The leaders of the group wouldn’t disclose which GOP presidential prospects they have been meeting with, though their first public event is the September 17 Rubio speech.
The Florida senator certainly embodies the brand of conservative foreign policy the Hay Initiative supports, but its leaders said they wouldn’t endorse any candidate, and as a 501(c)(4) classified nonprofit organization, they aren’t even affiliated with any political party, officially.
“A lot of it is driven by the concern that if you look at both parties, and you can call it neo-isolationism, you see people really calling into question American leadership and that America has to be actuated by both its interests and its ideals,” said Cohen. “The truth is you’re going to have to reconstruct American statecraft going forward from 2017 onwards, coping with the consequences of what’s happened over the last six and what will be eight years. No matter who is president in 2017, that’s going to be a very difficult proposition.”
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