Natalie Kitroeff

He recognizes that, you know, this war is going to be a difficult thing to explain to voters and a difficult thing to describe as a success.

While in the meantime, kind of receding from view is the vice president, the seeming heir apparent to Trump, J.D.

Vance, who clearly is not the cheerleader in the way that Rubio is.

Yeah.

And so is he preserving a kind of position of independence in doing that and biding his time, basically allowing himself either to pivot into like totally supporting a war just as it's ending or being the guy who was exercising notes of concern and caution as the war protracts itself?

That's right.

Both Vance and Rubio are trying to preserve their options.

They, in essence, have their feet on both sides of the line.

And in doing that, I mean, what they're really doing, Natalie, is personifying this moment of truth that has arrived for the Republican Party.

It's kind of been sitting there for a

About, you know, just what they stand for.

There was a bumper sticker, America First, which could be taken literally as stay out of other countries.

Just do stuff at home.

And now it's a question of just what is America's role in the world.

And nobody really wants to have that conversation.

It's a complicated one.

It's a difficult one to sell to voters.

But now it feels like the Republican Party almost has no choice but to confront it.

As they try to explain to their voters, to Americans, what's this war about?

Why are we doing this?