Rand Paul and Ron Paul are the leaders of the real Tea Party. It’s about the Constitution and following what it says. Get our troops out of other countries. Protect our own borders. Close departments and agencies that have no business operating and do more harm than good. Downsize government to the point where existing levels of revenue can pay for it. Do away with all subsidies and tax breaks for corporations, special interests and individuals.
The real solutions involve pain and sacrifice. The crap spewed by neo-cons and libertards is nothing but lies and misinformation. They have no intentions of cutting anything. The Pauls are the only honest politicians in America.
On domestic policy, the Republican candidates in last week’s primary debate seemed to speak with one voice: Cut taxes, cut spending, repeal Obamacare, declare victory.
On foreign policy, though, they sounded a more uncertain trumpet. There were flashes of the old post-9/11 confidence — as in Tim Pawlenty’s declaration that post-Saddam Iraq represents a “shining example” to the Middle East. But there was also pessimism about Afghanistan, skepticism about the Libyan intervention, and a general sense that the United States is bearing too many burdens overseas, and paying too high a price.
For the first time in a decade, it seems, the Republican Party doesn’t know where it stands on foreign policy. Instead of being united around George W. Bush’s vision of democratic revolution, conservatives are increasingly divided over what lessons to draw from America’s post-9/11 interventions.
But while this division shows up in the current presidential field, it’s distilled to its essence in two high-profile Republicans who aren’t running (not in 2012, at least): Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky.
As The American Spectator’s Jim Antle pointed out last month, Rubio and Paul have followed similar paths to prominence. Both were discouraged from running for the Senate by party leaders. Both rode Tea Party support to unexpected primary victories. In Washington, both have defined themselves as stringent government-cutters.
But on foreign policy, the similarities disappear. Rubio is the great neoconservative hope, the champion of a foreign policy that boldly goes abroad in search of monsters to destroy. In the Senate, he’s constantly pressed for a more hawkish line against the Mideast’s bad actors. His maiden Senate speech was a paean to national greatness, whose peroration invoked John F. Kennedy and insisted that America remain the “watchman on the wall of world freedom.”
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But while this division shows up in the current presidential field, it’s distilled to its essence in two high-profile Republicans who aren’t running (not in 2012, at least): Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky.
As The American Spectator’s Jim Antle pointed out last month, Rubio and Paul have followed similar paths to prominence. Both were discouraged from running for the Senate by party leaders. Both rode Tea Party support to unexpected primary victories. In Washington, both have defined themselves as stringent government-cutters.
But on foreign policy, the similarities disappear. Rubio is the great neoconservative hope, the champion of a foreign policy that boldly goes abroad in search of monsters to destroy. In the Senate, he’s constantly pressed for a more hawkish line against the Mideast’s bad actors. His maiden Senate speech was a paean to national greatness, whose peroration invoked John F. Kennedy and insisted that America remain the “watchman on the wall of world freedom.”
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