But at this point that remark will do McCain more harm than it will the targets of his wrath. It will be seen as yet another indication that McCain and others who agree with him just don’t understand why Paul’s filibuster struck a nerve with so many in his party’s grass roots and inspired the admiration of many on the other side of the aisle as well. The word “wacko” signifies a lack of seriousness and the idea that those who fit the description are out of the political mainstream. The problem is that McCain, Graham and others who oppose Paul’s foreign policy views don’t seem to grasp that what is happening now is not merely excrescence of a marginal movement but the beginning of a serious policy debate about what Republicans believe about foreign policy. And the sooner he, and others who don’t want the GOP to drift away from being the party that stands for a strong America on the international stage, stop dismissing their opponents and start engaging them on the issues the better off they and the country will be.
I think Tobin's exactly right that Republicans who don't necessarily agree with everything Paul stands for in the foreign policy realm will undoubtedbly be drawn more to his arguments simply because they want to do the opposite of whatever Sens. McCain and Graham stand for. (Although I harbor doubts about what a Paul foreign policy would look like, much of the McCain/Graham foreign policy has been bad to mediocre at best.) This is unfortunate because, as Tobin points out, Paul's real aim is to fundamentally change the trajectory of modern Republican foreign policy.
But the notion that all this fuss was about the Constitution and the right of due process is a cover for Paul’s basic disagreement with the GOP’s long consensus about foreign and defense policy. Paul spent much of Wednesday speculating about the possibility that an unprincipled future American president could use a drone to kill his political opponents or to punish dissidents of the Jane Fonda variety. That fired the imagination of paranoids on both the right and the left who are always ready to believe Big Brother is about to haul them off to jail. But the cheers Paul received went beyond that limited set to those who are uncomfortable with more than just the theoretical possibility of a drone attack on an America in the United States. It’s important to understand that Paul’s issue is not so much with drones as it is with a policy of what he calls “perpetual war” against Islamist terrorism and the entire concept of a strong U.S. policy to protect our influence, allies and trade in the Middle East.
Tobin cites a speech Paul gave at the Heritage Foundation a couple weeks ago as the key to understanding what the filibuster was really all about. In the speech, Paul said the following on what U.S. foreign policy towards Iran should look like:
No one, myself included, wants to see a nuclear Iran. Iran does need to know that all options are on the table. But we should not pre-emptively announce that diplomacy or containment will never be an option.
Much of the speech is dedicated to ascertaining the true meaning of George F. Kennan's policy of containment, which Paul says something approximating that policy should form foundation of the U.S.'s policy in combatting Islamic radicalism world-wide.
Though Rand Paul is different in many respects than his father, Ron Paul, the former Paul is still, in important ways, trying to orient U.S. foreign policy towards something that would most likely meet his father's approval. How the son differs from his father is in the virtue of prudence, something Ron Paul has probably never heard of before. No doubt, Sen Paul's filibuster is the very public beginning to putting together the principles that will guide Republican foreign policy in the future. This is most definitely a debate worth having.
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