Rand Paul is mad as hell, and he’s not going to take it anymore.
Apparently fed up with constant criticism of his foreign policy position from long-sitting Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the Republican Senate freshman from Kentucky accused McCain and Graham of being “lapdogs” for President Obama.
Responding specifically to criticism this week from Graham, Paul said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that the South Carolina senator and McCain have been “wrong about every policy issue over the last couple decades.”
Paul cited specific Obama positions, including proposed military action in Libya, calls to bomb Syrian President Bashar Assad, and giving foreign aid to countries that oppose the United States, that he opposes and that McCain and Graham support.
“People who call loudest to criticize me are great proponents of President Obama’s foreign policy — they just want to do it 10 times over,” Paul said. “So I’m really the one standing up to President Obama. And these people are essentially the lapdogs for President Obama and I think they’re sensitive about that.”
Paul, who announced this month that he would run for president in 2016, said he is a “Reagan Republican” and that U.S. lawmakers need to be mindful that intervention overseas could lead to “unintended consequences.”
“Their foreign policy is so disjointed, confusing and chaotic,” Paul said of Obama’s foreign policy and those on the Right who support it, “that really people need to reexamine those who want to be involved with any war. I think we get involved when there’s an American interest. I think we have to militarily stop [the Islamic State]. But I’m sad that ISIS got a lot of weapons from interventionists in my party and the president who gave them weapons indirectly.”
Graham said Monday that Paul is “more wrong than right” when it comes to issues of foreign policy, adding in a discussion on MSNBC that “even Obama” is better than the Kentucky presidential candidate when it comes to dealing with threats abroad.
“I want to fight a war,” Graham announced Sunday in comments critical of Paul’s desire to crush the Islamic State rather than engaging in a broader conflict that would pit the United States simultaneously against both the Islamic State and its regional enemies in Syria and Iran.
Graham, who also accused Paul of wanting to “lead from behind” on foreign policy, is joined in his attacks on the libertarian-minded lawmaker by longtime colleague McCain, who said Paul “just doesn’t understand” foreign policy.
Like Graham, McCain would like to expand the mission against the Sunni caliphate that controls a large area of Iraq and Syria. He has criticized Obama’s request for authorization to use force against the Islamic State for not also bringing American forces into armed conflict with Bashar al-Assad’s Baath dictatorship — which, in alliance with Iranian forces and Lebanese Hezbollah, has been engaged in a bloody and indecisive war against the Islamic State for three years.
Following Paul’s nearly 13-hour senate filibuster on March 5, 2013, of the Obama administration’s use of unmanned drones, McCain and Graham were among the first to criticize the Kentucky senator for questioning the federal government’s use of the new technology.
(h/t Mediaite)
