Posted on 11/16/2016 7:08:06 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Senator Rand Paul reiterated his opposition to both former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and former UN ambassador John Bolton as secretary of state in an interview with the Guardian on Tuesday.
The interview follows an op-ed in Rare, an online conservative publication, where Paul condemned Bolton as “out of touch”.
The Kentucky senator grounded his opposition in the importance that Donald Trump “pick people who agree with his foreign policy”. Trump repeatedly argued on the campaign trail that the Iraq war was a mistake and condemned what he saw as an overly interventionist foreign policy from Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. As Paul phrased it, Trump was “standing up not just to Woodrow Wilson” but also “a whole line of neocons in both parties”, and the senator believed such policies were “a big part” of Trump’s campaign.
Paul, who serves on the Senate foreign relations committee, insisted “there is no way I could vote for someone who is an unrepentant supporter of the Iraq war and regime change. I think that is a disaster for the country. It has made us less safe and so categorically I can’t support anybody that supports regime change.”
He noted in particular that Bolton, who wrote an op-ed in support of bombing Iran in 2015, was one of the biggest cheerleaders for the Iraq war and pointed out that Giuliani agreed with the former UN ambassador on Iran.
Instead, Paul suggested Senate foreign relations committee chair Bob Corker as an alternative. He’s “much more of a realist, not likely to be loading the bombs to go to Iran tomorrow”. In contrast, he suggested that Bolton’s hawkish stance was perhaps because he was trying to “assuage guilt” over “not serving in combat”.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Some advise is better communicated privately.
Let’s have some confidence, Senator Rand, that Donald Trump - who rejected us getting into Iraq - will follow through on his America First foreign policy.
Okay.
Rand’s opponent was Jim Gray, the gay mayor of Lexington who has a male spouse.
Kentuckians were not likely to send Gray and his husband to DC.
Too bad Rand Paul didn’t win the Presidency, because what he thinks doesn’t matter. And he has bad hair.
Haha.
Losers gotta lose.
Much as I hate to admit it but Rand does have a point. Trump’s foreign policy should be his and his alone, and not someone else’s acting under the guise of his administration. Whoever Trump names has to be under no illusions as to who is in charge. Can Bolton and Giuliani do that?
Didn’t know who the KY Democrat was, thanks.
People in TN still like him: they are too uninformed to know the real Corker.
“Rand barely said a word to help to defeat Hillary Criminal. Now he’s a loud mouth. How precious.”
Except that he was one of the first to talk about Benghazi being used as a trans-shipment point of arms to ISIS, and that Hillary should have been fired for that. If folks who were listening were too dense to read between the lines and understand the implications of what he was saying, oh well.
I may be one of the few in this forum who happens to agree with Paul on Bolton and Giuliani. Giuliani is a cross-dressing, anti-gun, pro-homo liberal. Personnel is policy. I do not agree that we need to be pre-emptively nuking Iran and in the process killing millions of innocent people over there. Bolton, as far as I can tell is a hard-core neocon. Personnel is policy. No thanks.
If we can talk to the Russians, why can’t we talk to the Iranians?
“Can Bolton and Giuliani do that?”
That’s a really good question. Eliot Cohen just bailed so there is hope that a Trump administration will be relatively inhospitable to the neocons.
Rand was quiet after the primaries mostly. Then cut and run on Trump when the bullets started to fly. Now he’s self servingly marching at the front of the parade. How brave of him. Sorry, I’m not interested.
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