McCain’s preemptive strike on Rand Paul is an indication of just how nervous the War Party is about its increasingly tenuous position: in the GOP, at least, it can’t allow any deviation from the party line of perpetual war and skyrocketing “defense” expenditures, especially with a budget crisis looming on the horizon. For the logic of the “tea party” revolt against spending and big government requires, as Sen. Coburn put it, that “nothing is sacrosanct” – no, not Lockheed’s profit margin, nor even the hegemonic fantasies of Bill Kristol and the Kagan Clan.
The logic of the anti-spending, anti-big government sentiment that swept over a hundred congressional Democratic incumbents out of office, and spawned a national grassroots activist movement, leads inevitably to anti-interventionism. Because the fact of the matter, simply put, is that our overseas wars are unsustainable. We can return to fiscal sanity, or we can continue our rampage through Central Asia, slaughtering innocents and creating more terrorists in our wake – but we cannot do both.
A few days after his slam-dunk election victory, Senator-elect Paul appeared on This Week with Christiane Amanpour and not only came out for cuts in the military, but also made the case that a decade of war and occupation in Afghanistan may indeed be enough. For that he is being attacked by the War Party, as well as the administration loyalists among the liberals, and you can bet the smears have just begun. He has so far shown that he is every inch his father’s son, and I very much regret implying – or, rather, openly stating – otherwise. Rand Paul proved me wrong, and I have never been happier to make a public contrition.
The movement of which Rand Paul is a leader has the potential to turn American politics – and American conservatism – upside down, and pull off a fundamental political realignment in this country. No amount of smears and jeers from the upholders of the status quo is going to stop them, at this point: only they can stop themselves, by failing to follow through on the bright promise of their pledge to cut the American State down to its proper and constitutionally-mandated size – both at home, and abroad.
