Spoetnik
07-12-10, 16:40
The tea party and foreign policy
On a day that one tea party leader pleaded with Sarah Palin to run for Republican National Committee chair (swift reply: no thanks! that sounds like a...job!), it's worth remembering that as much as she is a darling of the tea party movement on domestic issues, she is not one of them at all on foreign policy.
Barry Gewen has an interesting piece up at TNR explaining why. Noting that tea partiers tend toward isolationist foreign policy positions, he observes:
There was a truce within the party until the elections, but now, as Richard Viguerie warned, "a massive, almost historic battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party begins." Onlookers can expect to hear a great deal of name calling in coming months as charges of "isolationist" and "imperialist" fly back and forth.
At the center of this battle, of course, is Sarah Palin. She has allied herself firmly with the Republican hawks, opposing any cuts in defense spending and generally calling for a more activist and interventionist America throughout the world. She is on record in support of an attack on Iran. To much of the press and the punditocracy, she is the darling of the Tea Partiers, but that's not how it looks to many inside the movement, and if you want to hear the worst of the vituperation aimed her way, you should look not in the direction of liberals and Democrats, but at the Ron Paul wing of the Tea Party movement. Accused of hijacking the movement for the neoconservatives, she is called "a wolf in sheep's clothing," "simplistic," "senseless and deranged," "close-minded," "arrogant," "a neocon Stepford wife."
Palin's not changing her stripes on foreign policy questions. Remember who her most prominent national adviser is.
And the the tea party won't change its stripes either. So push may come to shove on this question someday, I suppose, but only if some foreign policy question really dislodges the economy as our main concern. And even then, well, I think back to the months after 9-11, when that was the case, and even then, Ron Paul and his like were awfully lonely voices in the GOP. Granted, the next Congress will have many Pauls (well, two literal ones, but a sizeable number of figurative ones). But I still don't see libertarian/tea party-style foreign policy views dominating in the GOP.
But it's sort of interesting to muse about the long-term. Let's say for the sake of argument that Iraq and eventually Afghanistan just sort of wind down, and there are no terrorist attacks or anything dramatic like that. And more and more tea partiers are elected to Congress over the next two or three cycles. And John McCain will be retired by then, or close to it, and Dick Cheney will be stewing in a Nigerian priso--I mean, enjoying retirement in McLean. It's not impossible to imagine, as Gewen seems to suggest, that the GOP could become an isolationist party again.
These fights for the souls of things almost never live up to billing, but it will be fascinating to watch the new tea party contingent in the House and Senate react when something bubbles up, especially if related to Israel, which is not an isolationist preferred vacation spot.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2010/dec/06/sarahpalin-tea-party-movement-foreign-policy
On a day that one tea party leader pleaded with Sarah Palin to run for Republican National Committee chair (swift reply: no thanks! that sounds like a...job!), it's worth remembering that as much as she is a darling of the tea party movement on domestic issues, she is not one of them at all on foreign policy.
Barry Gewen has an interesting piece up at TNR explaining why. Noting that tea partiers tend toward isolationist foreign policy positions, he observes:
There was a truce within the party until the elections, but now, as Richard Viguerie warned, "a massive, almost historic battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party begins." Onlookers can expect to hear a great deal of name calling in coming months as charges of "isolationist" and "imperialist" fly back and forth.
At the center of this battle, of course, is Sarah Palin. She has allied herself firmly with the Republican hawks, opposing any cuts in defense spending and generally calling for a more activist and interventionist America throughout the world. She is on record in support of an attack on Iran. To much of the press and the punditocracy, she is the darling of the Tea Partiers, but that's not how it looks to many inside the movement, and if you want to hear the worst of the vituperation aimed her way, you should look not in the direction of liberals and Democrats, but at the Ron Paul wing of the Tea Party movement. Accused of hijacking the movement for the neoconservatives, she is called "a wolf in sheep's clothing," "simplistic," "senseless and deranged," "close-minded," "arrogant," "a neocon Stepford wife."
Palin's not changing her stripes on foreign policy questions. Remember who her most prominent national adviser is.
And the the tea party won't change its stripes either. So push may come to shove on this question someday, I suppose, but only if some foreign policy question really dislodges the economy as our main concern. And even then, well, I think back to the months after 9-11, when that was the case, and even then, Ron Paul and his like were awfully lonely voices in the GOP. Granted, the next Congress will have many Pauls (well, two literal ones, but a sizeable number of figurative ones). But I still don't see libertarian/tea party-style foreign policy views dominating in the GOP.
But it's sort of interesting to muse about the long-term. Let's say for the sake of argument that Iraq and eventually Afghanistan just sort of wind down, and there are no terrorist attacks or anything dramatic like that. And more and more tea partiers are elected to Congress over the next two or three cycles. And John McCain will be retired by then, or close to it, and Dick Cheney will be stewing in a Nigerian priso--I mean, enjoying retirement in McLean. It's not impossible to imagine, as Gewen seems to suggest, that the GOP could become an isolationist party again.
These fights for the souls of things almost never live up to billing, but it will be fascinating to watch the new tea party contingent in the House and Senate react when something bubbles up, especially if related to Israel, which is not an isolationist preferred vacation spot.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2010/dec/06/sarahpalin-tea-party-movement-foreign-policy