Rubio’s move to speak out forcefully on the issue carries little short-term political risk for a senator positioning himself as a strong Obama critic in advance of a presidential run he is expected to launch about a year from now.
But to non-interventionist thinkers, Paul’s more cautious tact figures to pay long-term dividends among voters both in and out of the GOP, who increasingly want the United States to reduce its footprint on the international stage after more than a dozen years of war.
“Obama’s a unifying issue for Republicans, and it’s pretty safe if you’re aspiring to something higher to build your support within the Republican base by criticizing Obama,” said Chris Preble, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute. “But there are huge differences between Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, and eventually those details are going to get fleshed out.”
In a Pew Research Center poll released in December, 51 percent of respondents said that the United States invests too much in trying to solve world problems. Just 17 percent, however, said that the U.S. does too little, and 28 percent said it does the right amount.
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