Michael Gerson naturally approves of Rubio’s bad foreign policy speech:

It deserved the designation “major” for its courage, skill and moral seriousness. The courage came in criticizing a drift toward isolationism within the Republican Party.

Yes, Rubio is risking so much to challenge the great power of “isolationism.” Of course, actual isolationism doesn’t exist in the GOP or anywhere else in modern America. One would also be hard-pressed to find many contemporary advocates of U.S. neutrality today, but that is at least a position that some living Americans hold. How did Marco the Bold criticize the “drift toward isolationism”? By employing the most ridiculous caricature of a non-interventionist view possible:

And I disagree with voices in my own party who argue we should not engage at all. Who warn we should heed the words of John Quincy Adams not to go “abroad, in search of monsters to destroy”.

As I said yesterday, not going abroad in search of monsters to destroy is extremely different from “not engaging at all.” The former implies rejecting* a policy of ideological crusading and endless foreign wars. This is the opposite of what Rubio supports. Opponents of endless foreign wars do not propose that the U.S. cease all international engagement, but that U.S. engagement with other nations be commercial and diplomatic, and that the U.S. should use force only for its own self-defense and the securing of truly vital interests. According to Rubio’s warped definition of international engagement, one must choose between being completely cut off from the world on the one hand or the exhausting pursuit of global hegemony and constant meddling in the affairs of other nations on the other. Attacking a position of total disengagement from the world that no one holds is the easiest exercise in knocking down a strawman argument imaginable. Not only does no one subscribe to such a view, but the politician who attacks it is certain to be rewarded with praise for having rejected it. Witness the fawning admiration Rubio is already receiving as proof.

Rubio was saying exactly what his political allies in the Senate and his party leaders wanted him to say. If there is a better recent example of timid conformism, I’m having trouble thinking of it. The fact that Gerson describes such a slipshod, ideological speech as “foreign policy sanity” is a reminder of how attached to Bush’s disastrous foreign policy so many Republicans remain despite its many major failures.

* This was omitted in the original posting.