In the 2010 election the New Hampshire Republican party took 298 out of 400 house seats, 19 out of 24 state-senate seats, and all five seats on the executive council. A little over a year later, in the state’s presidential primary, the same (more or less) electorate gave over 56 percent of its votes to a couple of moneyed “moderates,” one of whom served in the Obama administration and the other of whom left no trace in office other than the pilot program for Obamacare. Another 23 percent voted for Ron Paul. Supporters of the three other “major” candidates in the race argue that, if only the other two fellows would clear off, a viable conservative alternative to Mitt Romney would emerge. In fact, even if you combine Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum’s share of the vote, it adds up to a mere 19.5 percent: Were Bain Capital to come in and restructure the “conservative” candidates into one streamlined and efficient Newt Perrtorum, this unstoppable force would be competitive with Jon Huntsman.
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According to George Mason University’s annual survey of freedom in the 50 states, New Hampshire is the freest state in the union, so one would expect there to be takers for Ron Paul’s message. On the other hand, facing a very different electorate in Iowa, Paul pulled pretty much an identical share of the poll. It may be time for those of us on the right to consider whether it’s not so much the conservative vote that’s split but whether conservatism itself is fracturing.
No candidate is ideal, and we conservatives are always enjoined not to make the perfect the enemy of the good — or in this case the enemy of the mediocre: Sitting next to me last Tuesday on Fox News, the pollster Frank Luntz said that Romney in his victory speech was now starting to use words that resonate with the American people. The main word he used was “America.” On Tuesday night Romney told us he wants to restore America to an America where millions of Americans believe in the American ideal of a strong America for millions of Americans. Which is more than your average Belgian can say. The crowd responded appreciatively. An hour later a weird goofy gnome in a baggy suit two sizes too big came out and started yakking about the Federal Reserve, fiat money, and monetary policy “throughout all of history.” And the crowd went bananas!
It’s traditional at this point for non-Paulites to say that, while broadly sympathetic to his views on individual liberty, they deplore his neo-isolationism on foreign policy. But deploring it is an inadequate response to a faction that is likely to emerge with the second-highest number of delegates at the GOP convention. In the end, Newt represents Newt and Huntsman represents Huntsman, but Ron Paul represents a view of America’s role in the world, and one for which there are more and more takers after a decade of expensive but inconclusive war. President Obama has called for cuts of half a trillion dollars from the military budget. In response, too many of my friends on the right are demanding business as usual — that the Pentagon’s way of doing things must continue in perpetuity. It cannot.
America is responsible for about 43 percent of the planet’s military expenditure. This is partly a reflection of the diminished military budgets of everyone else. As Britain and the other European powers learned very quickly in the decades after the Second World War, when it comes to a choice between unsustainable welfare programs or a military of global reach, the latter is always easier to cut. It is, needless to say, a false choice. By mid-decade the Pentagon’s huge bloated budget will be less than the mere interest payments on U.S. debt. Much of which goes to bankrolling the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. Nevertheless, faced with reducing funding for China’s military or our own, the latter will be the easier choice for Washington.
Lowry and Rubin and many other "conservative" pundits sold out for Romney, and now someone is worried about the Ron Paul faction? This would be funny if it wasn't so tragic.
Actually, in one of the debates Mr Gingrich made the case for Mr Paul better than he did himself. If one looks at policy and not the ad hominum attacks ( so ardently evidenced on the NRO) Mr Gingrich has a tempered approach to many of the issues raised by Mr Paul and a path forward to accomplishing them given the congressional realities that even Mr Paul has not been able to prevail. It would behoove us to look at policy and assess the merits rather than personality.
It's been two thirds of a century since we won a war because it's been that long since we've fought a war. War is when you go in, blow the hell out of everything, and then rebuild it. Our marching orders since WW2 have been to kill people, but not hurt their feelings.
