They’re nearing a critical mass of impatience with what some call 'Rand-ism.' GOP hawks: This won't stand, Rand

The Republican Party’s hawks are finally saying it out in the open: This aggression will not stand, Rand.

After three years of watching the GOP’s non-interventionist wing gather strength, there are mounting signs that a more combative set of national security conservatives have reached their breaking point. Now, prominent conservative leaders in what used to be considered the Bush-Cheney mold are increasingly taking the offensive against their intra-party rivals.


New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie publicly challenged libertarian Republicans Thursday to explain their skepticism about government surveillance to the families of 9/11 victims, declaring at a Republican Governors Association event: “I want them to come to New Jersey and sit across from the widows and the orphans and have that conversation.”

( PHOTOS: Rand Paul’s career)

New York Rep. Peter King said this week that he will explore a 2016 presidential run to wrest control of the defense debate from small-government advocates such as Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas, and warned that an America-first candidate would stand little chance of defeating Hillary Clinton.

Perhaps the most dramatic provocation to Paul-aligned conservatives came earlier this month, when Republican national security activist Liz Cheney – the former vice president’s daughter – announced a primary challenge to Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi, a low-key incumbent backed by Paul and a number of other Senate colleagues.

( PHOTOS: 2016: Who’s next?)

Republican hawks say these developments amount to something less than a coordinated counteroffensive. But no one disputes that they’re nearing a critical mass of impatience with what some call “Rand-ism” – resistance to foreign entanglements and deep, confrontational skepticism about the expansion of the federal defense apparatus, particularly in the areas of surveillance and drone warfare.

“I want a strong national defense and I don’t want Rand Paul to be the face of the Republican Party,” King said in an interview. “I’ve felt this way for a while [and] once it gets out there, people say, ‘God, this is wrong, we’re killing ourselves. This is not the Republican Party.’”

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who was a vocal and at times caustic critic of Rand Paul’s father, former Texas Rep. Ron Paul, during the 2012 primaries, called it a welcome development that “people are starting to push back.”

“There was a lot of talk, particularly during the Republican primary last year, of, ‘Well, we don’t want to alienate these voters,” Santorum said, recalling that he’d been criticized as “too bellicose” and “too warlike. “I can tell you, the Paulistas who were active on the state level in 2012 were not interested in the Republican Party as it now exists. They are interested in a very different kind of model.”

( PHOTOS: Highlights from Rand Paul’s filibuster)

King acknowledged that public opinion has turned against some Bush-era security policies, such as the ongoing war in Afghanistan. But he suggested that it doesn’t take much to jolt voters from their sense of complacency.

“I see every time there’s a terror attack, or even a thwarted terror attack, people’s views change dramatically,” the Long Island lawmaker said, conceding: “They want out after 12 years in Afghanistan, and really after President Obama not explaining for the last five years why we’re there.”

For the emboldened phalanx of defense-minded conservatives, it remains to be seen how difficult a task they’ll have in turning the tide of the GOP’s national security conversation. Republican hawks say they are firmly confident that the party is, in its heart, more sympathetic to the George W. Bush agenda of expanding freedom and fighting terrorism, than to the Rand-style focus on limiting the government’s security powers that many congressional Republicans have recently embraced.

That’s certainly true of most national Republican elites. In some Republican donor and operative circles, there’s active talk of whether the GOP’s strong-on-defense wing may need new infrastructure and organizations to promote their priorities during primary season in 2014 and beyond.

Among those groups, optimistic Republicans argue that the GOP base cheers for tirades against drones and the NSA out of hostility toward the Obama administration, rather than the actual substance of those issues. They point out that the GOP-held House defeated an amendment this week offered by libertarian Rep. Justin Amash, which would have sharply curtailed the NSA’s domestic spying powers (though about two in five Republicans supported the measure.)

Amid the continuing Edward Snowden saga, there have been few Republican voices sympathetic to the NSA leaker outside the Paul family.

“I’m honestly not too worried,” said Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, the influential foreign policy conservative. “I’m confident the Reagan Republicans will prevail over the Snowden Republicans.”

Alluding to hawkish Arkansas Rep. Tom Cotton, an Iraq war vet and potential 2014 Senate candidate, Kristol quipped: “I think Christie-Cotton is much more likely in 2016 than Paul-Amash.”

