Palin may or may not have supported Pat Buchanan in the 1990s. She supported all of the above during the Bush administration. In 2008, she described Ron Paul as “cool.”

The GOP has followed a similar course. Even since Barack Obama has been president, we have seen Republicans vote with Dennis Kucinich against war in Libya and actually stop war with Syria. Then some of those same Republicans have rapped Obama for being too dovish with Russia and Iran.

The New York Times‘ Ross Douthat has observed, “the Republican base doesn’t really have a detailed set of foreign policy positions.”

“What it has, instead,” he continues, “is the cluster of sympathies and instincts (pro-Israel, pro-military, nationalist rather than globalist, fretful about radical Islam, skeptical of international institutions) that Walter Russell Mead has famously dubbed ‘Jacksonianism,’ which can incline G.O.P. voters for or against different policy choices depending on how those options are presented.”