DIGG THIS

For those paying any attention, the recent Republican presidential candidate debate in New Hampshire was an eye-opener. No, there were no surprise announcements or gaffs from the so-called front-runners. Romney, Giuliani, and McCain came off predictable and scripted in their replies to questions; yawn, yawn. The real fireworks, instead, came from 10-term congressman Ron Paul who showed up to debate, yes actually debate, U.S. foreign policy.

Unlike the other Republican candidates for president, Paul has always opposed the U.S. war in Iraq. He voted against the war resolution in 2002; he opposes the "surge" and would withdraw ALL U.S. troops immediately from the Arabian peninsula. The other candidates giggled as Representative Paul explained his non-interventionist positions to debate moderator Chris Wallace. Given the frequent audience cheers to Paul’s arguments, however, they had best stop giggling and listen up.

The mainstream media has pretty much decided that the "Republican" position on the war is identical to the Bush administration’s position: Iraq is a part of the war on terror and the U.S. military must "win" so that Iraq’s various factions can establish a viable democracy. Now that’s a real cute story, and perhaps all of the Republican big-whigs really believe it; but in my judgment it is emphatically NOT what many rank and file conservative Republicans believe at all. Indeed, my guess is that many rank and file conservatives believe that nation-building is not an appropriate activity for our government and military, that "democracy" there is an impossibility, and that the U.S. occupation in Iraq is a tragic mistake and not worth one more American life.

We need some history here. The Eisenhower/Goldwater/Reagan school of Republican conservatism held that individual liberty was the highest political goal and that the federal government was generally inept at managing the economic and social affairs of society. This is why old fashioned conservatives believed in free enterprise, tax cuts, balanced budgets, and school vouchers, and why they were skeptical about government regulation and interventionism, including and especially foreign military interventionism. Even George W. Bush ran in 2000 on a basically conservative platform but he abandoned the bulk of that platform when the looney neo-conservatives hijacked U.S. foreign policy.

Both Eisenhower and Reagan may have carried a big "stick" but they never fired many shots, never started a foreign war and never attempted to invade and "nation build" an occupied Arab country. Indeed, both were extremely leery of any Middle East military adventure involving U.S. combat troops. When push came to shove in places such as Suez or Beirut, both U.S. Presidents decided (correctly) that a direct long-run military confrontation was ill-advised. After all, protracted wars meant higher taxes, mountains of red-ink federal debt, and a larger "military industrial complex" and these results were impossible to square with basic conservative principles and a minimalist reading of the Constitution.

Ron Paul’s chances of becoming President are thin; nonetheless, his candidacy of ideas is a stark reminder that to be a conservative Republican is not necessarily to be "pro-war." As our heavily mortgaged economy slides into recession and as the quagmire in Iraq continues, Paul’s "peace and freedom" libertarian supporters may well provide the crucial swing vote in the presidential election of 2008.

Reprinted from the Vero Beach Press Journal with permission from the author.

September 19, 2007

The Best of Dom Armentano