Republicans follow Rand Paul at their peril

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The Robert Taft Republicans Return
Isolationism has never served the interests of America, or the GOP.
By Bret Stephens, September 3, 2013

"We'll be lucky to get 80 Republicans out of 230." That's an astute GOP congressman's best guess for how his caucus now stands on the vote to authorize military force against Syria.

At town hall meetings in their districts, the congressman reports, House Republicans are hearing "an isolationist message." It's not America's war. The evidence that the Assad regime used chemical weapons is ambiguous, maybe cooked. There isn't a compelling national interest to intervene. "Let Allah sort it out." We'd be coming in on the side of al Qaeda. The strike serves symbolic, not strategic, purposes. There's no endgame. It would be another Iraq.

Or, to quote Sean Hannity in all his profundity, it would be "the next world war."

There's also the trust issue. "Why should I go out on a limb to help this president?" The this in that question, as House Republicans ask it, means Benghazi and Susan Rice, the IRS and Lois Lerner, the NSA and James Clapper. It means a president for whom all policy is partisanship, including the referral to Congress.

"Big move by POTUS," former Obama spinmeister David Axelrod tweeted over the weekend. "Consistent with his principles. Congress is now the dog that caught the car." Thanks, David, for that conciliating image to win over fence-sitting Republicans.

Most Republicans don't want to become, again, the party of isolationists. Not consciously at any rate. Nearly all of them profess fidelity to a strong military, to Israel's security, to stopping Iran's march to a bomb. And opposition to military intervention in Syria—particularly if it's of the pinprick sort being contemplated by the administration—isn't necessarily proof of isolationist sympathies. Henry Kissinger is opposed to intervening in Syria. Henry Kissinger is not, last I checked, an isolationist.

Yet the Syria debate is also exposing the isolationist worm eating its way through the GOP apple. Thus:

"The war in Syria has no clear national security connection to the United States and victory by either side will not necessarily bring into power people friendly to the United States." Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.).

"I believe the situation in Syria is not an imminent threat to American national security and, therefore, I do not support military intervention. Before taking action, the president should first come present his plan to Congress outlining the approach, cost, objectives and timeline, and get authorization from Congress for his proposal." Sen. Mike Lee (R., Utah).

"When the United States is not under attack, the American people, through our elected representatives, must decide whether we go to war." Rep. Justin Amash (R., Mich.)

Such faux-constitutional assertions—based on the notion that only direct attacks to the homeland constitute an actionable threat to national security—would have astonished Ronald Reagan, who invaded Grenada in 1983 without consulting a single member of Congress. It would have amazed George H.W. Bush, who gave Congress five hours notice before invading Panama. And it would have flabbergasted the Republican caucus of, say, 2002, which understood it was better to take care of threats over there rather than wait for them to arrive right here.

Then again, the views of Messrs. Paul, Lee and Amash would have sat well with Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio (1889-1953), son of a president, a man of unimpeachable integrity, high principles, probing intelligence—and unfailing bad judgment.

A history lesson: In April 1939, the man known as Mr. Republican charged that "every member of the government . . . is ballyhooing the foreign situation, trying to stir up prejudice against this country or that, and at all costs take the minds of the people off their trouble at home." By "this country or that," Taft meant Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The invasion of Poland was four months away.

Another history lesson: After World War II, Republicans under the leadership of Sen. Arthur Vandenberg joined Democrats to support the Truman Doctrine, the creation of NATO, and the Marshall Plan. But not Robert Taft. He opposed NATO as a threat to U.S. sovereignty, a provocation to Russia, and an undue burden on the federal fisc.

"Can we afford this new project of foreign assistance?" he asked in 1949. "I am as much against Communist aggression as anyone. . . but we can't let them scare us into bankruptcy and the surrender of all liberty, or let them determine our foreign policies." Substitute "Islamist" for "Communist" in that sentence, and you have a Rand Paul speech.

Which brings us to another isolationist idea: that what we do abroad takes away from what we have, and can spend, at home. When Barack Obama claims, dishonestly, that the cost of foreign wars is guilty of "helping to explode our deficits and constraining our ability to nation-build here at home," he is sounding this theme. So is Mr. Paul when he demagogues against foreign aid by insisting that "while we are trying in vain to nation build across the globe, our nation is crumbling here at home."

Republicans should know that deficits are exploding not because of military spending or foreign aid—as a percentage of GDP, George W. Bush spent less on defense in 2008 than Jimmy Carter did in 1980—but because of the growth of entitlement programs. Republicans should know, too, that investing in global order deters more dangerous would-be aggressors and creates a world congenial to American trade, security and values. One cost-effective way of doing that is making an example of a thug who flouts U.S. warnings and civilized conventions.

Taft couldn't understand this when it came to the dictators of his day. Neither does Mr. Paul when it comes to the dictators of today. The junior senator from Kentucky may not know it yet, but, intellectually speaking, he's already yesterday's man. Republicans follow him at their peril.
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