Why Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul Fight for Trump’s Favor
The sparring between these two senators and presidential allies is helping to shape conservative foreign policy.
By Liz Mair
Ms. Mair is a Republican strategist.
Oct. 21, 2019
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...Both also figured out — faster than most K Street government-relations experts who are still sweating their inability to lobby the president successfully as well as major figures in the nation’s foreign-policy establishment — that a lot can be gained by simply being nice to the guy and, as friends do, picking up the phone and chatting. It’s a way to put a bug in Mr. Trump’s ear, and both have used it.
The only trouble is, if you’re Mr. Graham, Mr. Paul seems to be making the friendship thing work better for him — though at least Mr. Graham so far has continued American engagement in Afghanistan to show for it. It’s not an inconsequential victory, but it might be a temporary one — and it hints at some serious differences of opinion between Mr. Trump and Mr. Graham that aren’t being overcome by late-night heart-to-hearts.
By contrast, those same one-on-one chats seem to be paying dividends for Mr. Paul, who applauded Mr. Trump, after his move in Syria, for “moving forward to stop the ‘endless wars.’”
Mr. Graham called that same decision “the biggest mistake of his presidency.” But Mr. Paul redirected the blame for foreign-policy mistakes to Mr. Graham, who, the Kentucky senator said, “has been wrong about almost every foreign-policy decision of the last two decades.”
More often than not, the president stands with Mr. Paul. Mr. Graham has noticed. Mr. Graham told ABC News that the president’s problem is that “he talks like Ronald Reagan and he acts like Rand Paul on occasion.”
“On occasion” is an understatement: Syria is just the latest instance of foreign-policymaking in which Mr. Trump has demonstrated highly Paulite tendencies...
Liz Mair, a strategist for campaigns by Scott Walker, Roy Blunt, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina and Rick Perry, is the founder and president of Mair Strategies.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/21/o...rand-paul.html
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