Huh?
Posted on 11/06/2014 1:12:02 PM PST by right-wing agnostic
Arkansas elected Republican Rep. Tom Cotton to the Senate on Tuesday, sending incumbent Mark Pryor packing. You might not be surprised that a Republican won in Arkansas in a heavily GOP year, but Cotton's victory is a much bigger deal than you probably think. His election is a significant step for the future of GOP foreign policy, and thus perhaps for American foreign policy.
Cotton, you see, is the golden child of the Republican party's hawkish establishment. He still calls the 2003 Iraq invasion a "just and noble" war. He's young — just 37 — and fervently backed by some of the most influential conservative figures in the nation. His Senate victory makes him a serious candidate for an even higher office some day. But even before then, his ascent could represent a larger movement in his party's foreign policy.
This sets him on a collision course with the GOP's other leading young voice on foreign policy: Sen. Rand Paul. One of Paul's top priorities is moving the Republican Party away from George W. Bush's neoconservatism; one of Cotton's is pulling the party back towards it. And given the slate of immediate foreign policy issues facing the Senate, the two are likely to be at odds sooner rather than later.
(Excerpt) Read more at vox.com ...
“Golden child”?
Yeah that doesn’t sound snarky at all.
Actually, Cotten sounds good.
Going to have to buy popcorn futures.
This is overblown.
The Republican party is still very much drifting into non-interventionist foreign policy territory. The insane rantings of Juan McLame and the clear blowback with regard to arming rebels in Libya, have poisoned the interventionist strand of Republicanism now on the wane.
Tom Cotton won with large conservative support primarily because he has been a thorn in Boehner’s side on many issues in the house, he’s solid on social issues, and he had a great chance of knocking off Mark Pryor.
In the senate, Cotton will be on the more conservative side of the 50/50 divide line of the Republican senators, likely more conservative than John Boozman.
There is not going to be a big foreign policy argument in the coming decade, regardless of what ISIS does. Everyone is worried about other things.
Disagree...maybe you’re correct for the Obola era, but 2 years from now everything will change in the foreign policy department.
As long as America’s crisis of confidence persists, we should stay far away from foreign intervention. A lot of people will get killed and money wasted for nothing.
The issue outlined in the article is that Cotton may vote to give the executive as much power as possible when it comes to foreign policy, whereas Paul obviously wants it limited.,
Now that is a fair debate in general, but with Obola in the White House, sorry but I am not going to rely on a Muslim to fight Muslims. Obama needs to be limited in every way.
The 2003 invasion may well have been justified. But ever since it has been going steadily south, as we lost all vision and purpose.
War for the sake of war? And mostly being fought on the wrong side? I don’t think so. That’s McManiac’s dream.
I’m not a fan of Rand Paul, but he’s right on that one.
He should get along with McCain and Graham then. Neither one of those have ever seen a situation that couldn’t be improved by sending in troops either.
I find your number 8 to be incoherent.
More akin to lefty rants in free weeklies.
I really have no idea what you are trying to say.
I agree. In fact, I think it’s crap. The article is dripping with all the hacnkeyed phrases “colision course,” “extreme conservatives,” etc., that take the place of actual thinking and analysis. This article is the author’s wet dream of a Repulbican battle royale.
I’ll note that Cotton did not have McCain come to campaign with/for him this time around.
You think we’ve accomplished anything useful since Bush left office? Just about everything Obama has done is to help the wrong side, including the illegal war in Libya.
It’s very doubtful that we are doing anything helpful in Afghanistan any more. The Rules of Engagement are killing our troops, almost entirely to no purpose.
And do you think things are better in Iraq?
I am telling you that I cannot be more proud of my fellow Gen X’ers.....notice all of them are conservative. Incredible.....we have so much work to do to fix the disaster that the Boomer Generation did to this country. Thank You Walker, Cruz, Cotton and on and on.....Life is sure looking mighty bright now after so many dark years. We really should have gone from Reagan to X’ers...we would have been better off.
After watching how Iraq and Afghanistan were handled I’m reluctant to support those kind of efforts ever again. I’d rather we focus on maintaining the capabilities to smash our enemies and keep them from ever attacking us and less focus on fixing the middle east which its clear we will never fix. I think the idea of letting the people in the middle east own their problems and only getting involved when its a matter of things directly hurting our vital interests is a better approach.
Nation building sends the message that socialism is all fine when its to support a war but back home its not. We need to be more consistent. Diplomacy has failed in the Middle East and war has failed. I don’t think we should spend any more blood on lost causes especially given that we have a political reality that refuses to let our military fight wars to win them. The reason we aren’t still fighting Nazis today is because the Soviets went door to door executing them in Berlin. It wasn’t pretty but that dastardly deed accelerated the process as did dropping nukes on Japan. An enemy that does not believe you are fighting to win will never respect you and I’ll not support sending troops led by politically correct politicians who are as likely to see our troops as the enemy as those we fight.
We are up to our necks with foreign policy alligators, Russia, China, Islam, we need someone strong on national defense issues, not a surrender monkey, we can vote democrat for that.
LOL Arkansas? Whoda thunk. The reddest of red states...
It was always conservative in some sense. It’s not as if San Francisco voted for Ted Cruz.
There were 96 years between R votes for president between 1876 and 1972... Now look at Arkansas...
Huh?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.