2016 Republicans Must Have Answers On The NSA And Iraq

[Draggingtree]

The Federalist: 2016 Republicans Must Have Answers On The NSA And Iraq

Want to be president? You'll have to answer questions about Iraq and the NSA.

By Ben Domenech JULY 15, 2014

At the Examiner, Gene Healy writes about why the Rand Paul/Rick Perry initial sparring is good for the foreign policy debate on the right. Whether it’s good or bad in the long run, I do believe it illustrates a number of challenges Republican candidates in 2016 will have to deal with, and the difficulty of assessing where the Republican base is headed at a time when few leaders have run in tandem with its shifting views on national security and foreign policy.

 

It should be clear, however, that Rand Paul has been elevated for three reasons, all of which are concurrent with the trendlines of Republican opinions to varying degrees. He has become the lone prominent voice on the national stage rejecting the nation-building approaches deployed by both parties in the past decade and a half; he has advocated for bringing home troops and withdrawing from or avoiding additional actions in hot spots around the world; and he has spoken to the distrust of government within the realm of security policy domestically.

[Draggingtree]

JUL 15, 2014

The Band Perry-Rand’s Featherweight Foreign Policy Debate

by Greg Weiner

John McCain has pronounced on the Paul-Perry-Paul war of foreign-policy op-eds that are available here, here, and here, so let us review the bidding. To believe there are things that exceed U.S. control is to accede to an “absence of American leadership” to which all global ills are traceable. To believe other things, controllable or not, fall outside of U.S. interests is to advocate “a withdrawal to a fortress America” such as preceded World War I. Say what one will about Senator McCain, he knows how to spice up a Sunday show with stark simplicities.

 

Senator Paul and Governor Perry, meanwhile, are doing dueling riffs on Ronald Reagan, who was first elected President 34 years ago, which would be like Reagan campaigning for the White House by debating the merits of the circa-1946 foreign policy of Harry Truman—an appeal to a towering historical figure, to be sure, but not one likely to resonate with the 18- to 29-year-old voters who make up a fifth of the electorate, the oldest of whom was four years old when Reagan left office, and who as a cohort opted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama over Mitt Romney.

 

http://www.libertylawsite.org/2014/07/15/the-band-perry-rand-and-their-featherweight-foreign-policy-debate/