Brave Newt World

Steve Benen has the GOP's national security schtick down cold.

As potential GOP presidential candidates eye 2012, the leading Republican voices on national security are Gingrich, Palin, and Romney? Isn't that rather humiliating for a party that used to lead on these issues?


Gingrich has exactly zero experience on foreign policy, military affairs, and national security. Romney recently tried to pretend to understand these issues, and was utterly humiliated. Palin has said publicly she thinks she understands foreign policy because Vladimir Putin flew over her house.

The Republican Party likes to maintain the pretense that these issues "belong" to them -- all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding -- but the fact that their most noteworthy national luminaries on the subject are utterly clueless, and bring all the sophistication of a child to the debate, is pretty striking.

This isn't to say the entire Republican Party is devoid of credible voices on national security and foreign policy; that would be an overstatement. Current and former officials like Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.), Brent Scowcroft, George Schultz, Colin Powell, former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), Reagan Chief of Staff Howard Baker, former Sen. John Danforth (R-Mo.) all approach these issues with at least some seriousness and stature.

Of course, since this same group also happens to agree with President Obama on national security and foreign policy, that's probably not much help when it comes to GOP politics.

Of course you can (and should) expand this know-nothing celebration of nihilism to cover pretty much all facets of the GOP 2012 "strategery".  Watching Republicans scramble to stomp all over their own positions from the Bush years just to disagree with Obama is rather breathtaking, and in doing so they reveal just how little they care and how they know even less about any given subject.

I'd love to see some sort of Palin/Gingrich ticket in 2012 too.  It would flame out in such spectacular fashion that it would guarantee a reformation of the Republican party along the lines of Actual Reality, so that America could actually get around to doing the things that need to be done, and letting the people who need to do those things be in charge.

Right now, deep thought in national security from the likes of these leading lights of GOP 2012 hope are "Mitt's a poseur, Newt's insane, and Sarah wants to dictate Lower Manhattan zoning laws."