Still, there are also more than a few daunting data points for the anti-Paul coalition within the GOP – signs in public opinion research that the country has moved substantially from the Bush-era national security consensus.

A Washington Post poll this week showed 67 percent of Americans believe the war in Afghanistan is not worth fighting, including a bare majority of Republicans. An extensive Pew survey published Friday found a mixed public attitude on surveillance: half of Americans said they approve of the government’s information-collecting, but 56 percent said courts weren’t providing adequate oversight and a 47-percent plurality said the government had done too much to limit civil liberties. And public polls consistently show public hesitation about possible U.S. intervention in Syria, where the United Nations reports 100,000 have been killed in a civil war as dictator Bashar al-Assad clings to power.

Paul, for all the flak he’s taking inside the party, has ridden this shift in public opinion to national prominence, mounting a 13-hour filibuster against the (hypothetical) domestic use of drones against U.S. citizens. Just last week, he delivered a speech at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention in Louisville, denouncing foreign aid programs that support Egypt and Pakistan, and arguing against arming rebels in Syria.

“America has never backed down from a fight, but we should never be a nation that is eager to get involved in civil wars that don’t affect our national security,” Paul said, according to his prepared remarks. “America’s mission should always be to keep the peace, not police the world.”

Paul’s gang shows no signs of backing down in the face of renewed criticism from inside the GOP. The Kentuckian was attacked for having “strange ideas” on national security during his 2010 Senate primary, and ended up crushing an opponent endorsed by Dick Cheney. The senator and his advisers are well aware of the response he gets outside of Washington to his come-home-America pitch on national security.

In their view, all the elite dismay at Paul’s views on everything from foreign aid to government surveillance, only underscores the potency of his small-government populism.

But Paul and his allies are also acutely aware that the heat on the senator has increased. Earlier this month, Paul’s world reacted with fury to a report in the Washington Free Beacon – a website founded by multiple Weekly Standard alums – detailing the writings of one Paul adviser, Jack Hunter, who authored provocative, neo-confederate columns under the label “The Southern Avenger.”

Despite initially standing by Hunter, Paul accepted his resignation earlier this week.

In general, Paul’s advisers have taken a bring-it-on approach to the stepped-up confrontation. When Liz Cheney announced for Senate, Paul issued a statement suggesting that she’d be better off seeking office in “her home state of Virginia.”

And after Christie’s shock-and-awe remarks this week, senior Paul adviser Doug Stafford suggested the New Jersey governor “needs to talk to more Americans, because a great number of them are concerned about the dramatic overreach of our government in recent years.” Paul himself fired back at Christie on Twitter, writing: “Christie worries about the dangers of freedom. I worry about the danger of losing that freedom. Spying without warrants is unconstitutional.”

“We are winning. They are lashing out,” one Paul adviser said in an email, of the national security debate.

In the big picture, it’s still unclear which side of the party is better positioned to win over the next generation of conservatives. Both the libertarian-leaning and the neoconservative-leaning sides have their favored up-and-comers. For the hawks, that group includes Cotton and, for many, Cheney, as well as Sens. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Marco Rubio of Florida.

On the other side, Rand Paul is clearly at the head of the pack, joined on some issues by Cruz and Utah Sen. Mike Lee. His set of supporters varies from issue to issue – on drones, it included much of the Senate GOP conference. On other subjects, such as domestic spying, there are fewer prominent spokespeople, with the largely-untested Amash leading the charge in the House.

Republican strategist Brad Todd, who has sharply criticized the libertarian wing of his party, said the party is still in the process of seeing “younger conservatives who don’t buy into the darkest and weakest corners of libertarianism stand up.”

“These are people whose ideology was shaped by Reaganite exceptionalism and whose adult lives have been colored by the constant threat of jihadists,” Todd said, arguing for the long-term health of the hawkish-leaning GOP.

Another Republican hawk expressed strong unease with the prominence of the Paul coalition, but questioned how far it could really go at the ballot box.

“I don’t think they can win, and even if they did win, what would happen?” the Republican wondered. “The GOP would lose in a Goldwater-style blowout and that would be the end of that.”