Rand Paul is taking his controversial message on defense spending to GOP voters in the Hawkeye State, after earning both applause and a lecture from Florida Sen. Marco Rubio during the fourth Republican debate Tuesday.
The Kentucky senator kicked off a 48-hour swing through Iowa just hours after Tuesday’s debate in Milwaukee, where his heated exchange with Rubio over increased military spending emerged as one of the most memorable moments of the night.
Paul got mixed reactions when he argued that candidates who advocate expanding the Pentagon’s budget aren’t true fiscal conservatives. But the GOP hopeful repeated that message nonetheless during several meet-and-greets in the earliest voting state.
“Right now, most people don’t think that we’re going to be invaded by Germany or invaded by Iran. Most people do think we have a pretty strong national defense,” Paul told supporters in Des Moines.
“But we spend more on our national defense, more on our military than the next 10 countries combined,” he continued. “So the question is, are we stronger if we borrow our way? Are we going to be able to project power from bankruptcy court?”
“I think many people are beginning to ask that question,” Paul said.
While noting that the U.S. must be “vigilant [and] try to stop the bombing attacks from coming to us,” Paul maintained that Washington should “hold the line” on all federal spending, including defense.
“I don’t think we’re safer as we get further in debt,” Paul told dozens of veterans Wednesday during a campaign stop in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
Gabe Lanz, an Iraq and Afghanistan War veteran who attended Paul’s event in Des Moines, described the senator as a “lonely voice of sanity among the war drones in D.C.” to the Sioux City Journal.
Paul rose to eighth in the Washington Examiner’s post-debate presidential power rankings. Some have said the senator’s passionate defense of his libertarian-leaning philosophy on foreign policy during the fourth debate was what his supporters have been waiting for.
