Hostettler voted against the Medicare prescription-drug benefit and No Child Left Behind. He voted against the federal marriage amendment, preferring instead to preserve traditional marriage by stripping federal courts of jurisdiction over the issue. He was one of 11 Republicans to vote against the $51.8 billion Hurricane Katrina relief package. In 1996, he was one of 17 Republicans who voted against a budget compromise backed by then House Speaker Newt Gingrich that would have ended the federal government shutdown. Gingrich canceled a fundraiser for Hostettler as a result.
Hostettler’s biggest dissent, however, was on Iraq. He had opposed making regime change the official U.S. policy by voting against the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998. Then Hostettler was one of just six House Republicans to vote against authorizing the invasion of Iraq, while Democrats like Bayh were still on board. At the time, Hostettler questioned the need for pre-emptive strikes and said he was not persuaded by the evidence the Bush administration offered for Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. In the floor speech explaining his vote, he cited St. Augustine and Just War theory, as well as the Founding Fathers.
After leaving Congress, Hostettler stepped up his criticism of the war. He even wrote an antiwar book, Nothing for the Nation: Who Got What Out of Iraq. Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, a Republican who recanted his support for the war, praised the book: “Had we listened to Hostettler at the time, we would not have done it. … For years I have known I was wrong. Now I know why I was wrong.” Others, such as Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, have criticized the book’s references to Israeli security concerns and neoconservatives: “Hostettler’s reasoning is nothing new, following the line of attack in The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by academics John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt.”
Hostettler rejects this as a mischaracterization of his views, but is unapologetic about his disagreements with neoconservatives. “The neocons know what a Senator Hostettler would mean,” he says. “They would rather have Evan Bayh as the lead sponsor of sanctions against Iran, bringing us to the brink of war or a Republican who would do the same thing.” Hostettler argues, “They want to mold the Republican Party’s image on foreign policy, and I am not of that mold.”
Re-thinking my decision on supporting John Hostettler
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Originally Posted by Cowlesy
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