'Youthful Naivety': GOP Senators Clash Over Supporting Ukraine

WASHINGTON ― Senate Republicans took their contentious intra-party debate over countering Russian aggression to the internet on Tuesday after the Senate passed a military and financial aid package that included $60 billion for Ukraine.

Freshman Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), a fierce opponent of the bill, noted the generational divide in the Republican conference on the matter. A large chunk of the 26 GOP senators who opposed it are younger lawmakers who came to Washington in the past decade during the GOP’s transformation away from the orthodoxy of Ronald Reagan to that of Donald Trump.

“Nearly every Republican Senator under the age of 55 voted NO on this America Last bill,” Schmitt wrote in a post on X. “15 out of 17 elected since 2018 voted NO.”

He added: “Things are changing just not fast enough.”

It’s true. The Senate GOP is changing. The traditional stalwarts in the party are slowly being replaced with hard-charging MAGA loyalists eager to defend and amplify Trump’s tactics. The influence of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the top Senate Republican who supported the bill and pushed for its passage for months, is clearly on the wane, and another Trump term in the White House would only accelerate that shift, recreating the party in his image.

But it’s not just the new class of Republicans who have embraced Trump’s isolationist tendencies. Prominent defense hawks like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) also opposed the Ukraine aid package, the latest head-spinning heel turn in his career. Graham said he couldn’t support the bill without tougher border security measures even though he voted against a bipartisan border deal that he was involved in crafting after Trump warned Republicans not to support it.

Graham even endorsed