Can Paul resurrect conservative realism?

Here’s How Rand Paul’s Conservative Realism Could Change the GOP

By W. JAMES ANTLE III 

If you want a preview of the standard Republican critique of Rand Paul’s foreign policy ahead of the 2016 primaries, Illinois Congressman Adam Kinzinger is your man.

The freshman lawmaker told ABC’s “This Week” that his fellow Republican “put out budgets to cut the military in half.” To drive the point home, Kinzinger added, “I think that would be devastating for our party right now on national security.”

Nonpartisan fact-checkers have rated Kinzinger’s assertion about the size of Paul’s proposed defense cuts false. But if you throw in the “I word”—isolationism, naturally—that’s pretty much what the Kentucky senator can expect from the kind of Republican who would “love” to see Jeb Bush run for president.

Paul has increasingly been pushing back against such caricatures. The latest example is his speech last week to the Center for the National Interest: “The Case for Conservative Realism.” More artfully crafted than some of his previous foreign-policy addresses, it might not have been right in every particular. It is, however, part of a project that has value beyond Paul’s presidential prospects.

It is necessary to present an alternative to the bipartisan foreign-policy consensus that has caused the United States to bounce from one ill-conceived military intervention to the next, with results that range from inconclusive to disastrous. Since the most extreme version of that consensus dominates Republican thinking, it would be optimal for the alternative to take root in the GOP.

To be a real alternative, it cannot simply be another set of views some Republicans could conceivably hold. It must be politically viable, palatable to sufficient numbers of the GOP nominating electorate to successfully put forward more than the occasional House backbencher.

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