In an interview with CBS, Sen. Rand Paul argued that the GOP’s “bomb everyone tomorrow” policy is hurting it on the East and West coasts:
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said Monday that Republicans can win in New England and on the West Coast if they’re willing to drop a “we need to bomb everybody tomorrow” foreign policy.
“I think one of the problems we face, as a Republican party, is that we’re behind the eight-ball to begin with,” Paul said on CBS’ “This Morning.” “We’re not winning the West Coast. We’re not winning New England. Maybe we need to embrace more Ron Paul Republicans, more libertarian Republicans. … It means people who are little bit less aggressive on foreign policy. They believe in defending the country, but they don’t believe we need to be everywhere all the time.”
If the Obama’s election illustrated anything, it’s that there’s not a major difference between the GOP and Democratic Party when it comes to a general willingness to intervene and a willingness to use force.
The differences are much more apparent when it comes to where, when and how they choose to intervene, and in areas like diplomacy. The Obama administration has ramped up the drone program, gone into Libya, and surged in Afghanistan. And it’s the Obama administration that leaked stories about the “Kill List” and worked with Hollywood on a movie about the Osama bin Laden raid. By Rand Paul’s logic, Obama should be losing New York and California, which he obviously is not.
Of course Americans don’t want the military getting entangled in unnecessary conflicts. But most would probably disagree with what Ron and Rand Paul view as legitimate reasons for national defense. For example, polls show the majority Americans say they would support a preemptive U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear program, if it came to that. People generally understand that sometimes preemptive action needs to be taken to prevent larger conflicts down the road.
Right, because you don't say, "Would you personally pay $1000 to bomb Iran. That's REALLY the question being asked, and I defy you to find a poll that puts the cost anywhere in the question."
The reason the GOP is losing the coasts is because of the "no abortion ever" faction, and, to a lesser extent, nasty anti-immigration rhetoric. n nUntil 2008, I always voted D because of SCOTUS and preserving the right to privacy established by Griswold v CT. n nY'all have no idea how difficult it is to vote GOP when they insist on revisionist history by smearing Margaret Sanger as a 'genocidal eugenicist' in order to delegitimize today's Planned Parenthood. And these 'so-cons' are just as nasty as the Israel-bashing left who now own the Dems.. n nIf the GOP were actually the party of fiscal discipline (deficits DO matter), and somewhat libertarian on 'social issues', they would have a permanent majority. n nToo bad Clint Eastwood is not the nominee. He had a better chance than Mitch Daniels. n n
It's not revisionist history to refer to Margaret Sanger as a eugenicist. It's who she was. It's revisionist to ignore it. It maybe that "no abortion" ever faction has lost the coasts but so what — if that's the case, "the abortion at anytime, for a nny reason" has lost everywhere else.
Much of what you say is true. n nBuffoons like Akin, malignant bullies (even with soprano voices) like Buchanan scare away independents, immigrants, and Jews, and that's before Rand Paul and his creepy band of followers are considered.
Buchanan is a non factor. when you say immigrats, do you mean – soften the tone on illegal Immigrants? Not a chance, they are here illegally and need to be sent home. They have no right to citizenship in this country.
Immigrants who vote – citizens. There are lots of those. n nBuchanan's presence on Fox is offensive to me. Not enough to turn me away from the Republicans. because Fox is not he Republican Party, but enough to stop some people from even considering the Republican party. n nAkin is a major turn off for potetnial crossover voters, as are the Paul people.
