THE REPUBLICAN FOREIGN-POLICY SPLIT – AT 11:46 A.M. ET:  Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina appeared on television last night, and was clearly distraught.  "The Republican Party of Ronald Reagan died today," he declared.  He was referring to the House passage of the debt agreement, which leaves open the possibility of major cuts in defense.  Graham, along with John McCain, Joe Lieberman and others, militantly opposes those cuts, and correctly so.

As we reported yesterday, there is a battle on for the soul of the Republican Party.  Will it be the party of Reagan, with a strong, unyielding commitment to the defense of this country, or will it revert to being a party of green eyeshades, interested only in "no new taxes," and little beyond that?

Eli Lake, of the Washington Times, publishing, a bit oddly, in the New Republic, writes a superlative piece on where GOP presidential candidates stand on foreign policy.  I strongly recommend it.  But it left me realizing that all the candidates must answer detailed questions on their foreign-policy views.  For example, Lake reveals this about Texas Governor Rick Perry:

In 2004, Perry enticed Citgo—owned by the Venezuelan government, no friend of the United States—to expand refineries in Corpus Christi and move its corporate headquarters to Houston by putting together a grant and low-interest loan package worth $35 million. Perry also sought to persuade the Chinese telecom giant Huawei to expand its North American headquarters in Texas. Last year, the intelligence community quietly pressed Sprint not to use Huawei components in building a national 4G network, fearing the company’s close ties to the People’s Liberation Army would effectively give the Chinese government a listening post in every cell tower of the new wireless network. On August 18, eight Republican senators sent a letter to Obama administration officials warning that the deal could undermine national security. Sprint eventually complied. But, on October 1 of last year, Perry attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the company’s new headquarters in Plano, Texas. “Huawei has a strong, worldwide reputation as an innovator of quality telecommunications technology, with facilities spread across the globe,” Perry proclaimed.

Dave Carney, a strategist who has been with the governor for 14 years and would play a major role on a presidential campaign, defended these moves when I asked him about them. He said that it’s Washington’s job to vet corporations for national security reasons. “Has the federal government kicked Citgo out of the country?” he asked. “I haven’t seen that.” He made the same argument about Huawei, saying, “If this Chinese company is as evil as has been reported, then the federal government should step in to deal with it.”

In fairness to Perry, the responsibilities of being a governor are very different from the responsibilities of being president. And presidents’ views on foreign policy have a way of morphing once they get into office.

COMMENT:  Not a wise comment from Carney, who appears callous.  As for Governor Perry, whom I like, we need answers.  Will he see foreign policy as just another business deal, or will he understand the national security implications of every economic agreement? 

You may remember Governor John Connally, also of Texas.  He was shot in the same car when President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963.  He made a try for the presidency in the 1970s, but came off as just another businessman who saw the world with a big dollar sign over it.  He didn't come close to the Oval Office.

So Perry needs to explain his foreign-policy views in detail.  Indeed, all the candidates must be closely examined on this subject.  We used to say that a country can survive four years of a bad domestic policy, but four years of a bad foreign policy can be fatal.  We have taken our eye off the foreign-policy ball to attend to our economic woes.  We've got to get that eye refocused again, or our children will pay the price.

August 2, 2011