Palin’s Future and Neocon Rifts; the appeal of Palin is her malleability on foreign policy

[laststeamtrain]

Palin’s Future and Neocon Rifts

February 11th, 2010

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For Kristol, the appeal of someone like Palin, and Bush before her, is their malleability on foreign policy. With Sarah Palin’s propensity for “going rogue,” one has to wonder if Kristol is not concerned about her doing the same to the neocons. To wit: That’s exactly what happened with her endorsement of Rand Paul.

Paul, the son of Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the isolationist par-excellence of the libertarian right who has his own problems with the neocons, has taken a page from his father’s foreign policy book in the race for a Senate seat in Kentucky. Check out Paul the younger’s foreign policy campaign website (well, labeled as “National Defense,” anyway, because it seems Paul’s foreign policy is limited to trashing and defunding the U.N. and Bretton Woods institutions). There you’ll find a video where Paul says he would not have supported the war on Iraq. Now, that’s no way to make friends with Bill Kristol and his lot!

The story is one of the continuing rifts that are tearing apart the Republican Party — at least in, but not limited to, foreign policy. The Tea Baggers (cum quasi-isolationists) on one side and the neoconservatives on the other. It’s a debate that already played out in the 1980s — most notably with John McCain. In 2000, before Bush and Karl Rove’s reprehensible South Carolina push-polls sunk McCain’s candidacy, he was the top choice of neo-conservatives. McCain had, by that time, largely drifted from his post-Vietnam isolationism of the 1980s and early ’90s into an aggressive interventionist posturing — neocon territory, in other words.

Now it looks like the battle is playing out again. And the darling of the neocons, Palin, is caught in the middle. With her new comfort, however, she might not be running for office again. And if she spends her time endorsing the likes of Rand Paul, I’d say the Billy Kristols of the world will certainly be disappointed.

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[TwilightGardener]

1. They'll shape her into whatever they think will win, and the media will present that

image uncritically.

[Ozymanithrax]

2. Should Palin run and win she will do whatever she is told...

She hasn't got enough knowledge of foreign diplomacy, or anything else, and will easily be manipulated to do whatever is edgy and attitudy.