How Did I Not See This Coming?
I would always defer to my former boss [Newt Gingrich], if you will, as I was a pup freshman as he was speaker, on issues of foreign policy. ~Gov. Mark Sanford
Via Will at Ordinary Gentlemen
Well, I would say this pretty much puts to rest Reihan’s fears of burgeoning antiwar sentiment on the right. Then again, one might point out that on any number of issues Sanford has not deferred to Gingrich’s judgment. Gingrich quite publicly backed the invasion of Iraq, and just a few weeks back Sanford relayed his objections to the war in Iraq to Michael in his profile of the governor. One assumes that the skepticism he showed regarding the bombing of Yugoslavia made him wary of backing the invasion at the time. As for Gingrich’s view on Kosovo, I don’t think Gingrich was doing much publicly to back the campaign so soon after his resignation, but it is basically unimaginable that he would have been in opposition to it. It’s not just that Sanford defers to Gingrich on North Korea policy, but that he pretends that he would never disagree with him, when we already know that he has agreed with him and the general direction of foreign policy Gingrich et al. represent.
Now I understand that Sanford is a member of the Republican Party, he was appearing on FoxNews, and he might actually want to be elected to another office someday, so I can’t say I am surprised. I suppose I am not so much disappointed in such an embarrassing statement from Sanford as I am depressed that the range of acceptable foreign policy debate in leading Republican circles stretches all the way from “attack them” (it does not really matter which state we’re discussing) to the cliche of “actions, not words.” When Chris Wallace is the one playing the role of the reasonable skeptic of military action to Sanford’s relative belligerence, there is no hope for sane foreign policy taking root in the GOP.
P.S. Yes, Freddy, some people might be a tad disappointed.
Update: After thinking about it a little more, I realize that Sanford’s deference to Gingrich is worse than it seemed at first. He isn’t just deferring to him to obscure the non-interventionist streak in his own record, but he is also doing it because governors always feel obliged to defer in this area to supposed wonks. In practical terms, this means that any governor, no matter how good his instincts and no matter how sound his past views, will end up deferring to more interventionist wonks for the simple reason that the GOP is lousy with interventionist wonks and has very few representing another side of the debate. At the risk of exaggerating, I don’t think it’s too much to say that we saw the basic reason for Republican foreign policy dysfunction on display in that one clip: all the most likely potential candidates for presidential office (i.e., governors) end up receiving horrible advice from entrenched wonks, and many of the former don’t know or care enough to recognize how bad the latter are at what they do, and the governors don’t have the confidence to risk pushing back or challenging them even when the wonks say crazy things about attacking North Korea.
13 Responses to “How Did I Not See This Coming?”
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All he had to say was, “Please, no more than two wars at a time.” I hope the governor was just kicking the question down the road as it were. But it’s definitely not a good sign. Maybe we should start The Adult Party.
Certainly this is disappointing, but I wouldn’t abandon all hope that Sanford won’t be a voice for the anti-war right. I got the impression he was just punting on the question. I wouldn’t read too much into one Fox News interview.
Sanford will never be able to run as the “America First” candidate some of us want him to be, but even at this point in time he’s infinitely better than the alternatives (Romney, Palin, etc.).
Sanford will not go anywhere. He sort of has principles. And he has a wife that makes Lady McBeth look sanguine. Don’t look at Sanford to see what he will do, look at his wife. I can tell you he is running for president.
And don’t look for a hell of a lot of republicans in South Carolina to support him. He’s pissed off about the entire party.
There are interventionist wonks, and then there are successful interventionist wonks. The GOP haven’t really fielded any of the latter in a generation. Moreover the pld guard (Scowcroft, Lugar, Warner, Baker,etc.) wears the RIno hat these days, so they are just not acceptable to the vocal party base.
