There’s been plenty of talk both here and elsewhere about longshot hawks entering the Republican primaries just so they can debate Rand Paul on foreign policy.
John Bolton and Peter King are pretty open that’s a major motivator for their presidential machinations. Lindsey Graham denies it, but I don’t believe him.
Would the three amigos have any real effect? Ron Paul entered the 2008 Republican primaries largely for the opportunity to debate foreign policy and something much bigger ended up happening.
I don’t expect King, Graham or Bolton to be able to do anything similar, but stranger things have happened.
The big risk is that they can all gang up on Rand during debates, as sometimes happened to his father during his first GOP presidential run. The second time around, Ron got the occasional assist from Jon Huntsman or Gary Johnson in the real early debates.
This may be especially important if, say, Jeb Bush views attacking Rand Paul as punching down. He can have a more articulate hawk like John Bolton do his dirty work for him, driving up Paul’s negatives.
But there is no guarantee something like this will work. Consider the experience of Rudy Giuliani.
Giuliani led national polls of Republican primary voters for much of 2007. He had far greater standing than Graham, King or Bolton due to his status as “America’s Mayor” following the 9/11 terrorist attacks and his tough reputation for cleaning up crime in New York City.
Hawkish foreign-policy arguments were more popular, almost universal, within the Republican Party at the time. Ron Paul was little-known. When the two of them clashed about foreign policy and blowback at a 2007 GOP presidential debate, the crowd in the room overwhelmingly took Giuliani’s side. So did most commentators and Republican activists outside the room.
Giuliani appeared to have won the exchange and perhaps cemented his frontrunner status. Ron Paul appeared to have made a major blunder.
Yet who wound up getting more votes in the 2008 primaries? And who sparked a movement that is continuing to have influence today? Hint: the answer isn’t Giuliani.
Giuliani wasn’t some gadfly. He was thought to have a real shot at winning the nomination. John McCain, whose foreign-policy views were similarly hawkish, did win the nomination.
It’s just as easy to envision some hawkish asterisk candidate stealing thunder and drawing votes from a more viable hawk, like Chris Christie or Marco Rubio.
It’s also possible Rand Paul can be a top-tier candidate while the single-issue hawks remain stuck at 1 percent or worse.
Either way, it looks like Republicans will have a more robust foreign-policy debate than CPAC.