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View Full Version : Paul really does have a shot at winning the 2016 presidential nomination: Foreign Affairs says




politics
01-30-2014, 06:58 PM
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/files/imagecache/800x/images/Dueck_RandPaulBubble.jpg

An interesting article about Rand appeared yesterday in the front page of the Foreign Affairs website. http://www.foreignaffairs.com/

Despite of the title of the article is a fine interpretation of Rand’s foreing policy views in the context of the GOP.
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/140697/colin-dueck/the-rand-paul-bubble


According to Mead, Jeffersonians emphasize the need to avoid military interventions abroad. For proponents of this tradition, the United States should set an example to others while keeping to its own affairs and not intervening forcibly overseas. The moral and financial costs of U.S. foreign policy strategy should be kept to a bare minimum. The Jeffersonians' chief concerns are the supposedly corrupting effects of international warfare and power politics on American traditions -- effects they typically describe as increased taxes, large standing armed forces, and the erosion of civil liberties. This description fits Paul's views quite closely.

The inclination toward Jeffersonian foreign policy is today stronger within the Republican Party -- just as it is stronger among Democrats and political independents -- than it has been for a good many years. Indeed, one might say that the Jeffersonian tendency is stronger right now within the GOP than at any time since 1952, when Senator Robert Taft (R-OH) ran a very close race for the Republican presidential nomination. A widely discussed Pew Research Center poll from just last month revealed that a bare majority (52 percent) of Americans now believe the United States should “mind its own business internationally.” This all would seem to work in Paul's favor as he considers a run for the presidency.
What outside observers often miss, however, is that the conservative base of the Republican Party has long been inclined toward what Mead calls Jacksonianism. This tendency is easy to miss because it is badly underrepresented among elite foreign policy commentators in either party. (Unlike Jeffersonianism, which has pockets of elite support in the academy and at Washington think tanks such as the Cato Institute.) Foreign policy Jacksonians are intense nationalists who take great pride in the United States' military and prioritize protecting its sovereignty, honor, well-being, and security in what they view as a dangerous world. Jacksonians are generally skeptical of elite-sponsored legal, multilateral, and idealistic plans for global improvement -- hence the surface resemblance to Rand’s views. But once their country is at war, threatened, or under attack, Jacksonians tend to be relentless and unyielding.



To be sure, the majority of grassroots conservatives are deeply skeptical of humanitarian intervention, Middle Eastern democracy promotion, foreign aid expenditure, and nation-building projects overseas -- especially as handled by Obama. Insofar as Republican internationalists favor the any of those measures, they have yet to win over (or win back) the party's base, and that does mark a striking shift from the George W. Bush era. Still, the decline of conservative GOP support for idealistic foreign policies hardly leaves the Jeffersonians as the only game in town. Today, as so often before, the pivotal foreign policy players inside the GOP are the hawkish American nationalists best described as Jacksonian. And if Paul's speech earlier this month is any indication, he isn't exactly speaking for them yet.
This is not to suggest that Paul has no chance at all of winning the 2016 primary. Party primaries tend to be more unpredictable than general elections, and with multiple candidates running, the various contenders may slice up the vote and run through the states in surprising ways. For example, even if Paul's Jeffersonian foreign policy views represent only a minority of GOP primary voters, multiple other candidates running as national security hawks might divide up the Jacksonian vote, which would leave Paul at no numerical disadvantage. And of course the majority of voters these days do not cast their ballot on foreign policy issues, but on issues of domestic politics and personality.
All of which is to say that Paul really does have a shot at winning the 2016 presidential nomination.






As a reminder, last month it was the Foreign Policy magazine that considered Rand as one of the 100 leading global thinkers of the year.

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?434933-Rand-Paul-one-of-the-100-Leading-Global-Thinkers-of-the-year-Foreign-Policy-Magazine-says

Matt Collins
01-30-2014, 08:32 PM
Isn't FA the CFR publication?

erowe1
01-30-2014, 08:37 PM
Isn't FA the CFR publication?

Yes.

politics
01-30-2014, 08:38 PM
Yes, indeed.

boneyard bill
01-30-2014, 10:21 PM
I read the article, but I tend to disagree with it's major thesis. I don't think that rank and file Republicans are divided into two groups, a Jeffersonian minority and a Jacksonian majority. It think most Republicans tend to be both Jeffersonian and Jacksonian at the same time. The both anti-interventionist AND nationalistic. Don't get involved unless you have to, but if you have to, kick the shit out of the enemy. Remember, the anti-war, isolationist faction prior to world war II was called the "America First Committee."

Likewise, Rand Paul's Jeffersonianism doesn't put him in the same camp as the Democrats. Democrats are Wilsonian. They are absolutely in favor of foreign intervention but presumably for altruistic causes only. This is not to say that Rand might not appeal to a few Democrats on foreign policy, but I doubt that it will be very many. Remember that in 2000, George Bush ran on a foreign policy platform that would be very similar to what Rand could be expected run on. (No nation building. Mind our own business). But I don't think he pulled very many Democrat votes with that message.

Brett85
01-30-2014, 11:13 PM
I read the article, but I tend to disagree with it's major thesis. I don't think that rank and file Republicans are divided into two groups, a Jeffersonian minority and a Jacksonian majority. It think most Republicans tend to be both Jeffersonian and Jacksonian at the same time. The both anti-interventionist AND nationalistic. Don't get involved unless you have to, but if you have to, kick the shit out of the enemy. Remember, the anti-war, isolationist faction prior to world war II was called the "America First Committee."

I wish that were the case, but unfortunately it isn't. 55% of Republicans still think it was a good idea to go into Iraq.

http://www.people-press.org/2014/01/30/more-now-see-failure-than-success-in-iraq-afghanistan/

idiom
01-30-2014, 11:27 PM
The Jeffersonians' chief concerns are the supposedly corrupting effects of international warfare

Supposedly my Arse.

Desire Industries:Sex Trafficking, UN Peacekeeping, and the Neo-Liberal World Order

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/cchrp/isht/study_group/2010/pdf/DesireIndustries.pdf


As enforcers of this neo-liberal morality and commerce, UN peacekeeping allows
certain identities to pleasure and profit at the expense of others. That UN peacekeepers
would traffic in persons for sex is but the most superficial and obvious response to this
nexus of technology, power, and capital utilized by one configuration of race, gender,
and class against others. Peacekeeping, after all, aims to rebuild a war-torn society so it
will function more properly in the neo-liberal world order.8

Working Poor
01-31-2014, 02:44 PM
I hope Rand plays things close to the vest and does not reveal any tactic too soon. The later we can ward off the attackers the better.

philipped
02-02-2014, 05:20 PM
All this hype is making it clear he will get top 3 in all the early states so far in 2016, that's my opinion.