Posted on 06/28/2014 3:19:35 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
It’s not exactly the Ali-Frazier “Thrilla in Manilla,” but the ongoing Rand Paul-Dick Cheney pugilism certainly packs a punch.
The libertarian ophthalmologist and the warlord emeritus have been pounding each other for months, and while it’s tempting to just kick back with popcorn and behold the entertainment, we do need to acknowledge the bout’s deeper meaning. Because this is really about something quite serious.
Republicans are profoundly split these days over foreign policy: between the non-interventionists who are increasingly wary of American military involvement abroad; and the neoconservative hawks who blundered us into Iraq and want us to keep flexing military muscle. Senator Paul is a leader of the non-interventionsts, a GOP faction that used to be tiny, but not anymore. The Iraq disaster has swelled their ranks, and Paul hopes to speak for them in the 2016 presidential primaries.
Cheney is freaked out about that; hence his creation of a new group, Alliance for a Stronger America, which is geared to rebut Paul at every turn. Cheney clearly hopes to influence the GOP’s foreign policy debate; his new group is set up to raise money from anonymous donors and steer the bucks to like-minded candidates.
Paul delivered the latest flurry of punches. Last Thursday, in his own Wall Street Journal column, he was clearly talking about Cheney: “Many of those clamoring for military action now (in Iraq) are the same people who made every false assumption imaginable about the cost, challenge and purpose of the Iraq war. They have been wrong for so long, why should we listen to them again?” Paul followed his column up with a weekend appearance on Meet the Press, where he questioned the credibility “of those who supported the Iraq war.” Cheney quickly retaliated on ABC’s This Week, labeling Paul as an “isolationist” and saying his views “didn’t work in the 1930s, it sure as heck won’t work in the aftermath of 9/11.”
It’s hard to say who started this spat, but Paul arguably did so in 2009, when he was caught on video suggesting that Cheney dragged us into Iraq to profit his old cronies at Halliburton. In the video, which surfaced this spring, Paul tells an audience of college students: “We need to be fearful of companies that get so big that they can actually be directing policy….Dick Cheney (during the ’90s) goes to work for Halliburton, makes hundreds of millions of dollars as their CEO. The next thing you know, he’s back in government, and it’s a good thing to go into Iraq.”
That was quite an insinuation, to say that Cheney ginned up a war to make money for his pals. When asked about the video this spring, Paul retreated a tad: “I’m not questioning Dick Cheney’s motives,” but nevertheless said: “When people go from high levels of government (Pentagon chief for Bush the elder) to high levels of industry that are dependent on government money, there’s a chance for a conflict of interest.”
Wow. You rarely hear that kind of talk in GOP circles, and Team Cheney didn’t like it. Cheney dispatched his daughter Liz (the daughter who bombed out in the Wyoming Senate race) to assert: “Senator Paul often seems to get his foreign policy talking points from Rachel Maddow.” Dad defended himself on CNN: “I had no relationship at all with the company throughout the time that I was vice president. I didn’t even talk to them…. So (Paul) is obviously not familiar with the facts.”
Dick Cheney, of all people, claiming that someone else is fact-challenged. Insert joke here.
Who should we root for in this ongoing Republican intramural? Probably Paul (grading on a curve), if only because of Cheney’s serial lies and performance failures. What’s unknowable is whether Paul can actually win the GOP nomination as a non-interventionist. Paul is currently first (just barely) in the latest Real Clear Politics aggregation of polls of a crowded field of potential 2016 candidates, but the truth is, most GOP primary voters traditionally favor a muscular foreign policy.
It’d be nice if the party found a middle ground (is there no such thing as prudent, fact-based interventionism?), but that won’t happen any time soon. As Paul warned the Cheney camp back in April, “sharpen your knives, because the battle once begun will not end easily.”
China has a billion people, a command economy, and we can’t do a damned thing about them. We dont vote there.
We need to export all of our liberalism….and if we did that, we woulnd’t have to worry a bit about China. You never figure that out. And you never talk about anything else.
get meds
I think actually, I am catching an equal but opposite bit of “free trade” from you.
I agree with you that China has a billion people, and a command economy. I completely agree.
What I am saying is, we need to stop buying everything from there.
That is my point.
Bring back jobs, to America.
We are currently 17.5 trillion dollars in debt.
That is rapidly increasing.
Bring back jobs, to America.
