“He’s a knee-jerk isolationist,” King said of Paul in a separate interview. “Just the level of his arguments — ‘build bridges in the U.S. rather than Afghanistan’ — has superficial appeal. But what does that mean? Does he consider, analyze — what happens when we withdraw?”

No one is about to put King in the top tier of GOP 2016 hopefuls. As a single House member from liberal New York, he’d be handicapped in the race for money and exposure against the Chris Christies or Pauls of the GOP. His vocal support for stricter gun control laws would be tough to explain to conservative primary voters, as would his criticism of tea party lawmakers who “equate Obamacare with military action,” as he put it, because they both involve government spending…

“I want to make sure our alternative is better than theirs,” King, 69, said, adding that he’s “seriously” looking at a run but hasn’t decided yet. “If I’m going to be criticizing the Obama policies, and then we end up nominating someone whose policies I think are more dangerous than [Obama’s], we’ve failed as Republicans.”…

“I have more of an immediate responsibility because Rand Paul is in my party,” King said. “President Obama was elected; he’s entitled to run his foreign policy as commander in chief. What would be reassuring to me is knowing we have a real alternative for that coming up in 2016. But the thought that we have [something] worse than the Obama policy coming up.”