American Conservative Union
Not wanting to be left out the hawks-vs.-Rand melee, not-quite-yet-declared 2016 GOP candidate Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, sent out a blistering press release this morning, criticizing the junior senator from Kentucky for blaming the rise of ISIS on American hawks.
This is a perfect example of why Senator Paul is unsuited to be Commander-in-Chief. We have men and women in the military who are in the field trying to fight ISIS right now, and Senator Paul is taking the weakest, most liberal Democrat position. It's one thing for Senator Paul to take an outlandish position as a Senator at Washington cocktail parties, but being Commander-in-Chief is an entirely different job. We should all be clear that evil and Radical Islam are at fault for the rise of ISIS, and people like President Obama and Hillary Clinton exacerbate it. American weakness, not American strength, emboldens our enemies. Senator Paul's illogical argument clouds a situation that should provide pure moral clarity. Islam has a problem. ISIS is its current manifestation. And the next President's job is to have the discipline and strength to wipe ISIS off the face of the earth. It has become impossible to imagine a President Paul defeating radical Islam and it's time for the rest of us to say it.
Washington cocktail parties….DRINK!
As Jindal's statement exemplifies, the GOP's seemingly limitless supply of hawks have an unacknowledged problem that goes far beyond Rand Paul. Namely, they know what they're against—weakness! ISIS! Iran! Putin!—but they continue to be maddeningly vague and even silent about what, concretely, they would have the United States do in a world that stubbornly refuses to bend to the will of Washington's central planning. Absent specifics, the critique is mostly chest-puffing and name-calling circa 2003-04.
Americans have moved on from those days. When will the hawks?
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