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James Joyner notes that Romney’s VFW foreign policy speech is mostly unremarkable boilerplate. He also says this: Even some of us who don’t take our talking points from Rush Limbaugh grumbled a bit about the “apology tour” in Obama’s early weeks. But that’s gone away as he’s settled into office. The trouble with this is [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
Scott Galupo doubts that Romney can attack Perry from left (on entitlements) and right (on immigration) at the same time (via Allison): But, at this point in the history of U.S politics, it would be a highly unusual creature who could launch both attacks simultaneously. I would love to believe that Romney’s phony demagoguery will [...]
Filed under: immigration, politics
Pete Wehner believes that Ryan’s budget proposal is not much of a political liability: To put it another way, four months after Ryan’s plan was introduced, it is nothing like the political liability many people thought it would be. In fact, the public’s attention remains focused on the debt and the deficit as well as [...]
Filed under: politics
Zack Beauchamp comments on the MEK rally in Washington today: When was the last time you could remember any other terrorist organization that killed Americans demonstrating outside the White House and lobbying influential American politicians? What’s next, HezbollahPAC? I suppose other organizations could try to do this, but no one would want to have anything [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
Ross doesn’t see much use in the Huntsman strategy Dan McCarthy discussed yesterday: When Paul feuded with Giuliani over foreign policy four years ago, he was separating himself from the pack on an issue that actually mattered, both to the Republican electorate and to the country as a whole. Whereas by casting himself as the [...]
Filed under: politics
Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s essay on the history of military intervention and its non-interventionist critics includes an interesting discussion of Richard Cobden and John Bright, who were the leading British opponents of the Crimean War: Within a matter of years, this had ceased to be an abstract question: the Crimean War against Russia, ostensibly fought out of [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
Conor Friedersdorf wonders what happened to Howard Dean: He’s praising drone strikes and special ops because they’re less likely to attract the scrutiny and criticism from American citizens. It’s a position one doesn’t expect a prominent Iraq war dissenter to take — you’d think he of all people would understand that it’s vital for the [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
The Economist reviewed Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia, a new book on Burma written by Thant Myint-U the grandson of former U.N. Secretary-General U Thant: But the book’s main analytical and polemical point is tellingly made: in the absence of a Western counterbalance, Myanmar is falling almost inexorably into [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
Matt Duss debunks the myth that the Iranian government is filled with suicidal maniacs: According to Mehdi Khalaji, an Iran analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who spent years studying Shia theology in the Iranian seminary city of Qom, Ayatollah Khamenei — who, unlike Ahmadinejad, actually controls Iranian foreign policy — is [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
For some reason, Michael Rubin hates the president of Kyrgyzstan (via Nathan Hamm): Yes, that’s right: Let’s wish Otunbaeva, the former communist functionary who was one of the coup leaders who overthrew her predecessor and has since cozied up to Vladimir Putin in Russia a truly long life. May it be as long as Muammar [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics