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Does Romney Have an “Inner-Realist,” Struggling to Break Free?

To the extent I’ll be convention watching, I’ll be looking for clues about Romney’s foreign policy: is he as much a neocon captive as he appeared during the campaign? Or will he “discover his inner Nixon,” as Jacob Heilbrunn felicitously puts it? During the campaign Romney was awful — calling for new Cold War against […]

To the extent I’ll be convention watching, I’ll be looking for clues about Romney’s foreign policy: is he as much a neocon captive as he appeared during the campaign? Or will he “discover his inner Nixon,” as Jacob Heilbrunn felicitously puts it?

During the campaign Romney was awful — calling for new Cold War against Russia, planning to start a currency war with China, saying with seeming sincerity that he would follow Bibi Netanyahu’s advice on everything related to the Mid East. But Heilbrunn is somewhat optimistic because of what he calls Romney’s “oleaginous” character. He will tack according to the winds, and the winds are more often realist than neocon.

I’m less optimistic. But one reason I preferred Romney to his main opponents during the primary was that he was reportedly on friendly terms with Ron Paul. Not enough of course that he wants to allow the Paul campaign to make any noise or indeed let its voice be heard during the convention. That’s fairly typical. However, it probably does mean that Romney did not buy into into the Ron Paul-demon-isolationist-let-the-terrorists-win mythology which many neocons tried to turn into a kind of Republican Party loyalty oath. For Romney, it hints at a glimmer of independence. The convention is a time for Romney to begin signaling that he’s not simply a neocon enabler. If nevertheless the Romneyites give a sense that they think John Bolton is a serious foreign policy thinker, we can’t say we weren’t warned.

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