by Maisie Allison
Earlier this week, George Will panned the GOP's insane rhetoric on defense. Jacob Heilbrunn seconds him:
The real problem with the GOP approach is that it maintains the illusion of omnipotence. It leaves behind great-power status for the "I am the greatest" approach. The GOP worships unilateralism. This has less in common with Reagan than George W. Bush. Now war with Iran—and Syria?—is preoccupying the minds of the neocons. But knocking out Iranian nuclear facilities, as the estimable Walter Pincus reminds us today, is no simple task. In pushing for a strike, or even regime change, the GOP, to borrow from Talleyrand, has "learned nothing and forgotten nothing." The point, to put it another way, is that the policy of bombast but not bluff—which is to say that America really has invaded several countries in the past decade at great cost—has largely failed.
Jazz Shaws recognizes that Republicans should probably tone it down, if only because Obama's foreign policy record is extremely popular:
Polls have consistently shown that a staggering 75% of Americans supported Obama’s decision to finish pulling out of Iraq on George W. Bush’s original schedule, and those numbers have not shifted noticeably even with the outbreak of secular violence there after our departure. As recently as last month, 78% said they support the President’s plans to step up our rate of departure from Afghanistan. And Obama still gets high marks for taking out bin Laden and other high profile terrorist leaders. The whole point here is to remember that it is very dangerous to get too far out in front of attacking Barack Obama’s position when he’s playing a winning hand.
The Dish 