Michael Brendan Dougherty is depressed by the hawkish Republican candidates on the ballot:
The election may have real consequences for foreign policy, as the deadline for negotiations on an Iranian nuclear deal comes in just a few weeks. These throwback Republicans do not agree with a more libertarian or non-interventionist re-think of the GOP after the Bush presidency. If anything, they are likely to see the drawdown in Iraq after the surge as part of the ongoing problems in the region. They will pick fights with Obama over Israel now that the administration has made its displeasure with the government of the Jewish state so obvious and public. In many ways, this revival of GOP hawkishness is an attempt to re-run the 2004 campaign against John Kerry: They portray their opponents as weak on defense, and not fully committed to the national interest abroad.
If you believed, as I once did, that the Iraq War and the last years of the Bush presidency would change the GOP for decades to come, a Joni Ernst victory will highlight just how naive it was to think so.
The Dish 