Larison thinks it unlikely to pay dividends. Millman reframes:
The mystery isn’t why President Obama is running (partly) on foreign policy. The mystery is why Romney is. There is just no percentage in attacking Obama from the hawkish right on foreign policy except with hard core Republican base voters, and the record-free Romney runs more risk of seeming “out of touch” by harping on anything but the economy than the President does in running on his record.
Michael Crowley illustrates the GOP's continued hawkishness:
Plenty of senior Republicans are open to a military strike on Iran and oppose scaling back the war in Afghanistan; many of them are advisers to Mitt Romney. Other leading Republicans call for bold action in response to low probability, high-drama nightmares like an electromagnetic pulse weapon plunging us all into the world of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. And now comes an effort by House Republicans to build a wildly expensive missile defense shield to protect America’s east coast. The plan itself makes little sense: It addresses an extremely speculative threat. Chinese missiles do threaten west coast, not the east, and despite some seemingly exaggerated warnings, Iran probably can’t land a missile beyond Eastern Europe. Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee say the system should be operational by 2015 to protect the U.S. from an Iranian attack.
The Dish 