Look. Akin combined four things into one and said it so poorly that he sounded really stupid. Once — as opposed to how many times for Biden? Akin apologized as well, as opposed to DWS and the rest. And lets take apart Akin's argument: n n1: Do the lives of innocent bystanders have value? Remember the Russian theater where the Russians pumped in narcotic gas and killed a whole bunch of the hostages as well? nHow about that incident in NYC last month where the police shot not only the perp but a whole bunch of innocent bystanders? Was that acceptable (and you better believe we would be hearing more if it was Guiliani's NYPD and not Bloomberg's.) nA child resulting from a rape is an innocent bystander, killing that child is like shooting down an airliner to kill one person on it — and killing a lot of other innocent people on it as well. It is a tough question…. n n2: If you know any couples who are trying to have a child and encountering difficulty, and Akin might, you may hear of some of the things the woman does after intercourse so as to facilitate/help conception. Think gravity and the flow of liquids downhill versus uphill, and giving them time to do so. Then think about a scared person who will flee the second she can, that is the exact opposite. n n3: Hospital Emergency Rooms may leave a *lot* to be desired in terms of emotional support and psychological sensitivity (in general as well) but they are pretty good at enabling a rape victim to avoid pregnancy. Think removal of DNA evidence, some preserved for trial, rest removed in general, pregnancy no longer possible. n nQED there really aren't a whole lot of pregnancies resulting from rape, and there is one other wild card here, particularly in the more conservative areas of the country: n n4: An unmarried woman who becomes pregnant is viewed as promiscuous and with contempt. A woman who is raped is viewed as a victim and given both sympathy and support. She essentially has to wear Harthone's "Scarlet Letter" and being viewed with contempt, or she can have the entire community telling her they admire her for how well she is doing notwithstanding the circumstances. Emmanuel Kant's concept of truth verses Socrates concept of the "noble lie." Think communities of faith, particularly if that is important to her, particularly if she needs that community's support at this difficult time in her life – and she does have to look out for herself. n nCan anyone really blame her for lying and saying that she had been raped when, in fact, it was casual sex with some schmuck who has now abandoned her? Furthermore, can we not understand how she may be reconsidering, months afterwards, how consensual the sex actually was — at the time there was a guy saying how much he loved her and no pregnancy, and she well may have initiated it — but now with no guy and the pregnancy, she is remembering things a little bit differently. The human mind does such things. n nI've seen this happen — a college coed was recruited into lesbianism by the supervisor of her dormitory and decided that every sexual encounter she had in the past with her frat-boy former boyfriend, over the past 18 months or so, was actually a rape. And filed student code of conduct charges for all of them, which wound up on my desk — and even though four separate female administrators (one of them herself a rape survivor) wanted to toss the whole thing into the trash, politically this was not possible (and it would be a lot worse now with VAWA and the rest). n nI scheduled the first hearing on Halloween. It seemed appropriate, but I digress. n nSocrates "noble lie" — if all abortion is banned except for the case of rape (incest being irrelevant here) — if the woman really *REALLY* wants an abortion and the only way she can get one is to say that she was raped, what do we honestly expect most women to say? She may honestly convince herself she was, but in reality she wasn't. n nWe already see this with domestic violence. A woman who claims it goes to the top of the Section 8 waiting list, and women exploit this loophole. The most interesting part is trying to explain to them that "no, the boyfriend/husband. because of whom we gave you this apartment so you can get away from, can't just live there with you. We have seen it with Hannah GIles and ACORN (the pimp & prostitute gig) and her being told what to say to get what she wanted. n nDo we honestly not expect women to be told "just say you have been raped and then you can have an abortion. You were raped, right?" n nAll of this is what Akin was trying to say in that one badly worded sentence about "real rapes" and the rest. If one looks at what Obama has done to the welfare "work" rule, one can see how a ban on abortion with an exception for rape is truly no ban on abortion at all.
Sorry, Sanger actually said what she did, did what she did. And a lot more did as well. n nThe roots of the Holocaust are American — the ideology started here 10-20 years before the National Socialists picked it up — and when folks saw what the Holocaust actually was, when our soldiers actually went through the various camps (and not mentioned is that the soldiers were so horrified that the summarily shot absolutely every German they could find in retribution), when it became clear where the eugenics movement could go to, most ran away in horror. n nBut the eugenics movement led to the Holocaust, and the eugenics movement started here in the USA with folk like Sanger. This is a fact….
Alana, the difference between Dems and Republicans has more to do with how they talk about using force rather than any substantive difference.,
WHY isn't there "a major difference between the GOP and Democratic Party when it comes … to a willingness to use force" in Afghanistan?" n nHow can genuine conservatives abet the president's self-serving policy in Afghanistan where the US has no vital national interests? Supporting that pointless and failed war only helps give Obama a front of pugnacity behind which he can neglect Iraq and secure the loss of that vital victory! n nIt is unforgivable that even Commentary won't take a principled stand on this issue. n nSupport for that unnecessary fiasco won't earn credentials for the crucial nuclear tooth pulling of Iran. It is spineless to abide the Afghanistan war on that basis.