Perfect analogy. Whereas Cheney is a serious heavyweight, anchored in a firm understanding of geopolitical reality.
A leaf vs a brick...
That is a pretty useless post to make over and over and spam threads with.
OK I’ll stop posting on this thread.
However I want to say before I leave:
We are sinking as a country. America is sinking. We are no longer exploring space. Our military budget is shrinking. And we continue to import ever more ... stuff.
Rapidly we have changed, and none of it for the better. We need to do something. Now.
We cannot simply keep on buying everything imported. We will eventually collapse.
I’m completely serious.
Off this thread now.
I don't think anyone is disagreeing with this.
In fact, might I be so bold as to say most here agree with the statement.
We seriously, need to bring back American jobs, and do things more for ourselves.
Someone needs to run with American employment, as a position.
I hope it is the GOP who gets with it.
Here's where the disagreement begins — for me it's because there's an implicit assertion here: that it is the government's role to ensure jobs. This is, to my thinking, incorrect: the government's job is to provide an environment where employers can employ and profit.
Governments do this by supporting justice, not by laying regulation upon rule upon law. (This also means that if the employer wrongs the employee, that employer should be punished; See James 5.) — And remember that justice is generally not promoted [and indeed undermined] when legal/allowable is dependent upon the actor.
If we were to drop the regulation-burden on the companies, that would certainly be a big step to igniting the economy… however, in order to do this we need to go on a wholesale purge of departments/agencies which are not Constitutional; this would reduce our Federal Government to essentially the following:
In the end you simply offer no real solutions, even when asked how?
— this is what harms your message.
Well if Cheney isn’t a “”real”” conservative, he’d do (with me) until the real thing comes along (if ever).
I have immense respect for Dick Cheney, moreso than I had for Bush during his first term (after that it kinda went downhill re: that respect). I know Cheney’s background and I know what he stands for. He’s for a strong national defense and military....which I am also for (it’s the only thing government really should be required to do with the billions of our tax dollars, and should be required to do it well, instead of half-assed under Democrats)...
and we wouldn’t be in the fix we’re in NOW if Cheney was in command or CIC. Just sayin...
Who is "we?" More to the point, "who" are you suggesting put a stop to this buying. And WTF are you saying is "how" we stop this buying. You really think government bureaucrats can figure this out? You offer the same platitudes over and over and over, and never anything more than that. This is what irritates people. And you also keep repeating stats that no one disagrees with. You just don't have the slightest idea of how macro economics work. Not the foggiest.
We are in the fix we are in now because of Cheney! We have had massive spending that we can’t reasonably ever repay due to the wars started by Bush/Cheney and continued by Obozo (though arguably Obozo has been much worse). The fact that there is no difference between Republican and Democrat foreign policy should give you some kind of clue.
If Cheney was CIC, we would have already had wars with Iran and Syria, and would likely be gearing up for World War Three with either Russia, China, or both.This guy is toxic, detrimental, and against everything that America stands for.
The fact that you think nothing of using a pointless smear phrase like “left wing diatribe” does not reflect well on YOU.I agree with gunpowder.As time goes by, more and more on the right will wise up to the lunatic New American Century Agenda as perpetrated by Cheney, Bush and their neo -con buddies.
Rand Paul is not a Capitalist Conservative, he’s a Socialist Conservative. His geopolitical thinking has gone so far right that it appears left now.
He is sock puppet of Lew Rockwell
you’re using left wing diatribe now yourself. And you don’t even hear it.
No, you’ll never hear that from any “establishment” representatives of what laughingly passes itself off as “The Left”-—they went along with the PNAC too, while hedging their bets ever-so-gently, hoping they could wring some credit if things turned out all right in Iraq, and Afghanistan. Well, they didn’t, and the fact that this current Adminstration couldn’t bring itself to do anything pro-active like bomb the ISIS convoys , which clearly advertisted themselves in yellow Toyota trucks as they made their way from city to city in an orgy of murder and mayhem, means that they too are a continuation of the problem.
I beleive both these guys need to take a timeout, draw a deep breath and go F*** themselves.
you are so obsessed with the point you’re trying to make, (on which we don’t totally disagree btw) that you aren’t thinking straight - or at least not responding logically to what I”m saying….which is that using Iraq as the reason America is hated ,and throwing around the term “neo con” - are BOTH LIBERAL TALKNG POINTS!!!!!!!
And nothing you can ever say will change that whatsoever….
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