“Republicans should be seizing foreign policy, and not become a pale shadow of the Democratic party,” Bolton says. “The Democratic party, under Obama, is weak on foreign policy and national security, unlike it has been in years past. Joe Lieberman has retired, there’s no Scoop Jackson wing in the Senate. Republicans have an opportunity to argue and win back the debate, to put things on the agenda that have fallen away. I firmly believe that if a Republican can do that as a candidate, and make a compelling case in Iowa, South Carolina, and New Hampshire, well before a general election, then there’s a real opportunity to win.”…

Moving ahead, Bolton is expecting two things: Conservatives who have long cheered him may be turned off by some of his social views, and the national political press will likely be divided between hostility and indifference. “I have the advantage or disadvantage of having never run before, and I speak in longer sentences than you find on Twitter,” he says. “But that’s part of my hypothesis. People are ready for something with more depth.” On domestic issues, he says, he’s a self-proclaimed “libertarian,” which he knows will jar people who think he’s interested in running purely to irk Senator Rand Paul, another likely 2016 candidate and Bolton’s ideological opposite on foreign policy. “My argument is that you can’t protect your liberties at home unless we are protected internationally,” he says. “I think that argument can have currency across the Republican spectrum.”

“I can go to voters and tell them, without reservation, that I’m for limited government, as much as possible, on taxes, on regulations, but on foreign policy, I want to make sure we’re protected,” Bolton explains. “It’d be a mix of being against nanny-ism and libertarianism. On abortion, I’m about the same as Reagan; I’m against it except in the cases of rape, incest, or the life of the mother. On gay marriage, I support it, at both the state level and the federal level. Gay marriage is something I’ve thought about at length as I’ve looked at my future. I concluded, a couple years ago, that I think it should be permissible and treated the same at both levels.”