Paul picks foreign policy fights with GOP

The Kentucky senator didn’t try to paper over or shy away from his foreign policy differences with the rest of the Republican field. He went out of his way to say he had always opposed the Iraq War. And he went on to suggest that many of his opponents hadn’t necessarily learned the lessons of that war, even if they now reluctantly concede it was a mistake.

“Every time we have toppled a secular dictator, we have gotten chaos, the rise of radical Islam, and we’re more at risk,” he argued. “So, I think we need to think before we act, and know most interventions, if not a lot of them in the Middle East, have actually backfired on us.”

Like his father, Paul raised the example of Ronald Reagan negotiating with the Soviet Union when he suggested we shouldn’t be afraid to talk to our enemies. Pressed on whether an anti-Islamic State strategy that relies on Arab boots on the ground could work, he flatly said that there are 14 other candidates you can vote for if you want a reinvasion of Iraq. (Poor Jim Gilmore gets no respect.)

A lot of the criticism Paul has received from libertarians and antiwar conservatives on foreign policy has been exaggerated, in my view. None of the positions Paul outlined in Wednesday night’s debate were exactly new. The contrast between him and the rest of the presidential candidates in both parties was clear enough.

But it is true that this isn’t exactly the campaign Paul initially seemed inclined to run. He had hoped to have his father’s base nailed down by this point so he could begin reaching out to more conventional conservatives, convincing them his less interventionist message wasn’t so scary and certainly not reflective of threats to national security, particularly those posed by radical Islam.

Paul has always enjoyed his greatest success when he can frame his anti-interventionist arguments as also being anti-Barack Obama and anti-Hillary Clinton. That’s why he was able to convince a broad cross-section of Republicans to “stand with Rand” on drones and surveillance – the GOP rank-and-file demanded it – as well as the Obama administration’s proposed bombing of Syria. He’s also often preferred to make “Hillary Clinton’s war” in Libya his example of counterproductive interventions.

We saw some of that Wednesday night. Paul mentioned that there will always be a Bush or a Clinton ready to take us to war in Iraq, pointing to the Democratic front-runner’s vote for the invasion. He mentioned Democratic support for military action against Syria in 2013.

“Had we bombed Assad at the time, like President Obama wanted, and like Hillary Clinton wanted and many Republicans wanted, I think ISIS would be in Damascus today,” he said. “I think ISIS would be in charge of Syria had we bombed Assad.”

Yet Paul, more like his father than his usual custom, also showed a willingness to raise these foreign policy arguments even when doing so yielded no obvious benefits with a Republican audience. The senator reiterated that he was voting against the Iran deal, but also emphasized that he supported diplomacy with Tehran and wouldn’t even tear up Obama’s agreement without first checking for Iranian compliance with its terms.

Paul counseled caution and prudence in dealing with Russia and China rather than entering into a bidding war over who could sound toughest. Perhaps it isn’t so radical to assert that there’s more to foreign policy than the use of military force, but other candidates weren’t exactly jumping to take the same positions.

“Sometimes both sides of the civil war are evil, and sometimes intervention makes us less safe,” Paul contended. “This is real the debate we have to have in the Middle East.”

None of this got Paul booed off the stage (in some cases, there was even more than a smattering of applause) and his arguments were certainly more measured than his dad’s. In any context besides foreign policy, these would be standard conservative observations about the unintended consequences of government actions.

If you were looking for crowd-pleasing lines that would really get a bunch of Republicans going, however, these weren’t it. As long as we are talking about Obama’s Iran deal rather than Democratic wars or overreach, it’s hard for Paul to recreate the conditions of 2013 when he was able to rally Ron Paul Republicans and more mainstream GOPers simultaneously.

Paul also went further in defending marijuana liberalization on the merits rather than purely on federalist, 10th Amendment grounds than one might have expected. He has been a consistent critic of mass incarceration.

But foreign policy has always been what has animated the libertarians first attracted to his father’s presidential campaigns the most. It’s also always been the riskiest subject for him to discuss with Republican Party regulars.

Will any of it help his campaign regain its footing? I thought his NSA exchanges with Chris Christie would be a net positive last time, but instead they seemed to hurt both men. In the immediate aftermath of the debate, his stances were praised in the Nation while criticized as “waffling” and “weak” by a caller to a conservative radio talk show on which I appeared, the opposite of the response a Republican presidential candidate wants.

In terms of building the movement his campaign was supposed to lead even if, as seems likely, he loses, engaging these arguments is essential. The activists and organizations inspired by the Pauls are still young and could atrophy in the absence of a national debate to motivate them. And Donald Trump’s vocal criticism of the Iraq War proves that foreign policy deviationism isn’t a guaranteed loser, even if Jeb Bush’s biggest applause line was his praise for brother George W Bush.

Paul’s early triangulation may not have worked, but Trump’s meteoric rise proved that the thought process behind it isn’t entirely wrong. The billionaire’s ability to bond on a visceral level with a subset of angry conservatives has enabled him to take a wide range of heterodox positions.

Only time will tell if Rand’s performance was too little, too late or a sign that the vaunted libertarian moment isn’t over yet.