Republican lawmakers should stand up now because it is also a necessary course correction for their entire party. Democrats survived the Cold War and the charge of “losing China” by over-compensating in their militarism and their anti-communism. Even then, the foreign policy electoral advantage of Republicans was massive for four decades. But the polarity of American foreign policy politics may have reversed.
Since the end of the Cold War, Democrats have beaten Republicans in the presidential popular vote in each contest but 2004. Even though the most prominent Democrats supported the Iraq War, the foreign policy disadvantage from that debacle has almost entirely accrued to Republicans. 2006 was a foreign policy election and Republicans were turned out en masse. They only came back in the highly unusual domestic policy backlash against Obama in 2010. Hillary Clinton lost the 2008 presidential nomination over Iraq. A mistake she won’t make twice.
As panelists pointed out at the recent “New Internationalism” conference held by The American Conservative and (liberal-leaning) The American Prospect, popular opinion in England and the United States held Congress and the president from committing military resources to another regime change in Syria last year. The American people want a foreign policy that protects jobs, that promotes peace and prosperity. Four out of five Americans Pew polled say that America should spend more resources concentrating on problems at home rather than abroad.
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