Posted on 10/23/2014 7:26:35 PM PDT by Pelham
The neocons are back. That is, at least in Marco Rubio’s world. The Florida senator and potential 2016 presidential candidate has, since his election in 2010, regularly consulted with and sought the advice of top neoconservative writers and policymakers, several of whom served in the administration of George W. Bush.
His loose circle of advisers includes former national-security adviser Stephen Hadley, former deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, Brookings Institution scholar and former Reagan-administration aide Robert Kagan, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, and former Missouri senator Jim Talent.
To this group, beating back the rising tide of non-interventionism in the Republican party is a top priority, and they consider Rubio a candidate, if not the candidate, capable of doing so. “I think it’s very important that any isolationist arguments be defeated well and be defeated early,” says a neoconservative foreign-policy expert who talks with Rubio frequently.
Russia’s incursion into Ukraine, a war in Israel, and the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria have in the course of a few months made the American public, and especially Republican-primary voters, more hawkish. Some argue that these events have dimmed the prospects that Kentucky senator Rand Paul, who has carved out a niche for himself as the leading non-interventionist in the Republican party, could seize the nomination. Unquestionably, the crises have boosted Rubio’s stock.
“We’re in an international crisis of really significant proportions, the likes of which we haven’t seen in decades,” says the Brookings Institution’s Kagan. “We’ve all been very sympathetic to people worried about going crosswise with the Republican base, but I really think we’re past that. From my perspective, I’m only going to be interested in people who are willing to say the hard things.” For Kagan, that includes arguing for an increase in the defense budget and
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
ping
I think, though, that the whole America-taking-a-flaming-sword-in-defense-of-universal-freedom is pretty much a spent force in the face of clear indications on the part of a number of beneficiaries, especially the Iraqis, that freedom isn't all that high on their priority list and is as high as it is only because somebody else is propping it up. That does not argue a particularly interventionist policy.
It would be nice to have a President and Secretary of State who can spell "foreign policy" without having to be spotted the first six letters. Even nicer to have a Secretary of Defense interested in, oh, I don't know, how about defending the country from its enemies? All of this can be accomplished without growing the government; in fact, at least part of the farce that is 0bama's foreign policy is the notion that unlimited power and control - for him - will equate to unlimited success. The disproof of that can no longer be hidden by even the most sycophantic of the media.
Let's not forget in all these breathless aspirations for 2016 that we're going to have to survive the two years between now and then with an administration that couldn't run a Girl Scout bake sale without calling in a SWAT team. Relief is a long way away. We'd better be planning what to do until it arrives.
I hope you’re right that the utopians who think America has an obligation to spread democracy all over the globe are a spent force. But they’ll certainly keep pushing it with Rubio or someone like him.
Do these interventionists propose we permanently occupy every Islamic country we intervene in? Otherwise, how do they intend to deal with Islamists after we leave those countries? Iraq was predictable, and Afghanistan will end up the same way. If we do our nation building in Syria, the same results will occur. As long as we try to save Islam from Islam, we will fail.
As the Ebola show illustrates, Americans love to be terrorized. And that’s the only card in the neocon deck. But it still works! That’s how these girlymen make a living and Rubio is the perfect standard bearer.
Every week there is a new Hitler who is the greatest “existential threat” we’ve ever had! And it fools some of the people all of the time.
Rubio is a perfect ringer for them: an internationalist who is able to babble some conservative-sounding rhetoric when he has to. Kind of like a more suave and slick version of George W. Bush. Maybe Jeb can pick Rubio as his running mate if they won't let him get away with picking George "Viva La Raza" Prescott.
Are they beginning to realize that Jitt Rombush ain’t gonna fly and so now they’re gonna try a younger, more wet behind the ears GOPE?
Don't you love it when they try to tell us (weekly is about right) that a tinpot dictator who can't even hold his decrepit, war-torn nation together is a mortal threat to people in the United States? We're supposed to believe that Bashar Al-Assad is going to invade the US any day now!
The Karl Rove team always has George Prescott!
True. But maybe they’re thinking they need to put a couple elections between America and another bush candidate.
You have it exactly.
The original neoconservatives came out of the cold warrior wing of the Democratic party. Liberal internationalism is what it was called. They joined the Republicans during the Reagan years for its muscular foreign policy. But they also brought along their liberal domestic ideas and have been working to mainstream them in the GOP ever since.
I doubt that they will ever succeed in convincing conservatives but they have had a lot of success with the Republican establishment. Dubya, Romney, Jeb Bush, Rubio, the whole open borders/ amnesty crowd.
They’re always recruiting. If you listen to Medved and Hewitt you can get a pretty clear idea of who the GOPe is grooming.
I don’t listen to those guys. But I can imagine the push push push for whomever the GOPE ....is pushing.
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