Recently by Robert Wenzel: Strauss-Kahn Lawyer: It May Have Been a Set-Up
Yes, the elitists think Ron Paul isn’t warmonger enough to win. In a "2012 Campaign Roundup", the CFR states under the headline "Is Foreign Policy a Problem for Ron Paul?":
A common trope so far in campaign 2012 is the argument that Republicans have turned isolationist. Someone apparently forgot to tell voters in Iowa. Polls currently have Ron Paul running fourth there. Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that what’s hurting him with many Iowa Republicans is his non-interventionist foreign policies…
The reservations that Iowans have about Paul’s foreign policy views are striking. Why? Because the Midwest has historically been a stronghold of isolationist sentiment in America, and Iowa is the most Midwestern of states. (Indeed, Hollywood delights in movies in which Iowans are reluctant to go to war.) So perhaps “isolationism” doesn’t quite capture the complexity of the debate within the Republican Party on foreign policy…
But by the end of their report, they hedge their bets and quote a CFR president emeritus, who thinks Ron Paul is one of the few who knows what actually is going on in the world:
Les Gelb, CFR’s president emeritus, worries that Republican presidential candidates are looking backward to a “bygone world of dire military threats” rather than forward toward the new truth of world politics – economics matters. Looking back at the CNN presidential debate last week, Gelb observes:
The real shocker was how all those candidates, save for [Ron] Paul and [Jon] Huntsman, almost totally neglected the now-central economic dimension of international affairs. Only those two noted the new reality of world politics – that economic strength now matters more than military might.
The gathering eurozone crisis may force the GOP presidential hopefuls to address the topic of international economics, regardless of whether they are ready to or not.
Reprinted with permission from Economic Policy Journal.
