Sen. Lee: Ads criticizing Rand Paul's foreign policy are 'unfair'

Sen. Mike Lee denounced attack ads targeting Rand Paul for his foreign policy positions on Friday as “unfortunate and unfair” — but stayed coy about whether he will ever endorse one of his Senate colleagues running for president.

The Utah Republican, whose new book launched the same day as Paul’s campaign, strongly criticized the Foundation for a Secure and Prosperous American for springing an ad campaign on Sen. Paul (R-Ky.) that portrayed him as “standing with” President Barack Obama’s nuclear negotiations with Iran. Those ads began airing the same day that Paul officially stepped into the presidential race.


“It was really unfortunate and unfair that he was hit by these people who are saying Rand Paul is to the left of Barack Obama on questions of foreign policy,” Lee said at a Christian Science Monitor Breakfast on Friday morning. “It just didn’t strike me as a fair argument.”

Still, Lee acknowledged that Paul’s noninterventionist positions on foreign policy and the more libertarian positions of his father, former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), present the Kentucky GOP senator with a steep challenge in his pursuit of the White House.

“Ron Paul had some fairly unique idiosyncratic foreign policy views,” Lee said. “There are some that automatically assume Rand shares those views, even when he does not express them, even when he’s expressed sentiments that depart markedly from his father.”

Despite his defense of Paul, Lee said he had no plans to endorse him or Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) for president. Lee said he will remain neutral for the foreseeable future while offering effusive praise for each of them and said he would push back against those that attack the three first-term senators as unprepared for the rigors of the presidency when compared to former and current governors.

“I hope to be as supportive as I can of all three of them, because I really genuinely like all three of them. For that reason I’m not inclined to endorse any one of them. Because, I can’t endorse one of them without sort of un-endorsing one of the others,” Lee said.

The Utah Republican, who’s built a profile in the Senate of being an unyielding constitutional conservative that rarely banters with Capitol Hill reporters, held court with the media on Friday morning on the prospects of his Senate colleagues for a major chunk of the hour-long event. He handicapped their strengths and weaknesses, surmising that in many cases what makes the senators stand out is precisely what they will be attacked for.

Lee was closely associated with Cruz’s push to cut funding for Obamacare, but Lee noted that the inflexible conservative positions that make Cruz appealing to some GOP voters could limit his growth beyond the right-flank of the party.

On the other hand, Paul’s deviation from hawkish GOP orthodoxy stand out in the crowd but could become a liability the more he’s associated with his father’s quixotic brand of politics.

Rubio, a co-author of the Senate’s 2013 immigration bill that Lee denounced on the Senate floor repeatedly, is “one of the best natural athletes in political terms” that Republicans have, Lee said. He dismissed their contrasting positions on immigration as largely in the past and instead praised Rubio for working with Lee on a tax policy portfolio that breaks from the Republican position of broad-based tax cuts.

And Lee divulged that he and Rubio have their own inside joke on the Senate floor.

“Rubio and I speak Spanish on the floor together frequently,” Lee said, “mostly to freak out our colleagues.”