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How To Destroy Republican Realism

The Financial Times has published a reasonably fair editorial on Republican foreign policy woes, but it includes the very odd line: The old Republican foreign policy establishment, which includes Brent Scowcroft, James Baker and Henry Kissinger, who all served Nixon, is hoping that Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, throws his hat into the […]

The Financial Times has published a reasonably fair editorial on Republican foreign policy woes, but it includes the very odd line:

The old Republican foreign policy establishment, which includes Brent Scowcroft, James Baker and Henry Kissinger, who all served Nixon, is hoping that Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, throws his hat into the ring. That would enliven the debate [bold mine-DL].

If these old Republican foreign policy hands want another Bush to run for president, I’m afraid that doesn’t speak very well for their political or policy judgment. There might have been a time when old Republican realists could be forgiven for mistakenly believing that a younger Bush would follow in his father’s footsteps on foreign policy, but that illusion was dispelled very quickly during the previous administration. There is no excuse at this point to put any faith in a member of that family to conduct foreign policy in a sane or responsible way. More to the point, there is every reason to believe that Jeb Bush shares his brother’s views on foreign policy and approves of his brother’s record, and absolutely no reason to think the opposite. Nothing would be less likely to enliven intra-party debate than to have what few prominent realists remain in the GOP to align themselves with another candidate named Bush as he espouses the same bankrupt ideology that almost all of his would-be competitors have been promoting for the last several years. This wouldn’t do anything to help revive the Republican realist tradition, as the FT editors hope, but it would go a long way to make the last few well-known realists targets of widespread ridicule.

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