Posted on 06/28/2014 3:19:35 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
It’s not exactly the Ali-Frazier “Thrilla in Manilla,” but the ongoing Rand Paul-Dick Cheney pugilism certainly packs a punch.
The libertarian ophthalmologist and the warlord emeritus have been pounding each other for months, and while it’s tempting to just kick back with popcorn and behold the entertainment, we do need to acknowledge the bout’s deeper meaning. Because this is really about something quite serious.
Republicans are profoundly split these days over foreign policy: between the non-interventionists who are increasingly wary of American military involvement abroad; and the neoconservative hawks who blundered us into Iraq and want us to keep flexing military muscle. Senator Paul is a leader of the non-interventionsts, a GOP faction that used to be tiny, but not anymore. The Iraq disaster has swelled their ranks, and Paul hopes to speak for them in the 2016 presidential primaries.
Cheney is freaked out about that; hence his creation of a new group, Alliance for a Stronger America, which is geared to rebut Paul at every turn. Cheney clearly hopes to influence the GOP’s foreign policy debate; his new group is set up to raise money from anonymous donors and steer the bucks to like-minded candidates.
Paul delivered the latest flurry of punches. Last Thursday, in his own Wall Street Journal column, he was clearly talking about Cheney: “Many of those clamoring for military action now (in Iraq) are the same people who made every false assumption imaginable about the cost, challenge and purpose of the Iraq war. They have been wrong for so long, why should we listen to them again?” Paul followed his column up with a weekend appearance on Meet the Press, where he questioned the credibility “of those who supported the Iraq war.” Cheney quickly retaliated on ABC’s This Week, labeling Paul as an “isolationist” and saying his views “didn’t work in the 1930s, it sure as heck won’t work in the aftermath of 9/11.”
It’s hard to say who started this spat, but Paul arguably did so in 2009, when he was caught on video suggesting that Cheney dragged us into Iraq to profit his old cronies at Halliburton. In the video, which surfaced this spring, Paul tells an audience of college students: “We need to be fearful of companies that get so big that they can actually be directing policy….Dick Cheney (during the ’90s) goes to work for Halliburton, makes hundreds of millions of dollars as their CEO. The next thing you know, he’s back in government, and it’s a good thing to go into Iraq.”
That was quite an insinuation, to say that Cheney ginned up a war to make money for his pals. When asked about the video this spring, Paul retreated a tad: “I’m not questioning Dick Cheney’s motives,” but nevertheless said: “When people go from high levels of government (Pentagon chief for Bush the elder) to high levels of industry that are dependent on government money, there’s a chance for a conflict of interest.”
Wow. You rarely hear that kind of talk in GOP circles, and Team Cheney didn’t like it. Cheney dispatched his daughter Liz (the daughter who bombed out in the Wyoming Senate race) to assert: “Senator Paul often seems to get his foreign policy talking points from Rachel Maddow.” Dad defended himself on CNN: “I had no relationship at all with the company throughout the time that I was vice president. I didn’t even talk to them…. So (Paul) is obviously not familiar with the facts.”
Dick Cheney, of all people, claiming that someone else is fact-challenged. Insert joke here.
Who should we root for in this ongoing Republican intramural? Probably Paul (grading on a curve), if only because of Cheney’s serial lies and performance failures. What’s unknowable is whether Paul can actually win the GOP nomination as a non-interventionist. Paul is currently first (just barely) in the latest Real Clear Politics aggregation of polls of a crowded field of potential 2016 candidates, but the truth is, most GOP primary voters traditionally favor a muscular foreign policy.
It’d be nice if the party found a middle ground (is there no such thing as prudent, fact-based interventionism?), but that won’t happen any time soon. As Paul warned the Cheney camp back in April, “sharpen your knives, because the battle once begun will not end easily.”
Randy should just make it official and become a Democrat.
One small matter:
Mr. Cheney we need to do something about American jobs and American manufacturing. America needs jobs, and America needs to bring back manufacturing.
America runs a massive trade deficit at the moment.
Both the GOP and the Democrats, are sitting on the sideline on this issue.
Just saying.
Proof that moderates as well as liberals still take LSD.
They’re both pro-gay marriage, too, from what I can tell.
Rand Paul was great - until recently. Now I'm beginning to wonder if he inherited insanity from his old man.
Important as foreign policy is, the country is in such a mess right now it hardly matters.
The first order of business would be to impeach and remove the criminal, Communist, Muslim dictator in the White House. Then we can start worrying about the mess he has made in Iraq and elsewhere around the world.
Rand is a folking idiot
‘Im convinced he tried to hide his fathers insanity but the mask has slipped and he is just as nutty as his father.
Unfortunately, it sure looks that way.
this article is written by a hack.
go order some Chinese take out and get over yourself.
Meh. Bunch of lightweight irrelevants. I only care about relevant heavyweights.
This really is a crucial contest. It’s empire verses republic. What have Cheney’s wars gained us except a pile of dead Americans and even more people who hate us? We can’t re-engineer the world, as much as Cheney would like to, but we can thrive and prosper if we close our borders and re-focus on what made this country great.
Cheney is no conservative, he wants government to be as big as possible. Cheney is precisely what is wrong with the current batch of Republicans, and why real conservatives are frustrated.
Agreed.
I sit somewhere between the two, politically. I have been fans of both and have been pissed off by both.
Cheney is not my fave by any means, but your left wing diatribe does not reflect well on you.
You've gotta hand it to him, he's an indefatigable Johnny-One-Note who somehow manages to always make it to post #2, 3, or 4 on just about every thread, with the same "bring back jobs to America" post.
Obama has put America in global retreat, he has created a true international force in terrorism which now has the money and arms and territory of a nation as they drive us out of the Middle East, and Obama has rebooted the Cold War with Russia and China with both on the move to conquer and invade, while not only reducing our military, but at the same time making “equality” the dominate goal of it’s focus.
America is afraid of the death and destruction that will be coming from his policies, and Rand Paul promises to continue Obama’s weakness if he becomes president in 2016.
Paul is promising hell on earth and global conflict and terrorism in our malls and schools.
Why?
There's no functional difference between Republican and Democrat.
(Republicans have no desire to stop statism, and in fact do what they can to continue it.)
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