Rep. Ron Paul is not about to start softening his foreign policy stances. He made that clear in the speech he gave yesterday at a massive Tampa rally for his supporters prior to the start of the Republican National Convention.
In the course of the speech, Paul mounted a full-throated defense of the foreign policy ideas that make him an outlier in the Republican Party (and indeed anathema to some quarters of the GOP). Among other things, Paul slammed "neocons" and the "military-industrial complex." He warned of "blowback" from U.S. foreign policy, suggesting that if the country had followed his preferred foreign policy approach, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks would never have happened.
On the domestic front, he said that Americans "have to worry about fascism, an expansion of what we already have, which is corporatism — the buddy system between big corporations, big banks, with the government."
JTA’s Ron Kampeas reported on some of Paul’s remarks.
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While Paul isn’t going to be speaking at the convention (a fact that was praised by the Republican Jewish Coalition), he will be the subject of a video tribute there (a fact that was slammed by the National Jewish Democratic Counci and ignored by the RJC). And his son Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) will be addressing the Republican convention.
It will be interesting to see whether Rand Paul makes any nods toward his father’s foreign policy ideas, which he largely shares. The Kentucky senator, in remarks introducing his father at the Tampa rally, did push the Republican envelope, calling for an audit of the Pentagon and praising his father’s emphasis on "blowback" as key to understanding terrorists’ hatred of the U.S.
Mitt Romney’s former foreign policy spokesman, Richard Grenell,previously told Talking Points Memo that “Ron Paul’s commitment to limit government’s involvement in our daily lives is the future of the Republican Party.”
But he added: “I only wish Ron Paul’s foreign policy positions could be outsourced to John Bolton.”
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