Rand Paul's Sound Foreign Policy Instincts
W. James Antle III
September 19, 2014
Rand Paul’s critics and the media, not necessarily mutually exclusive categories, have begun to question whether the senator from Kentucky has a coherent foreign policy.
This growing skepticism certainly matters, but of more immediate importance is that some of Paul’s supporters and sympathizers are starting to wonder the same thing.
As Paul has sounded increasingly hawkish against the terrorist group known as ISIS, many libertarians and conservatives have started to speculate the 2016 presidential possibility has gone over to the dark side.
Paul has been down this road before. When he joined with all but four Senate Republicans in voting to delay Chuck Hagel’s confirmation as secretary of defense, the reaction from many erstwhile admirers was fierce.
“If Rand Paul persists on going demagogic on Hagel,” wrote American Conservative co-founder Scott McConnell at the time, “he will have established beyond any serious doubt that regardless of who his father is, he is Bill Kristol and Jennifer Rubin’s boy.”
In response to such criticism, Paul suggested some libertarians and antiwar conservatives were missing the bigger picture.
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