Matt Welch on Rand Paul's Foreign Policy
To see how far Rand Paul has gotten in his project to inject libertarianism into a GOP foreign policy debate long dominated by neoconservatives and other interventionists, think back to what official Republicanism looked like only 27 months ago.
Then, just one month before a new and different-sounding Tea Party wave of freshmen politicians (including Paul) flooded into Capitol Hill talking about cutting rather than limiting the growth of government, Weekly Standard founder William Kristol, American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks, and Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner took to the pages of The Wall Street Journal to fire a shot across whippersnappers' bow: Don't you even think about cutting defense, kids.
Now Republicans are poised to allow a $55 billion military spending cut by the end of the month, and Rand Paul is gearing up to deliver a major speech on "restoring the Founders' vision of foreign policy" tomorrow at Ed Feulner's old stomping grounds, the Heritage Foundation. As Editor in Chief Matt Welch observes, that rumbling you feel beneath your feet might be the first harbinger of a tectonic shift.
