Greg Scoblete reacts to Kevin Drum’s dismissal of Ron Paul:

But here’s the thing, if you support a non-interventionist foreign policy (or more precisely, a less interventionist one) what do you do? As Andrew Sullivan notes, there is literally no other candidate in either party that represents your views.

Since we’re talking about presidential candidates, this is correct. It’s true that there are some Democratic politicians with a strong record of opposing unnecessary wars, but none of them is running in this cycle, and back in 2008 there were arguably only two (Kucinich and Gravel). Obama isn’t opposed to all preventive wars, and Drum should remember that his administration started another war just a few months ago. Paul isn’t the only person to oppose preventive wars, but in the Republican Party he was among the first to do so.

As it happens, it’s true that “non-interventionism has no other significant voices except Ron Paul” in the current presidential election, and probably the only other nationally-known Republican figure who would be able to match him is his son. The amusing conceit in all of this is that Paul has been or will be bad for non-interventionism. Far fewer people paid any attention to these ideas just five years ago. Non-interventionism has gone from being a more or less marginal position to one that is starting to receive a lot more attention and at least a little serious consideration. It’s impossible to ignore that this wouldn’t have happened had it not been for Paul’s last two presidential campaigns.