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Saturday, September 6, 2014

Rand Paul Is No "Flip-Flopper"

Rand Paul Is No "Flip-Flopper"

09/06/14
W. James Antle III
Domestic Politics, Elections, United States

"There’s a word for a strong but prudent and judicious approach: conservative."

The word that should terrify Rand Paul is not “isolationist,” despite reams of conventional wisdom to the contrary. It is “flip-flopper.”
Paul’s many critics are trying to affix the label that bedeviled Mitt Romney to the Kentucky senator’s evolving position on U.S. military intervention against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
The likely 2016 Republican presidential candidate has gone from emphasizing the role past U.S. interventions have played in unleashing jihadists and pleading for caution to pledging—or appearing to pledge—“to destroy ISIS militarily.” Reporters were quick to pounce.
The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin, writing with the restraint for which she is famous, called it “Rand Paul’s remarkable metamorphosis”: he “has decided that if you can’t beat the ‘neocons’ he might as well join them.” BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynzki prefers, “Rand Paul is basically throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks.”
Some of this is unfair. First, it is simply indisputable that regime change in Iraq set in motion the chain of events that ultimately allowed ISIS to thrive. While that suggests we should be reluctant to reengage in Iraq, it doesn’t logically end the discussion any more than opposition to arming the Afghan mujahedeen in the 1980s necessitated being against intervening in Afghanistan after 9/11.
Read full articlehttp://nationalinterest.org/feature/rand-paul-no-flip-flopper-11216

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