Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Brian Katulis has given Politico an essay on the foreign policy divide in the GOP that I would have loved to run here at The Washington Note.
His oped captures well the brewing tension inside Republican circles between those who on one hand want to put forward a constructive, national-interest driven strategy that has at its core a patriotic commitment to reinventing American power and those on the other who engage in blustery, pugnacious nationalism that either clobbers other countries in efforts to remake them or walls them off from America.
Katulis is anticipating a major speech to be given by Newt Gingrich at the American Enterprise Institute tomorrow, Thursday, titled “America at Risk: Camus, National Security, and Afghanistan“. (Gotta love the title.)
The question Katulis asks is which part of the GOP foreign policy crowd will Newt Gingrich, who will likely attack the Obama administration’s national security course and priorities, reach out to.
As Katulis writes in his essay:
Dissension in the Republican ranks was on full display in the conservative reactions to the Obama administration’s National Security Strategy this spring. Conservative foreign policy analysts couldn’t decide whether to accuse the Obama administration of plagiarism or treason. Some praised the strategy as a continuation of the Bush administration’s approach; others condemned it as a recipe for weakness and an appeasement of America’s enemies.
Newt Gingrish’s speech will livestream here or can be seen in the box above starting at 2 pm on Thursday, 29 July.
Should be an interesting show. I hope Dick Cheney or John Bolton get the first question.
— Steve Clemons
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