"Tucker Carlson and the rest of the Republican party's support for Russia boils down to "we need Russian support against China"."
No, it's definitely not that.
It's just use Russian talking points to 'Blame Democrats' and get ratings. That's it. It's just a wedge issue.
For Trump it's different. He sees everything in terms of personal relationships, and this sounds odd but I actually believe he thinks being on 'good personal terms' with Putin would be good for the countries. Like two Dynastic builders in NYC, getting on each other's 'good side'. Putin however is not like that at all, he's thinking about the legacy of his nation of himself, and of course, both men are representing states, and Trump's 'personal relationships' have nothing to do with real diplomacy or strategic issues.
Secondarily, Trump sucks up to powerful people, Trump was trying to build a tower in Moscow before becoming president, he offered Putin the Penthouse for free as a brand building exercise but also to smooth the permits and attract buyers. Much of Trumps properties take investments from rich people from around the world, aka 'ill gotten money' much of it Russian.
Warming up to Putin in such a personal way and defending him in the press was a novel thing for America and a lot of the populist movement with with him on it. Fox, some GOP and a lot of pundits used the opportunity to flip the narrative as well.
So unfortunately, no, Carlson and the Russian-appeasers in the GOP are not thinking geostrategically. It's just cynical politics.
Don’t minimize the effect of Russia being a conservative christian white (for Republican standards) nation. The European conservative christian right wing has allied with the likes of Russia and their puppets just to combat liberalism and secularism.
Did you have an actual response? If you don’t grasp the issue it’s obvious I need to explain it further.
With EU human rights protections the undercurrent of liberalization for minorities in Ukraine is safe to flourish unlike in Russia. Even an extremely religious country like Poland has massive public support for abortion protections now and anti-lgbt laws were responded to with sanctions by the EU.
Eastern orthodox christianity is the only strong christian conservative power left in Europe. European right wing populists’ parties and christian conservative parties openly point to Russia as an example of a country that still has christianity at its core. The American christian right is ideologically aligned with them and they regularly share ideas and events.
If you actually followed European politics nothing I said is suprising and my first comment would have been obvious.
Have they actually been to Russia? The country is intensely anti-Western and already on the verge of becoming a Chinese puppet state.