Mark again has great foresight, maybe Mark Levin, Rush, Hannity and Sarah Palin will listen because they regard Mark Steyn so highlt, here is a article I wrote that I got on a conservative website and sent to Mark Levin, goes along with Mark's article here:
Being a strong conservative, I believe that Republicans and Conservatives have wondered too far in policing the World and Nation Building. I’ve heard Bill Kristol on Fox News Sunday say we should be in these different countries, I’ve heard a Republican politician say they we should spread our Democracy to other countries, I’ve heard Mark Levin rant about Ron Paul for his Foreign Policy, which is downsize the military and not be in every country, but Ron Paul also mentioned that being in every country in a small way contribute to “9/11”. That really gets Mark Levin mad, but people we need to face the facts and sometimes the truth hurts, so lets look at all of this with common sense and in a logically way (I’m no supporter of Ron Paul).
President Reagan built our military up and help cause the collapse of Russia, but since then we have kept building the military to where we are 6-10 times bigger anyone else in the world, yet we keep building ships and more planes, I do agree that we need to keep up with technology but at what price to our Republic. What President Reagan did to Russia, we are doing to ourselves now, making the military bigger and breaking the bank, and we can’t survive on this path or China being the second biggest military spender, saw what Reagan did to Russia and is now doing the same to us, making us go broke by spending more on military around the world.
So let’s go through our foreign policy, policing the world and spreading democracy, here is where I believe Mark Levin, Bill Kristol and others are wrong in their thinking, especially any conservative that believes in limited government yet wants to police the world.
I’ve learned a lot listening to Mark Levin about our Constitution and our Founding Fathers, what our country fought for, Liberty and Freedom. Wasn’t England in our country telling us to live by their rules and taxes in the 1700’s, we fought them for that overreaching power, again in 1812, we didn’t like it, someone invading our country telling us to live by their rules. Pearl Harbor attacked in 1941, but the cherry on the top was the Cuban Missile crisis, we got ticked off with a country putting missiles close to our back yard. If we got ticked off, don’t you think other countries and people would get ticked off with us being in every country, now granted, the way we did it is different, we probably asked some countries if we could have our military there and we would provide aid, some countries may have asked us in return for aid, which is all taxpayers money and then we have Presidents forgiving debts to countries. We have to recognize that some countries do not want our democracy and showing our military power will never work, countries like Russia, China, Africa and most of the Middle East, yet we have a slower, more peaceful way of spreading our democracy, look at China, we have quit a few Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonalds restaurants there, no matter what you think of fast foods, when people of other countries get a taste of what America is about, the people start changing, it’s slower then military but more peaceful.
So if we as a people got ticked off with England being in our country and missiles being put in Cuba, don’t you think people in other countries would get ticked off with us being there, that is what Ron Paul is saying about contributing to “9/11”, but the deep rooted truth is that the politicians have taken us on a path of policing the world, most of the people in this great land, want their Liberty and Freedom, yet we will help those in NEED around the world.
After one of the debates in 2008 when Ron Paul said that we shouldn’t have 900 military bases around the world, I heard a politician say that we needed to be in the different countries for our military to get different types of training, are you kidding me, we really do have politicians that don’t think and they went to college. We have in this great country plenty of different types of terrain for our military, the Southeast, the Rockies, Alaska, the lakes and woods on our northern border and the deserts in the Southwest, for jungles we would have to go to South America. Can you imagine what would happen on our southern border if we had a bunch of M1 tanks doing wargames, but most important, our men and women of the military would be closer to their homes and families.
Another fact that would help our economy, after one of those debates in 2008, I watched a National Geographic show on one of our aircraft carriers, their research stated that even though the aircraft carrier was powered by nuclear, that the US military uses 70% of the oil that is imported in this country. If we brought home the majority of troops from different countries and not build so many ships, one can only imagine how much oil we would save and help our economy, if we could get the military down to 40%-50% of oil imported, the BILLIONS saved would also start us on the path of not getting so much oil from overseas, if we then produced more of our own, the U.S. could really lower our imports, meaning those countries not friendly to us , wouldn’t be getting as much of our money as they do now.
