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Posted on 03/17/2014 3:51:58 AM PDT by SoConPubbie
“Every Republican likes to think he or she is the next Ronald Reagan,” he wrote in an op-ed for Breitbart News, responding to an attack by Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. “Some who say this do so for lack of their own ideas and agenda. Reagan was a great leader and President. But too often people make him into something he wasn’t in order to serve their own political purposes.”
“[A]lmost all of us in the party are big fans of Ronald Reagan,” Paul told Sean Hannity on Fox News in yet another defense of his foreign policy. “I’ve always been a big fan of peace through strength.”
Get real.
Paul may be right when he says that none of the Republicans considering a White House run in 2016 have a foreign policy outlook exactly like Reagan’s. But what’s undeniable is that Paul’s foreign policy is far and away the least Reaganeque of any of the possible 2016 Republican presidential contenders.
What Paul is trying to do is muddy the waters on Reagan’s foreign policy legacy in order to hide the reality that his foreign policy outlook bears no resemblance to that of the Gipper’s — and, more broadly, is wildly out of touch with the Republican mainstream. Sure, Reagan engaged in diplomacy, even occasionally when some in his own party believed it inadvisable. But that hardly makes Reagan a Rand Paul-style non-interventionist. Far from it.
Paul says he, like Reagan, supports “peace through strength.” Except Reagan’s notion of “peace through strength” focused on increasing military spending. Paul has not yet discovered a military cut he didn’t like.
Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and believed it had to be confronted. When the turmoil in Ukraine erupted and some Republicans urged President Barack Obama to get tough with Vladimir Putin to prevent Russian interference in the country, Paul’s first reaction was to tell the Washington Post that we need to seek a ”respectful relationship” with Russia — as if the reason Putin was behaving badly was due to a lack of American “thanks yous” and “pleases.”
Reagan invaded Grenada to overthrow the communist regime and protect the American medical students studying there, supported the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in their fight to push the Soviets out and provided funding and military assistance to the Contras in Nicaragua to fight the Soviet-supported Sandinista regime.
“We must stand by our democratic allies,” he declared in his 1985 State of the Union Address. “And we must not break faith with those who are risking their lives — on every continent, from Afghanistan to Nicaragua — to defy Soviet-supported aggression and secure rights which have been ours from birth.”
“Support for freedom fighters is self-defense,” he stated.
Does Rand Paul agree with any of the steps Reagan took to support freedom and stop the spread of communism in the 1980s? Can you imagine him uttering Reagan’s words?
Paul is right in saying that Reagan was no warmonger. Reagan detested war — he even thought Mutual Assured Destruction was fundamentally immoral. But just because Reagan was willing to engage in diplomacy doesn’t mean he was a Rand Paul-style non-interventionist. Reagan believed in a proactive American foreign policy in order to “roll back” the spread of communism and shape the world in a way beneficial to the West. He used many different tools to achieve his goals, including diplomacy, covert action and overt military intervention.
Paul, in contrast, believes “blowback” from American interventions often outweighs whatever good is trying to be achieved. That’s a fair outlook to have and Paul would be better served making his case for his foreign policy worldview rather than pretending that Reagan’s foreign policy is wildly misunderstood by everyone but him.
Even if none of the other 2016 presidential contenders perfectly match Reagan’s foreign policy outlook, the reality is they match it a whole lot better than Paul. Paul’s foreign policy resembles Reagan’s in the same way a unicycle resembles a banana.
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To hell with foreign policy!
We need to fix internal policy first for it is the worst danger our country has ever faced since it’s establishment.
Rand Paul is the guy to do it.
There can not be another Ronald Reagan.
Not any time soon anyway.
Times are different now.
Country was prosperous during Reagan’s last 6 years.
Now country is bankrupt by any generally accepted standards of accounting.
Bankrupt countries can not be strong.
Our young generation is already in debt to China, Japan and others.
Time to think rationally.
Otherwise here we come Roman Empire, WWII Germany, USSR during Gorby, Alexander of Greece, on and on...all went down to demise trying to project military strength abroad while going bankrupt.
But zero can cal himself Lincoln... whatever.
Trying to figure out the point of this article. There is no one like Reagan and won’t be another Reagan. This is where us fellow conservatives fail and become discouraged. We put our hopes into the next Reagan only to be let down when our candidate strays from Reagan. He was our once in a lifetime political evangelist.
Paul is a Shamnesty and CommieCare supporter. He’s done.
He’s nothing like Reagan, PERIOD
It is laughable that Rand Paul wants to handed Reagan’s military and foreign policy crown by his fellow Republicans and Conservatives. Paul spews rhetoric like a hawk, yet on defense he votes like a left wing liberal. Our military has been decimated by cut after cut, and he has almost single-handedly ensured the cuts became even deeper.
Cruz and Paul are on the same team in this fight against these radical socialists within. Ted Cruz did NOT attack Rand Paul. Only the liberals, and some conservatives with a distorted view of priorities, want this war of words to be happening right now. Let's not oblige them.
As the Titanic bears down on the iceberg, we shouldn't be distracted by re-arranging the deck chairs ....
Absolutely. Let it begin in earnest .... AFTER the November, 2014 mid-term elections.
And the lieberals are cheering you on and laughing their asses off at the stupid Party and their distraction with trivial pursuits.
This is sick!
.
Yes! And the arguments should be Cruz/Paul vs. 0bama! NOT Cruz v Paul. Duh.
That’s pretty much how I see it. All his nonsensical chatter grates on me.
Why do you say he is a CommieCare supporter?
Do you have links?
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