Democrats Attack Rand Paul For "Retreat" On Foreign Policy

Kevin Glass | August 29, 2014 7:30 AM

Yesterday the Democratic National Committee attacked GOP Sen. Rand Paul for holding a "blame America" stance and for a "retreat from the world."

Their statement:

It’s disappointing that Rand Paul, as a Senator and a potential presidential candidate, blames America for all the problems in the world, while offering reckless ideas that would only alienate us from the global community.
Unfortunately, this is nothing new for Paul. Last week he criticized American policy to the president of another country on foreign soil. This week he’s blaming the Obama Administration for another nation’s civil war. That type of “blame America” rhetoric may win Paul accolades at a conference of isolationists but it does nothing to improve our standing in the world.

This is exactly to be expected from the Democratic playbook. In fact, I took a look at what Democrats are planning to do with some of the prominent Republicans when it comes to foreign policy in a recent issue of Townhall Magazine.

What Democrats are going to try to do is portray Republicans, no matter what, with scare words like "isolationist" or "interventionist" or "neocon" or "hawk." From my piece:

It’s unclear if isolationism has been used in a non-pejorative way in the modern political era at all. With the ascendance of the United States to global superpower in the 20th century, very few politicians have advocated America’s removal from international affairs. More likely, advocates of aggressive American involvement tar any skeptics with the isolationist label.
“Democrats would love for the Republican candidate to be the ‘fringe’ candidate. The ‘dangerous’ candidate,” says James Carafano, vice president of national security and foreign policy at the Heritage Foundation. “It could be ‘dangerous-isolationist’ or ‘dangerous neocon.’ Democrats just want to say they’re the prudent alternative.”

Sen. Rand Paul certainly has heterodox views when it comes to foreign policy, and brings a much different vision than Republicans traditionally have. To counter Sen. Paul, the Democrats are resorting to attacks they used to decry as unfair. This is simple politics, but it's still important to counter them.