Republicans love wars and military spending. It was anti-communism and then racism that blunted the momentum of the New Deal after FDR. They stumbled in the 90s when peace broke out, but the PNAC offered a new enemy: Saddam! Then 9/11 happened and it was just like the old days: invasions, GWOT, permanent war, and re-election cause many Americans love a good war, so long as they think they can win quickly and get back to football.
Now we have Republicans who want to be president seeking to be seen as the biggest hawk:
More submarines. New bombers for nuclear missions. Sustained ground troops in Afghanistan.
Those are some of the changes U.S. Senator Marco Rubio called for today as he outlined his vision for a robust expansion of the U.S. military, positioning him as the biggest hawk in the 2016 presidential line-up.
“Some who aspire to be president have shown they would rather wait for poll numbers to change than demonstrate the leadership necessary to shape them,” the Florida Republican told an audience of about 100 people in Washington.
The remark was a jab at fellow Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican who wrote in the Wall Street Journal in June about his skepticism for airstrikes. He decided to support the bombings earlier this month, writing in Time magazine that “I am not an isolationist.”
Rubio cautioned against the drawdown of troops in Afghanistan, saying “we need a sizable force if we want to avoid repeating the mistakes of Iraq.”
Bloomberg News
By 2016, Republicans will paint Hillary Clinton as a dove who fails to understand war because she is a woman. It is in Republican DNA.
I think many Americans are tired of war. Hope so. Cause Rubio and his ilk will have to prove their manhood by sending troops in land wars overseas. He already wants to keep us fighting in Afghanistan.