Where did the GOP's foreign policy wise men go?

The world may not be as simple as Paul claims and the first-term senator may be badly misrepresenting the Reagan foreign policy he claims to champion. But who will step forward to articulate that alternative worldview?

Right now the alternative to Paul’s vision comes from Cheney. The former vice president is raising money for a new hawkish foreign policy organization and his fundraising emails sound just like his own Wall Street Journal op-ed. President Obama is weak, says Cheney, and terrorists are going to take advantage. This blunt, Hobbesian worldview and language is indistinguishable from Cheney’s posture of the past 13 years. There’s nothing in his pitch for a future foreign policy that acknowledges any personal mistakes or evolution in his thinking to match a changing world…

But what’s more entertaining than a Dick Cheney vs. Rand Paul fight? Their differences are stark! And both are good copy and rile up readers and viewers. The fight helps both Paul and Cheney, too. Paul needs the Cheney cartoon vision of foreign policy realism to convince primary voters that they must vote for him to avoid a return of neoconservatives like the guy in the cowboy hat with the knife in his teeth. Cheney needs Paul to convince foreign policy hawks that they should listen to him because the party might flounder and wind up supporting an isolationist who will bring terrorists to our doorsteps.