Texas Gov. Rick Perry (left) and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (right), took aim at each other in op-eds over Iraq. (Photo: AP)
The liberal media is getting a kick out of the Paul vs Perry feud playing out in two left-leaning if not leftist publications, the Washington Post and Politico. Just when Texas Gov. Rick Perry was enjoying fairly wide-spread praise for his handling of the border crisis, he decided to take a shot at the man many believe to be the front-runner for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.
On July 11, Perry penned an op-ed in The Washington Post criticizing Paul among other “noninterventionists of today” for being “curiously blind” to the threat from the Islamic State currently seizing vast amounts of territory in Iraq, adding that President Reagan would disagree with Paul for “drawing his own red line along the water’s edge.”
“Paul is an articulate advocate for his views, which are shared by many on the left and some on the right,” Perry wrote. “But in today’s world, with today’s threats, we still cannot ‘take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost.’ That was President Reagan’s warning,” he added.
“Sen. Paul would be wise to heed it.”
Every potential or hopeful Republican presidential nominee invokes the party standard-bearer, President Ronald Reagan. And why wouldn’t they. It’s been more than 30 years since Reagan smoked another liberal president who was a foreign policy failure, President Jimmy Carter, and yet Americans consistently rate the Gipper the best president in the modern era. That’s quite a feat considering convention political wisdom argues Republican candidates are doomed by demographics and can’t put together a winning coalition.
Nevertheless, while this little feud makes for a great headline, it might be worthwhile for the Republican Party going forward to debate who is actually staying true to the Great Communicator. It is difficult to speculate as to what exactly Reagan would have done in response to the ISIS offensive in Iraq, and one might make the argument that it is impossible to know for sure. That would be a fair position to take, but we can get some idea because we know what he did do in response to foreign policy crisis when in office, and some of those closest to him remain in the public eye today.
In one respect, both Perry and Paul make claims that are at least somewhat valid, but only one is closer to the historical record.
“Reagan led proudly from the front, not from behind, and when he drew a ‘red line,’ the world knew exactly what that meant,” Perry wrote. That’s certainly true, but as Paul wrote in Politico, many Republicans of today “get it so wrong regarding Ronald Reagan’s doctrine of ‘peace through strength.’ Strength does not always mean war.”
In fact, “Ronald Reagan never wanted to be a war president, and there were no wars on Reagan’s watch. None. The Gipper was no neocon,” Pat Buchanan wrote on Townhall.com back in April. As a senior advisor to President Reagan, as well as another conservative with strong libertarian leanings, Buchanan would know.
And history validates his claim. Not only were there no wars during Reagan’s presidency, but he managed to achieve a relative peace and working relationship with the Soviet Union.
“Reagan hated war, particularly the specter of nuclear war,” Paul added, and he is also correct on that account. Reagan hated nuclear weapons, or what he called “those god-awful things,” and hoped to build “Stars Wars” to render them obsolete. But unlike Obama, who sold Poland and other eastern European allies out during the reset, Reagan always negotiated from a position of strength, as not to find himself forced into war from weakness.
When Gorbachev at Reykjavik issued a demand to scrap Star Wars, or the Strategic Defense Initiative, Reagan boldly stood up and walked out on the Soviet leader.
“Unlike his more hawkish critics — and there were many — Reagan was always thoughtful and cautious,” Paul claimed.
Again, he’s correct. While he did not believe in a Kennedy-esque symmetrical response foreign policy, due to the risk of falling into a classic crisis of credibility, a sad amateur lesson Obama learned by drawing a “red line” in Syria, Buchanan also correctly noted that “Reagan believed in a measured response.”
There is no doubt that Gov. Rick Perry and other Republicans sound their battle cries inaccurately in the name of Reagan. But specifically regarding Rand Paul, it is more than fair to suggest other top 2016 contenders intentionally mislead and mischaracterize both Paul’s and Reagan’s philosophies on foreign policy. Paul is often incorrectly referred to as an isolationist, while Reagan’s reluctance to engage in intervention is at least as often downplayed.
Paul is leading the potential GOP pack on the PPD average of polls for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination by just 1 point, but he is way ahead of Perry by 13.2 – 4.4 percent. Even more challenging for Perry, Paul is either ahead or very competitive in the first in the nation caucus state of Iowa, and leads in the first in the nation primary state of New Hampshire. The electorate in the latter of the two, is nearly tailored perfectly to Paul’s libertarian-leaning ideology, which means they despise interventionists, particularly during poor economic conditions, the NSA spying and drones flying over their heads.
Under Reagan, the Republican Party was successful on the national level thanks to the three-legged stool strategy, which stood on fiscal and economic conservatism, social conservatism and strong national defense. This is a coalition that many in the party desperately seek to rebuild. However, the false labels stamped on Sen. Rand Paul and President Ronald Reagan have hindered the party’s ability to expand its appeal. Until Republicans finally separate the myth from the man and have an honest debate over what constitutes interventionist and isolationist policies — a debate not portrayed as a joke in the liberal media — it will be increasingly difficult to put together a national coalition.
