It’s the $64,000 question of the next GOP primary cycle. First up: let’s note a fascinating new development. Republican views of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have shifted quite dramatically. In the latest Pew poll (pdf), only 36 percent of Republicans now believe that the US achieved its goals in Iraq – basically the same as Democrats and Independents. Only 39 percent believe we succeeded in Afghanistan. So hefty majorities of Republicans now believe that both wars were failures. They haven’t yet fully absorbed the cost of those failures. But surely the fiscal blow will have some traction with Tea Partiers.
Larison, ever hopeful, believes that Rand Paul’s “greatest advantage over other Republican politicians is that he has reliably been an early and vocal opponent of unnecessary wars”:
Unlike every other Republican in elected office today, Paul was on record as an opponent of the Iraq war from the beginning. Today even most Republicans acknowledge that the war was a failure, and there is clearly no appetite for anything like that again. While other Republicans were berating Obama for intervening in Libya too slowly, Paul was opposed to the war, and he was likewise an early critic of attacking Syria and arming the opposition. This has put him on the right side of public opinion and distinguished him from the Obama administration on a few high-profile issues.
But Colin Dueck sees Paul’s foreign policy views as a liability:
A whopping 73 percent of Republicans believe Iran is “not serious” about addressing concerns about its nuclear weapons program. Some 80 percent of Republicans believe the United States is “less respected” than it was a decade ago. (It is unlikely that those Republicans view this as a good thing.) The highest foreign policy priority listed for Republicans was “protecting U.S. from terrorism.” Moreover, the December Pew poll found that 51 percent of all Americans view Obama as “not tough enough” on foreign policy and national security, 37 percent view him as “about right,” and only five percent view him as “too tough.” It is more than likely that the proportion of Republicans, specifically, who view Obama as “not tough enough” is well above 51 percent.
These findings are consistent with similar foreign policy polls by Pew, Gallup, and numerous other organizations. Over 70 percent of Republicans support drone strikes against suspected terrorists (Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2013); favor airstrikes against Iran rather than allowing that country to develop nuclear weapons (Haaretz, March 19, 2013); believe that U.S. military spending today is either about right or too low (Gallup, February 21, 2013); and think the “best way to ensure peace is through military strength” (Pew Center, June 4, 2012).
Last week, Paul is announced that he is against the Iran sanctions bill. Allahpundit wonders whether this will come back to haunt him:
It’s bound to figure in the debates next year, maybe prominently. If negotiations break down, it’s a cinch that the field’s more hawkish candidates will use his wait-and-see approach to bludgeon him for his dovish naivete. Paul will have defenses to that — he voted for Iran sanctions in the past, and he says here that he’d prefer to keep existing sanctions in effect until there’s proof that Iran’s complying with the Geneva terms (although Iran never would have agreed to that) — but no one knows if they’ll work. The whole thrust of his opponents’ criticism on foreign policy will be that he’s too much like his father to be trusted to defend the country robustly. They’re looking around for data points to support that thesis; if negotiations collapse, this’ll be seized eagerly.
(Photo: Alex Wong/Getty)
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