 2016, that number rose to 24 percent. And it's even higher today: 37 percent of Republicans view Putin favorably, the poll found in December.

While the Russian president still has a net un-favorability rating among Republicans, his standing has improved dramatically – from a net negative of 66 points to a mere 10 points.

By comparison, only 17 percent of Republicans have a favorable view of President Barack Obama, the December poll found. Obama’s net negative among Republicans is 64 points – significantly worse than the party’s take on Putin.

Within the GOP there has always been a faction with more sympathetic views toward Putin and Russia. Republicans like Rep. Dana Rohrabacher have taken a more open-minded view of Putin’s behavior in places like Crimea and Syria. But for years Rohrbacher and others like him were pariahs who existed outside the mainstream.

Now Rohrabacher — who was a speechwriter for Reagan and talks of fighting communism — is being floated for State Department appointments. (Rohrabacher said Thursday that he had been considering a role in Trump’s State Department but decided to stay in Congress.)

“There’s a lot of negative things about [Putin] that are accurate but there are a lot of negative things about him that have been said that are inaccurate,” Rohrabacher told POLITICO. “At least the other other side of the coin is being heard now. … Finally there’s some refutation of some of the inaccurate criticisms finally being heard.”

For the GOP, it’s been a sudden shift from a hardline on Russia, toward something resembling respect, if not warmth.

Daniel Vajdich, a former foreign policy adviser on the Senate Foreign Relations committee, recalled traveling to Foreign Relations Chair Sen. Bob Corker’s home state of Tennessee just after Russia annexed Crimea and supported rebel incursions in Eastern Ukraine.

For the Corker constituents Vadjich met, “no other issue—not Iraq, Syria or Iran— topped the emotion or frustration about what the Russians were doing in Ukraine and the way the Obama Administration was failing to do anything about it,” he said.

Now, the Republican president-elect Trump has said he would consider recognizing Crimea as part of Russia.

“It is dizzying,” said Vajdich, who has worked on the presidential campaigns of Gov. Mitt Romney, Gov. Scott Walker and Sen. Ted Cruz, all of whom represented the decades-old consensus view of Russia. “It’s just totally unexpected and counterintuitive to see how Republicans have shifted. I do think it has something to do with the general attitude that Trump expressed towards Putin and Russia. There’s no doubt there’s a very direct causal relationship about the permission he gave people.”

There also may be some politics at play, said said Larry Sabato director of the center for politics at the University of Virginia, because Putin’s alleged involvement boosted the GOP. Among the alleged Russian incursions into the election were hackers obtaining and leaking emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

“It’s just based on the ancient principle the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I don’t think it’s much more complicated than that,” said Larry Sabato director of the center for politics at the University of Virginia. “The Republican base, particularly the Trump part of the Republican base, is going to regard anyone and anything that helped their great leader to win as a positive force, or at least a less negative force.”

Trump, for his part, continues to contest that there was any Russian involvement in the election-related hackings.

“If Russia, or some other entity, was hacking, why did the White House wait so long to act? Why did they only complain after Hillary lost?” Trump wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.

In fact, Trump is incorrect to say that federal agencies did not talk about Russian interference until after he had won. They did so more than a month before Election Day.

The Department of Homeland Security and Director of National Intelligence released a statement on Oct. 7 saying they were “confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations.”

The Washington Post has since reported that the CIA concluded the efforts were aimed at lifting Trump’s prospects, rather than just destabilizing the election. And NBC has reported that Putin himself was personally involved in the effort.

Trump’s campaign contends that news of Russia’s involvement in the hacking is a media-driven plot to “delegitimize” the election.

Even if Trump’s ascendance allowed a more sympathetic view of Russia and Putin to become more mainstream, Vajdich does believe the appeal of Putin, and his leadership style, always existed in certain corners of the GOP.

“I think there’s something inherently attractive about Vladimir Putin when you compare him to President Obama and that’s something that’s going to resonate with some Republicans regardless of what Trump says,” Vajdich says.

“He’s decisive and unapologetically pursues Russian interests in a way Obama didn’t for America, in the minds of many Republicans.”

That reverence for Putin’s persona, if not his policies, extends even to those Republicans who decry Russia’s incursions abroad. Vice President-elect Mike Pence, for example, did not share Trump’s reservations about attacking Putin – he called Putin “small and bullying” at a September campaign event – but he still said he agreed with Trump that Putin was a stronger leader than Obama.

Even in 2014, in the midst of Russia’s widely condemned annexation of Crimea, Rudy Giuliani, who would become one of Trump’s most vocal surrogates, praised Putin for acting like “a leader.”

“[Putin] makes a decision and he executes it, quickly. And then everybody reacts. That’s what you call a leader,” Giuliani said.

And Russia has reciprocated.

State media has been full of praise for Trump, Tillerson and Flynn, noted Angela Stent, director of Georgetown’s Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies and a a member of the senior advisory panel for NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe from 2010-2016. Russian media also portrayed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a persistently negative light.

“Certainly the Kremlin didn’t like Hillary Clinton,” Stent said.

But there’s another aspect to the affinity between some Republicans and Putin.

Putin has fashioned himself as a defender of traditional values around the world, something that has a particular appeal to the socially conservative elements of the Republican Party. He’s actively pushed anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion legislation in his country. Just this week, the Russian government prevented the UN Security Council, in their statement about outgoing UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, from praising the Korean’s promotion of LGBTQ rights during his time in office.

"President Putin sees himself as the leader of the conservative world, battling decadent liberal values,” former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Mike McFaul told POLITICO. “When I was in the government there were overtures between evangelical and conservative religious organizations and Russians, including those associated with the government. … What brought them together was an ideological affinity about issues like LGBT in particular.”

The warmth toward Russia is not reserved to Trump and elements of the party’s base.

Rohrabacher went to great lengths in an unsuccessful attempt to derail legislation that Russia opposed in Congress. He even used information provided directly from the Russian government to make his case.

And he took to the op-ed pages of USA Today on Wednesday to defend Russia from accusations of attempts to influence the election, while also praising the work of hackers who targeted Democrats. He also wrote more broadly about his thoughts on the Russia-U.S. relationship.

“Putin is by no means guiltless in the deterioration of relations between our countries. Both sides failed,” he wrote. “We broke faith with a Putin-brokered deal with Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, which resulted in his downfall and an expansion of radical Islamic power. Putin has had ample reason to lose faith in America’s resolve.”

“Several people like myself, in order to say what we thought was truth, have been willing to take on the common knowledge that we think was wrong,” Rohrbacher told POLITICO. “There’s been this vilification not only of the Russian leader but of Russia itself.”

While Rohrabacher’s views have been injected into the mainstream, the party still has elements that are vigorously opposed to Putin.

There will be many Republicans, Sabato said, “who will not adapt to this new reality, they have long regarded Putin as one of the great evils of the world…They may just not bring it up very much.”

Some Republicans remain unwavering and outspoken in their opposition to Putin. And they expect voters will get behind them.

“For years, American diplomats and leaders have pretended Russia is our ally—we’ve tried resets and ignored their aggressions— that’s nonsense,” Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), who did not support Trump, said in a statement to POLITICO. “Putin and his friends are murderous thugs and it’s time Americans stopped pretending otherwise. Period.”

Isaac Arnsdorf contributed reporting.

CLARIFICATION: This story has been updated to clarify which publication reported that the CIA concluded that Russia hacked the U.S. elections to help Donald Trump.