Your lack of understanding Ron Pauls foreign policy is a laughable matter. The words "isolationism" already shows your lack of intelligence and knowing what isolationism really is. The whole point is not to be isolated from the world but to not be policemen of the world and spend trillions of dollars overseas. Why don't we mind our own business? You do know that the more you get involved overseas the richer countries like China, Russia and Pakistan get right? They provide military weapons to the enemy because it's a big business for them not because they care about terrorism but it's all about money, Russia learned this the hard way. Stop this neocon war propaganda and learn to fight real wars and diplomacy. Ron Paul 2012
Balanced thoughts. I agree that Paul's foreign policy thoughts are a touch too isolationist on the outside. However, upon looking at a reality of Congress being forced to vote on a war and a clear victory plan I believe we will not be isolationist at all, rather we will have the balance our founders hoped for. A president "against war" would mean an uphill battle for Congress to declare it. Once we are at war, the incentive would be to get out as soon as possible. So, in the end only if it is the will of the people we will not go to war (oh yes I am saying that "we the people" via our Congressmen determine what wars we get into). How many of us don't agree with: no unnecessary blood shed, free trade with other countries, and a slim mean military. Why do we need to bully the entire world into submission and bully the citizens by taking their hard earned money to give it to other countries?
I think you're in a state of denial if you think that by simply writing a made up juvenile label "Fortress America" it makes it so.
I know Afghanistan is a land locked country, so does Ron Paul. I also knew exactly what he meant by saying "As soon as the ships could get there."
Please tell me you have some solid information as to why a non-intereventionsit policy is nothing but a good thing. That it isn't the intent of the Founding Fathers. That it isn't strenuously recommended by Georgetown University Adjunct Professor Center for Peace and Security Studies (CPASS), Michael Scheuer, who recently endorsed Ron Paul for president because of his foreign policy.
Here's his bio -
Dr. Scheuer recently concluded a 22-year career with the CIA in which he served in both the Directorate of Intelligence (DI) and the Directorate of Operations (DO). During his tenure at the CIA, Dr. Scheuer held various positions including Senior Adviser for the Usama Bin Laden Department, Chief of the Southwest/Southeast Asia Counternarcotics Operation, and Chief of the Sunni Militant Unit. Dr. Scheuer is the author of Imperial Hubris. Why the West is Losing the War on Terrorism and Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama Bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of the United States, as well as numerous journal articles.
Mr. Scheuer has a website you might want to check out. The address is non-intervention . com
"My policy has been and will continue to be ... to be on friendly terms with, but independent of, all nations on earth. To share in the broils of none. To supply their wants, and be carriers for them all; being thoroughly convinced that it is our policy and interest to do so; and that nothing short of self-respect, and that justice which is essential to a national character, ought to involve us in war."
Once global satellite television was invented, it became much harder for any democratic country to wage a ruthless war.
In World War II, we could turn Dresden or Tokyo into a raging firestorm and not worry about the effect on the home front. Today, we've got CNN reporting how enemy civilians are holding up under OUR bombs--in real time! That is, we can now have a split screen showing our men in uniform bombarding the enemy--while another CNN reporter on the other half of the screen shows the effect on the enemy civilian population.
That has made it much harder to sustain American support for wars, once we see what the effect of our war is on the enemy, who after all are still human beings with families too.
In World War II, we did have one other propaganda tool: Racism. By portraying the Japanese as animals and buck-toothed savages, it made it a lot easier for us to bomb them without qualms. But for obvious reasons, the U.S. Government can no longer drum up support for a war by dehumanizing the enemy.
Among the sad ironies of the last decade is that, by the definitions in use for almost all of human history, we won the Iraq War in early 2003. Took us 3 whole weeks. Their army was shattered, their government overthrown, and their leader a fugitive,who we tracked down by the end of the year. That's what every ruler and commander from Gilgamesh to Patton meant by "winning" a war.
