He argues that Republicans never really took their own side of the debate.
Over at the American Conservative, Senator J. D. Vance details how the funding-compromise bill on the border and Ukraine went so badly. Namely, he argues that Republicans never really took their own side of the debate, as the elected Republicans in charge want Ukraine funding more than they want to secure the border itself. Originally, the idea behind the compromise was that funding for Ukraine would only be released and disbursed as Joe Biden provably secured the border:
The story our leadership tells is that the “politics of border security” had changed because of Donald Trump. James Lankford dutifully negotiated a bipartisan border product. Conservative Republicans encouraged this negotiation. When the product took shape, Donald Trump demanded conservatives walk. Trump argued that Joe Biden didn’t need a border security package — which was true — so Republicans should ask simply that Joe Biden do his job. This intervention allegedly killed a great piece of border policy.
This is a fairytale that makes conservative senators and Donald Trump look bad, perhaps by design. In truth, the demands conservative senators made at the beginning of the negotiation went like this: Joe Biden can fix this problem, but he refuses, so we must make him do his job. This posture came along specific demands from senators ranging from Ukraine aid supporters like Marco Rubio to Ukraine aid skeptics like me, and those in the middle like Ron Johnson. We argued that we could condition further Ukraine aid on decreased illegal border crossings. In other words, Congress would appropriate money to Ukraine in stages: if Biden refused to drive down border crossings, he wouldn’t get his money for Ukraine.
The deal, as envisioned by conservatives, was apparently never on the table. According to both Democratic colleagues and some Republicans, this is because Republican leadership—specifically Mitch McConnell—refused to push the Democrats on this issue. Other Republicans have argued instead that even if Mitch McConnell empowered Lankford to make this demand, Democrats would have never agreed.
Obviously, this latter view reflects more favorably on Mitch McConnell, but only by a little, because it suggests a massive asymmetry in negotiating leverage. If Democrats are desperate for Ukraine aid, and Republicans—at least the negotiating Republicans—are also desperate for Ukraine aid, border security would inevitably land on the chopping block. [Emphasis his.]
As we know, the border bill that came out was incredibly weak. The money disbursed for Ukraine had no connection to outcomes at the border. Any useful powers it granted the Biden administration to get control of the border were actually set to expire by the time Donald Trump got in office or Biden won a second term.
Further, Vance argues that the standalone Ukraine-funding bill that emerged has a similar poison-pill quality: It would restrain a future president Trump from doing precisely what he is promising on the campaign trail to do, which is negotiate an end to the war. Vance argues that Democrats would simply pick up where their first impeachment left off: that the law obliged Trump to fund the Ukraine war no matter what, and restricted him from engaging in diplomacy to end it.
I happen to think there’s another reason why funding is extended in the way it is — for the same reason Mitch McConnell and others passed such an extensive package before the Ukraine counteroffensive. They know that the American people are souring on this issue, and so they are squeezing for as much as they can get while the getting’s good.