There’s a stark split in the GOP over how to handle Russia’s threat to Ukraine. It’s less useful to think “doves” versus “hawks” and more illuminating to view it as a divide between Republicans who are responsive to their base and incumbents who feel they can afford to maintain some distance from GOP primary voters.

Those without the buffer of time baked into a six-year term are increasingly either muffling their hawkish instincts or wondering aloud why America should care at all what Russia does to Ukraine.

GOP House members are notably less interventionist than GOP senators. GOP primary candidates are the least interventionist of all.

What they’re saying: “This country has actual problems that our politicians should prioritize: election integrity, the border crisis, soaring inflation, violent crime, failing schools, and Big Tech, to name a few,” Blake Masters, one of the top Republican contenders for the Senate in Arizona, said in a statement to Axios.