Senator Rand Paul pens over-the-top pander to pro-Israel crowd
For months, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), the libertarian-minded son of former Representative Ron Paul, has sought to burnish his pro-Israel credentials as he paves a path towards the 2016 presidential election. His latest attempt is an over-the-top column this week in the National Review calling on the U.S. to stop calling for Israeli “restraint” and to cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA)...
The article is a call for the army to go wild, and has little grounding in facts. U.S. taxpayer dollars are flowing to a West Bank government that is committed to past agreements with Israel; that has continued security coordination with Israel, including standing by while Israeli soldiers invaded the heart of Ramallah; and that is not about to integrate Hamas’ armed forces into the government. If the PA took any steps that undermined security coordination with Israel, the West would cut off aid in a heartbeat.
But the column is not about facts. It’s about ingratiating himself to a crowd that has money–the Sheldon Adelson crowd....
Whether Paul can triangulate on the issue of Israel and U.S. policy in the Middle East will be interesting to watch. He has to try to maintain grassroots support, predicated on his unorthodox views on foreign policy, with the establishment’s pro-Israel and pro-intervention consensus. But for those hoping Paul would be the vanguard of an unabashed libertarian foreign policy, the run-up to the 2016 election will be disappointing.
As I have said, the closer we get to the 2016 primaries the more Rand is going to move away from libertarian principles-RW
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