I just got through watching Rand Paul "EXPLAINING" to Hannity WHY ~we have to cut military spending in order to get welfare spending cuts because the military spending is Constitutional, but the welfare is NOT~ – I swear. EXACTLY what he said. n nThis ain't the first time I've put Rand Paul in my RINO folder.
Rand Paul does not belong in a RINO folder (which is reserved for politicians who are basically democrats). He and the Ron Paul crowd need a folder of their own that is the isolationist/naive/simpleton batch. Toss Pat Buchanan in that one, too.
Rand Paul makes Lindsey Graham look like a SUPER PATRIOT! That is SICK!
Alana Goodman's post is fundamentally askew. n nYou don't evaluate foreign policy by simple metrics on "use of force." The fact that Obama has dramatically expanded the use of drones to assassinate terror leaders, in and of itself, means very little. Neither does the fact that Obama was willing to lend support to France and Britain in Libya. The so-called "surge" in Afghanistan was a cruel joke from the beginning, forced on Obama by his own naive campaign rhetoric of "the good war" in A-stan. n nThe real measure of a foreign policy is its view of America in the world and the definition of American interests in the world. By that measure, there is a vast gulf between Obama and conservatives. Obama simply does not look at the world from an American interest point of view. He really is a post-American president who only acts in furtherance of a global agenda. And even then he is reluctant (as with Syria) to do anything that might offend the Chinese or Russians or the Ummah. He will take the easy shots (like drone strikes) because he always takes the easy lay ups. But he had to be dragged kicking and screaming and covering his rear end ten different ways on the Bin Laden raid. He set impossible conditions with the Afghan troop increase. He has done everything possible to avoid, delay, and defer any red lines with Iran. n nTo say, then, that there is not much difference between Obama and the GOP on use of force etc.. is incorrect.
nMy head hurts after reading this article I am not sure what the point is? The reason we are losing New York and California is some in America believe that we need to have this socialist Utopia – Rand is right the welfare state spending is not constitutional. n nCalifornia and New York are lost causes – there is no hope for them anymore – their states have been destroyed by Democrats and RINOS. The fact remains, if you look how poorly they are run – there are many reasons for it for some reasons blue states are ripe with sanctuary Cities, high taxation to pay for the recipient class – they get what they deserve. n
Ms. Goodman is looking at objective facts and overlooking two other things — how the facts are spun by the media and the difference between how GWB and BHO presented what they were doing. n nAre we still being told of each and every serviceman who dies the way we were when Bush was POTUS? Are we still seeing the bodies flying into Dover AFB and the rest? NO we aren't. n nMore importantly, BHO (like JFK) is ruthlessly doing things on the side while claiming to be a man of peace, while GWB admitted if not bragged about what he was doing. There is a big difference there and it must not be overlooked. n nAnyone care to imagine the outcry if GWB had a "kill list"? Yet it is largely ho-hum when Obama does, when he is sending drones to follow up on it and the rest. n nWe need more people like Ms. Goodman pointing out what Obama is actually doing, but even then, the left may not care because — in the classic line of a Clintonista commenting on the military flyover just after he took office "they are *our* planes now." BHO killing people is good, GWB killing the same people, for the same reason, is bad. Go figure…
All of the middle east countries combined don't add up to 1/10 of the threat posed by the Soviet Union. Defense expenditures during the Reagan administration, adjusted for inflation, amounted to $400 billion dollars a year. It is currently over $700 billion a year (actually quite a bit more as it has been disguised and broken up into different legislation). n nAs to HOW our troops should be used, Conservatives understand that there are no property rights in the Arab world, so you cannot have constitutional government there, and any democracies you set up in that area will be democracies of the worst sort. n nThe fact that people claiming to be Conservatives do not understand this, and are incapable of performing a rational cost/benefit analysis as a result of this means they are not currently in much of a position to claim Rand Paul is "looney."