But as you say, Mark, it doesn't feel like it, does it? For a few months in 2001-02 (Afghanistan) and 2003 (Iraq) we were Kichener avenging Gordon, and ever since we have been Orwell shooting an elephant
Agreed. The mission accomplished speech was justified.
What we need to learn is to leave after we won, keep an eye on our enemies, and if they give us reason to do so, re-invade, kill their leaders, and leave again, lather, rinse, repeat until they no longer wish to be our enemies.
These engagements should be short and violent.
A military is supposed to kill people and break things. Period. Let the Belgians do the nation building.
And in 2003, it had been accomplished with few casualties on our side. That's when we should have pulled out. All of the lost lives and treasure since then have essentially been wasted in a misguided effort to impose liberty which the Iraqis neither want nor, at this time, deserve.
One lesson we should have learned from the Cold War period is that it is better to demand respect than to beg for love. And neither love nor respect can be bought. The primary test of our foreign policy should be: Does it serve the legitimate interests of the US?
We should treat everyone fairly and with kindness, but we should demand fair treatment in return. We should be slow to anger, but when provoked, our response should be both swift and terrible. And then we should leave.
By "winning a war," Patton meant that the enemy SURRENDERS: Lays down its weapons and sues for peace.
The successor government to Hitler SURRENDERED to the Allies.
The Japanese SURRENDERED to MacArthur on the battleship U.S.S. Missouri.
We never won the Iraq War in that sense. Remember that 52 card deck of Iraqis we were out to capture or kill? Not ONE of them was willing to formally surrender--to do what Hirohito did and broadcast to the Iraqi people to stop fighting permanently.
Instead,in the Iraq War, hostilities never formally ended. What Rumsfeld dismissed as "a few dead-enders" blossomed into a civil war.
Japan surrendered after getting reassurances about the safety of the emperor. Germans surrendered to us because they were more afraid of the Russians. These days a losing evil regime has little incentive to surrender because they know that they will then be brought to trial. I’m not saying its justice but less blood might be shed if some of these dictators were allowed to quietly disappear with some of their Swiss bank accounts.
Among the sad ironies of the last decade is that, by the definitions in use for almost all of human history, we won the Iraq War in early 2003. Took us 3 whole weeks. Their army was shattered, their government overthrown, and their leader a fugitive,who we tracked down by the end of the year. That's what every ruler and commander from Gilgamesh to Patton meant by "winning" a war.
But as you say, Mark, it doesn't feel like it, does it? For a few months in 2001-02 (Afghanistan) and 2003 (Iraq) we were Kichener avenging Gordon, and ever since we have been Orwell shooting an elephant
Ponzi and Longplay are both right. Our main issue as a culture is that the Western-Civ hating Left has feminized us. We have no cojones, no love for what we are, no desire for victory.
A more useful approach to Iraq would have been to withdraw two weeks after the execution of Saddam, itself occurring a week after his capture.
We wouldn't have had "cojones" in World War II either, if CNN had existed back then and broadcast into every American living room what Allied bombs were doing to Dresden and Tokyo: "So tell me, Mrs. Nakamura, how are your kids holding up under this American bombing?"
Television broadcast live from the enemy nation lets Americans in their own living rooms see the enemy civilians as human beings with families too. That makes it tough to drop bombs on the enemy country, knowing that at least a few of them will go astray and kill civilians just like the ones you're seeing on TV.
That said, summarily execute Saddam?
But, but.. What about his Miranda rights? His 'fair' trial, preferrably in NYC? Doesn't gathering evidence require months? Warrants must be obtained! What about the chain of evidence on the wood chippers? And while we held him, I heard that once a GI handed him his Koran without first washing his hands, donning freshly washed white gloves, and wrapping the book in a fresh towel- what have we done to punish this GI? After living in holes for months, was Saddam provided nutritionally complete Halal food?
And what is all this talk of "feminization"? Feminization is strictly not allowed under Sharia.
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