Leonard Lance continues to be a silent enabler of Russia’s foreign policy aims. His refusal to denounce President Trump’s trade agenda is just the most recent example of his pandering to a base that won’t acknowledge that, willingly or unwittingly, the President is playing stooge to Putin and his kleptocracy.

A corrupt and inefficient Russia, wholly dependent for its economy on the energy sector, can never grow to become a vibrant, innovative and free society. It’s citizens are doomed to stagnation and decline, and are fed a diet of bread and circuses to distract from the failures of government. Putin’s foreign policy goal therefore is to minimize external threats to his regime by pushing sticks in the spokes of Western society to promote mistrust in democracy, collapse of the EU, and a rise in nationalist populism cast in his own image.

And, boy, is he ever succeeding. We were asleep at the switch when he took Crimea. When he invaded Ukraine, we forgot that we had guaranteed the borders of Ukraine in return for its nuclear disarmament. Putin has promoted the rise of sympathetic nationalist parties in Poland, Hungary, Austria and Italy. He fomented Britain’s departure from the E.U. And now, most successfully here in the U.S., he has seen us install a President with a natural affinity for autocrats, and a mistrust of the alliance network that was an American creation, and provided the oxygen for growth and freedom and democratic change so antithetical to Putin’s values.

How Putin must be laughing now, when he sees the President tear at the economic foundations of our growth by his mindless assaults on our trading partners and allies! What a return on investment for a cheap cyberattack on our election! No expensive nuclear arsenal required….

“We should beware of the demagogues who are ready to declare a trade war against our friends — weakening our economy, our national security, and the entire free world — all while cynically waving the American flag.”

- Ronald Reagan

What do we hear from our Congressman? Only the Silence of the Lance.

We will #RememberinNovember #NJ07