Ernst has made several campaign appearances with Lindsay Graham, one of the most high-flying hawks in the party, and attacked her opponent as someone who “voted twice to defund our men and women as they were serving in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.” After a summer of news cycles featuring the gruesome beheadings of American journalists by ISIS, the American people are in favor of greater involvement in Iraq, not less. And Ernst has slammed Obama for a lack of direction on the emerging Islamic State.
Ernst is not the only Bush-era throwback in the election. Cory Gardner, who is running close to Democratic Sen. Mark Udall in Colorado, has vowed not to cut funding or support from military intervention in the Middle East, saying, “It is important that we do not leave a region until it is secure.” Tom Cotton, running for the Senate from Arkansas, is, like Ernst, a veteran who supports a more hawkish foreign policy than Obama and is willing to make noise about it…
The election may have real consequences for foreign policy, as the deadline for negotiations on an Iranian nuclear deal comes in just a few weeks. These throwback Republicans do not agree with a more libertarian or non-interventionist re-think of the GOP after the Bush presidency. If anything, they are likely to see the drawdown in Iraq after the surge as part of the ongoing problems in the region. They will pick fights with Obama over Israel now that the administration has made its displeasure with the government of the Jewish state so obvious and public. In many ways, this revival of GOP hawkishness is an attempt to re-run the 2004 campaign against John Kerry: They portray their opponents as weak on defense, and not fully committed to the national interest abroad.
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