Surprise! Now that Trump is gone, a number of Republican Party bigs have reverted to type:

Republicans held their tongues through all the ally-alienating NATO bashing Donald Trump did as president. They largely held ranks during his Ukrainian aid-related first impeachment.

The GOP of 2023 is turning into something very different. Key parts of it have shed the MAGA gag to assail Vladimir Putin for launching a war in Ukraine.

More:

Those were just a few of the personal insults [against Putin] that flew from the likes of Republican Sens. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, John Cornyn of Texas, Jerry Moran of Kansas, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, respectively, as they unloaded on the Russian president at the US Capitol.

Wicker accused Putin of slaughtering tens of thousands of women and children over the years, citing his involvement in deadly campaigns including the leveling of the Chechen capital of Grozny two decades ago and the bombardment of Aleppo, Syria in 2016. “He will continue to kill innocent human beings until he’s stopped,” Wicker told reporters.

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a former Trump rival who then became a key ally in Congress, said cutting Putin’s ambitions short should be everybody’s top priority.

“It is in America’s national security interest for Russia to lose because we don’t want Putin to be stronger and to take a major step towards reassembling the Soviet Union, towards threatening Americans, towards threatening our allies in Europe,” Cruz said earlier this week.

Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who advocated for shipping over whatever defensive weapons Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wants ASAP, cast the current conflict in apocalyptic terms.

“It’s a moral battle between good guys and bad guys,” Sasse said while surrounded by a dozen colleagues at the US Capitol. “And we need the good guys to win.”

Yep, it’s just that simple, Senator. Good grief. Now that Trump is out of the picture, these guys would be willing to start World War III.