MR. PAUL CONFRONTS HIS CRITICS – AT 11:24 A.M. ET:  As readers of this site know, I am not a big fan of Rand Paul.  While many of his ideas are fine, his view on foreign policy are more appropriate for a dorm room bull session than for the U.S. Senate. 

As a nation, we are currently paying the price for weakness.  A weak, leftist, anti-defense, vacillating president, who seems to have a certain contempt for his own country, is in charge, and the international system is descending into chaos. 

And yet Rand Paul might well continue the worst elements of Obama's foreign policy, reversing the age of Reagan in the Republican Party.  The Reaganites are fighting back.  I hope (and believe) that they will make Paul unelectable.  From The New York Times: 

WASHINGTON — Rand Paul had just finished his opening remarks at a private gathering of Republican power brokers at the Four Seasons in Georgetown last fall when Phil Gramm, the former senator from Texas, shot up his hand with the first question.

“Let’s say you knew for certain that by May 1 of next year that Iran would have generated enough highly refined uranium to build a bomb,” Mr. Gramm said. “Would you support attacking?” Mr. Paul, the Republican junior senator from Kentucky, had a dodge at the ready. “Can I give you Romney’s answer?” he asked, drawing a few laughs from the crowd as he said that he did not answer hypotheticals.

Mr. Gramm demanded more of a response.

“What would you do?” the former senator insisted, but Mr. Paul was again vague.

An awkward silence fell over the room, and the moderator at the gathering quickly moved on to the next question.

The exchange, a recording of which was provided by someone in the room, showed how difficult it will be for Mr. Paul to straddle the treacherous fault line splitting the hawks of the Republican Party from others who favor a less aggressive foreign policy as he tests the waters for a presidential run in 2016.

As Mr. Paul opens new doors to younger voters and others who have turned away from Republicans, few issues have proved more persuasive for the libertarian-minded senator than his wariness of centralized authority and his skepticism of military intervention. Yet those same positions have alarmed powerful elements of the Republican base who have undertaken a campaign to portray Mr. Paul as dangerously misguided.

They include right-leaning supporters of Israel, neoconservative think tanks, veterans of the George W. Bush administration and the widely read writers of The Weekly Standard, National Review and the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. Underscoring the potential threat to Mr. Paul, these are not just influential voices but people who hold considerable clout in the moneyed circles that control the flow of cash into campaigns and “super PACs.”

COMMENT:  Rand Paul's best course is to stay in the Senate as a gadfly, and present ideas.  But he is simply too unformed to be running the show.  His views on foreign policy contradict everything we have learned about how peace is achieved.  No war ever got started because America is too strong.  Wars start from weakness and indecision, when one side believes it can get away with aggression.

The constant question surrounding Rand Paul is the degree to which he is influenced by his father, whom I found thoroughly obnoxious.  An isolationist, some of Ron Paul's views came uncomfortably close to racism and bigotry.  Rand seems more moderate and thoughtful, but we shouldn't have to be convinced of a candidate's commitment to national defense and a strong foreign policy.  It should be in the record, and it isn't.

May 24, 2014