Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) made the case Friday for a more restrained foreign policy to a largely evangelical audience at the Faith and Freedom Conference in Washington, DC.
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But it was Paul’s view that President Obama wasn’t necessarily to blame for the current turmoil in Iraq that seemed to upset at least one prominent neoconservative. Reports The Huffington Post:
Paul’s remark that President Barack Obama wasn’t to blame for the rise of Sunni militants in Iraq drew even more admonishment from the neoconservative wing of the party, which has begun openly fretting about the possibility that the Kentucky Republican could end up becoming the GOP standard-bearer.
Michael Goldfarb, founder of the unapologetically hawkish Free Beacon, distilled Paul’s message on foreign policy into a simple: “Don’t blame Obama.”
https://twitter.com/thegoldfarb/status/480042380603949056
After tweeting his disdain, he elaborated in an email to The Huffington Post.
“The hawks in the party well know the dangers of supporting Obama policies out of principle — the Afghan surge, NSA surveillance, strikes against Assad, all Obama policies that we supported because they were the right thing to do,” Goldfarb wrote. “In each case we saw the Republican base recoil at the administration’s incompetence and mismanagement. Now Rand, who shares Obama’s view of the limits of American power, is supporting Obama’s policy of doing nothing in Iraq and Syria. Good luck with that!”
How much luck will be needed is questionable. As Goldfarb notes, most hawks supported the Obama administration and opposed most conservative Republicans on intervention in Syria and NSA spying on American citizens.
Strong majorities of Americans opposed intervention in Syria, the NSA metadata collection program and are now overwhelmingly against U.S. military action in Iraq—including most Republicans.
Some neoconservatives are even expressing reservations about military action in Iraq. On Tuesday, Former Bush speechwriter and strong proponent of the Iraq war David Frum advised against intervening militarily.
Goldfarb is not the first hawk to portray Paul’s foreign policy views as something marginal, when in fact most polling data shows the Kentucky senator’s views are relatively mainstream.
In an op-ed on Thursday at The Wall Street Journal, Paul cautioned against hasty military action in Iraq and cited Ronald Reagan’s “Weinberger Doctrine.” Named after its author, Reagan’s Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, this doctrine set a criteria for war that Paul believes the Iraq war did not meet.
Paul implied that if the U.S. had followed a more Reaganesque foreign policy during the Bush administration the war in Iraq might’ve been avoided.
Jonathan S. Tobin at Commentary took Paul to task for what he believed was a misrepresentation of Reagan as did The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin who has been known to devote more time to Paul on her Right Turn blog than any other politician including President Obama.
In March, Paul asked hawkish Republicans to stop misrepresenting Reagan’s foreign policy in an op-ed for Breitbart. Reagan’s son, Michael Reagan tweeted:
Rand Paul Gets it.#Rand Paul.Exclusive–Rand Paul: Stop Warping Reagan's Foreign Policy http://t.co/EsV9LXEWaC via @BreitbartNews
— Michael Reagan (@ReaganWorld) March 11, 2014
Sen. Paul replied:
Thank you! RT-@ReaganWorld:Paul Gets it.#Rand Paul.Exclusive–Stop Warping Reagan's Foreign Policy http://t.co/rfjgWuravq via @BreitbartNews
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 11, 2014
Disclosure: I co-authored Senator Rand Paul’s 2011 book The Tea Party Goes to Washington.