As last month's tense standoff in Ukraine morphed into a full-blown international crisis over the weekend, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio led the Republican charge in criticizing President Obama's handling of the situation and calling for a much tougher line against Russia.
First, in a Politico column on Saturday, Rubio outlined eight steps that he said the White House should take to “punish Russia” for its incursion into the Crimean Peninsula.
Then, in an appearance on “Meet the Press” the following day, the Florida Republican doled out more of the “heavy criticism” he said the administration deserves while also outlining the case for rethinking the U.S.-Russian relationship.
“They're increasingly behaving like an enemy of international peace and international norms,” Rubio said of the Putin regime. “If you look after the end of World War II and certainly through the Cold War era, the spread of democracy and freedom and established norms for nations to interact with one another so that we would never have another world war -- Russia doesn't, under this President Putin, does not seem interested in any of that. And they are, certainly as it regards to that, an enemy of the United States.”
This depiction was a stark yet unsurprising one, in that it came from one of the leading GOP advocates for a robust projection of U.S. power on the international stage.
Equally revealing -- and unsurprising -- in his response to the Ukraine crisis has been Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a likely rival to Rubio in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries.
From his opposition to intervention in Libya and Syria to his calls for cuts in the defense budget, Paul has been the standard-bearer in Washington for the Republican Party’s ascendant non-interventionist wing, which has shaken up the internal foreign policy debate within the GOP in recent years.
Early last week, Paul could not have sounded a more different note from Rubio’s than when the Kentucky senator told The Washington Post that the U.S. should seek a “respectful” relationship with Russia.Read the rest of the story HERE.
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3 comments:
At this point, I am not sur which camp I am in between the two of them.
I stand with Rand Paul and the Founding Fathers -
"To cherish peace and friendly intercourse with all nations having correspondent dispositions; to maintain sincere neutrality toward belligerent nations; to prefer in all cases amicable discussion and reasonable accommodation of differences to a decision of them by an appeal to arms; to exclude foreign intrigues and foreign partialities, so degrading to all countries and so baneful to free ones; to foster a spirit of independence too just to invade the rights of others, too proud to surrender our own, too liberal to indulge unworthy prejudices ourselves and too elevated not to look down upon them in others...." James Madison
Madison's Inaugural Address - The American Presidency Project
March 4, 1809
"The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible.... Trust in temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies... steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world." (President George Washington, Farewell Address, 1797)
"My policy has been, and will continue to be, while I have the honor to remain in the administration of the government, to be upon friendly terms with, but independent of, all the nations of the earth. To share in the broils of none. To fulfil our own engagements. To supply the wants, and be carriers for them all: Being thoroughly convinced that it is our policy and interest to do so." -- George Washington
(1732-1799) Founding Father, 1st US President, 'Father of the Country' - Source: 1795 - letter to Gouverneur Morris, ref: Washington's Maxims, 54.
"Honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none," (President Thomas Jefferson, Inaugural Address, 1801)
George Washington: "The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure." (1793.)
Well I'm sure! I'm in the peace through strength camp = Rubio. While there are things I like about Paul, his FP views disqualify him, IMO.
Tired of hearing things like this from the article:
"But to non-interventionist thinkers, Paul’s more cautious tact figures to pay long-term dividends among voters both in and out of the GOP, who increasingly want the United States to reduce its footprint on the international stage after more than a dozen years of war."
REDUCING OUR FOOTPRINT COSTS LIVES, period, end of story. It's disheartening that foolish isolationism has crept into the GOP. Events of late should disabuse all Republicans of the folly of receding from being the world leader. Disabling the military is the worst possible mistake. Not standing up for allies will lead to conflict in the future.
-Martha
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