Matt Welch Talks Rand Paul on RT and The Real News

On Monday, February 4, I appeared on The Real News with Paul Jay to talk about the foreign policy divisions within the GOP and Tea Party, and where Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) fits in with them:

Then on Wednesday, February 6, I went on RT to talk more of the same:

Reason on Rand Paul here.

Comments

[invisible furry hand]

that's over 22 minutes of video. Matt, you're forgetting we're all ADHD around here. Can't you just... oh look over there, something shiny...

[PS]

We? Speak for yourself. Some of us are merely lazy and stupid.

[waaminn]

Gotta love those bought and paid for politicians lol.

http://www.AnoTimes.tk

[Bill Dalasio]

Interesting take. I do think Mr. Welch misses a significant factor muting conservatives' enthusiasm for intervention - war fatigue. It's been over eleven years since 9/11. We've pretty much been at war the entire time. We've had Afghanistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, now murmurings of Mali. In the meantime we've had a financial crisis and a major recession. When the hell is it over? Meanwhile, even the neoconservatives have to acknowledge that there's a significant chance that Iran will actually have nuclear weapons before they have a chance to intervene. At a certain point, you need a fallback position. And Paul's libertarian realism fits nicely within a long history of conservative foreign policy thought. Remember, realism (not phony pro-internationalist realism, but genuine skepticism about the ability to shape human nature), historically, defined the conservative perspective on foreign policy.

[wareagle]

some is war fatigue and some is telling the rest of the world "this is what you asked for." Remember the global anti-war parades after going into Iraq?

A lot of folks are pro-nonintervention at this point, due in large part to the US gets blamed either way, so let's get blamed without it costing us billions of dollars.