Paul rejects the “isolationist” label, but he has long been wary of foreign intervention. The Rand Paul pile-on

If you had any doubts about how seriously some Republicans are taking the notion of a Rand Paul presidency, look at how far they’re going to shut down his views on foreign policy.

In the past three days alone, Texas Gov. Rick Perry used a Washington Post op-ed to warn about the dangers of “isolationism” and describe Paul as “curiously blind” to growing threats in Iraq. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) accused the Kentucky senator on CNN of wanting a “withdrawal to fortress America.” And former Vice President Dick Cheney declared at a POLITICO Playbook luncheon on Monday that “isolationism is crazy,” while his daughter, Liz Cheney, said Paul “leaves something to be desired, in terms of national security policy.”


The preemptive strikes suggest that many in GOP fear Paul is winning the foreign policy argument with the American people — and that that could make him a formidable candidate in 2016. After all, second-tier presidential hopefuls don’t usually get shouted down this way.

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“I think the general fear on the part of a lot of leaders in the Republican Party is that there’s an isolationist temptation after two big wars, an isolationist temptation in the American electorate,” said Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who was a deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration. “And I think people are genuinely concerned about it and desirous of trying to stop it before it spreads further.”

Paul rejects the “isolationist” label, but he has long been wary of foreign intervention and also has spoken out against foreign aid programs. In particular, he’s cautioned against getting too involved in the latest crisis in Iraq, where Islamist militants have captured significant territory.

But those in the more hawkish wing of the Republican Party say the U.S. cannot close its eyes to flashpoints in the world, especially if certain regions become havens for terrorists planning to attack Americans. Paul’s views ignore the importance of American leadership, they argue, and that’s why he’s coming under siege.

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“Maybe [the Republican critics] are starting to realize that he could emerge as a leader of the party, and he’d be dangerous for the country,” said New York Rep. Peter King, one of the GOP’s most vocal foreign policy hawks. If Paul’s “views go unchallenged, it’s possible that people will become convinced they’re valid foreign policy views, and they’re not.”

Paul is making it clear that the hawks mess with him at their own risk.

In a blistering response to Perry in POLITICO Magazine on Monday, Paul wrote that the governor’s new glasses apparently “haven’t altered his perception of the world, or allowed him to see it any more clearly.” And he argued that Perry’s solutions to the Iraq crisis aren’t really that different than his or even President Barack Obama’s — except that Perry is willing to send troops back into Iraq and Paul isn’t.

Paul’s advisers say his skepticism of military action is more widespread within the Republican Party than the foreign policy hawks wish to believe.

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“It’s not isolationism. It’s setting a high bar for sending our sons and daughters overseas,” said Lorne Craner, a foreign policy adviser to Paul who served in the State Department under both Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

The hawks don’t doubt that there are some Republicans who share Paul’s views. But they’re concerned that, in the heat of a presidential campaign, the coverage will make the foreign policy debate within the GOP sound more evenly divided than it really is.

“I think there is a fear that you’re going to see a million stories saying the Republican Party is divided between two views — the Rand Paul view and the other view — as if it were a 50-50 thing, rather than Paul being isolated on the fringe,” Abrams said.

Others worry that Republican voters who aren’t big on foreign policy have long been presumed to support hawks, but now may be increasingly siding with Paul.

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“There is clearly is a Republican foreign policy consensus, and those who care most deeply about maintaining American leadership in the world are worried that silence means disagreement — not agreement — anymore,” added Mackenzie Eaglen, a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “It used to be that you could assume there was a silent majority behind that world view, and that is no longer the case.”

“I don’t think we can change Sen. Paul’s mind, but there is still a much larger debate that hasn’t been won or lost either way yet, with ‘mainstream Republicans,’” she said.

Paul’s cautious stance on foreign intervention is just the latest example of the many divides within the GOP, which already has infighting among tea party, establishment and other factions on everything from immigration to the Export-Import Bank.

But, as chaos increasingly spreads in the Middle East (the Israeli-Palestinian flare-up being the latest crisis), Republicans also sense a growing opportunity to take on Democrats in the foreign policy realm.

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The hawks, in particular, have been accusing Obama of pulling out of Iraq too early and not recognizing the dangers of the growing terrorist threat posed there by the militant network known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

“I think the very first step … is to recognize that there is a threat,” Cheney said Monday. Yet even he acknowledged that there’s growing public fatigue from always having to watch out for terrorist threats: “You’ve got folks who simply don’t want to be bothered, and it’s been a long time since 9/11,” he said.

Paul, however, says the real problem in Iraq is that “there aren’t that many good choices right now” — and that he’s not about to call for sending the troops back in when, in his view, the Iraqis didn’t fight very hard for their own security.

“I ask Gov. Perry: How many Americans should send their sons or daughters to die for a foreign country — a nation the Iraqis won’t defend for themselves? How many Texan mothers and fathers will Gov. Perry ask to send their children to fight in Iraq?” Paul wrote.

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Robert Zarate, policy director of the Foreign Policy Initiative, a think tank that’s affiliated with conservative commentator William Kristol, argued that “the internationalists need to not only debate the isolationists in Washington, D.C., but they also need to continue making their case persuasively to the American people.”

Craner, however, argued that Paul’s views are more in line with Americans who are growing increasingly distrustful after the experiences of the Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and want a clearer sense of the objectives of future military actions and how they’re going to end.

“They kind of understand Afghanistan, but with the other two, they’re saying, ‘How did we get into that again?’” the Paul adviser said. “Before we do that kind of thing again, we need to ask some serious questions.”

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