The bench of realist foreign policy wonks is just not that deep. Where are potential Republican candidates going to find any wonks that are going to advocate a little humility? AEI? Heritage? Apart from the “Paleos” and the libertarians, I suspect that a lot of the Republicans who aren’t still watching their DVD of 300 have already jumped ship to the Dems….maybe Obamanomics will scare them back, but that still doesn’t re-establish their credibility within the party.
Oh, and I forgot to ask, since when has Newt been an FP wonk? He made his rep in the domestic arena. At the time he was “up and coming”, there was still a Soviet Union….he was never called upon to do more than mouth the Reagan-era homilies. Am I forgetting some courageous moment when he broke with convention?
Gingrich was anti-war while Clinton was president, but has since discarded that stance. He was just on TV yesterday (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0409/20906.html) yammering on about how he would have attacked N. Korea’s launch site prior to the test.
Sure, it may have been posturing, but me thinks posturing about starting a war which would devastate Korea and quite possibly draw in China, shows that Gingrich is a complete and total wingnut – just like the rest of the establishment Republicans.
“The bench of realist foreign policy wonks is just not that deep.”
This is true, but what is worse is that the realist bench is North Carolina compared to the non-interventionist bench, an observation I have made before.
There is barely a FP non-interventionist team let alone a bench. The non-interventionists that are out there are mostly commentators and activists, and experienced foreign policy people. The alt right needs to focus on this. Developing a credible stable of genuine non-interventionists.
The whole establishment is set up against this though. Many of the places where non-interventionists might get experience they don’t think should exist and operate with fundamentally opposite assumptions.
“and experienced foreign policy people.”
oops … I meant and NOT experienced foreign policy people.
Babbling about attacking NK when out of power is not wonkery….it’s, like, anti-wonkery. As you say, posturing for the plebes.
I agree with Red that the “alt right” should concern itself with developing a farm team. There are some of us on the putative left….a few of good will….who might be willing to help and yet not to use it as a club later on.
A dream, I know.
I agree that Gingrich is not a foreign policy wonk in that he doesn’t know very much about the subject, but that’s half the problem. He has a reputation as a general “ideas” man, and so people defer to him as if he knew something regardless of his background in the subject. What Gingrich was saying about NK is anti-wonkery of sorts, but the problem is that this is what foreign policy “debate” on the right has devolved into over the last decade among those regarded as Republican authorities on the subject.
Daniel ‘Doctor’ Larison: ” In practical terms, this means that any governor, no matter how good his instincts and no matter how sound his past views, will end up deferring to more interventionist wonks for the simple reason that the GOP is lousy with interventionist wonks and has very few representing another side of the debate.”
Another way to put it is that hawkery is a core issue with the GOP, where ‘core issue’ means that dissent is anathema.
I have great respect for New Gingrich. Unfortunately, the action that needs to be taken with regards to North Korea shooting a missile. It is for Japan. It is Japanese Air Space that North Korea needed to seek permission and if done so would have been refused. It was for Japan to notify China and South Korea that they were going to shoot it down…and any backlash would force the nuclearization of Japan. This would put Japan in the position of being respected for their own self defense.
Further, such action by Japan would have supported pressure from the US toward China to completely eliminate the North Korean threat via unification. Yes, neither China nor Japan want to deal with another major power player that a unified Korea would become. However, a unified Korea is the only thing that will prevent a nuclear South Korea and a nuclear Japan or the use of North Korean war to deflect an invasion of Taiwan. Any of which would put all of Asia on a war footing with the US right in the middle.
Anything less than Korean unification is postposing war or nuclearization.
However, push comes to shove, both China and Japan have gotten along quite nicely with South Korea and would likely continue to do so under a Korea unified under South Korea.
And the fact that it could take 50 years to bring North Korea up to South Korean standards should allay any fears of a unified Korea conflicting or threatending Japan or China.
Nothing but good can come from Korean unification.
Nothing but bad can come from post poning unification.
Now that we all know for sure that Mark Sanford is no Ron Paul, is their any Republican out their with a conservative, non-intervention, Republican foreign policy?