The GOP's foreign policy muddle

This week?s political uproar over bloodshed in Libya and Egypt was a sharp reminder to Republicans: It?s tough to be the opposition party when it comes to matters of national defense.

And for Republicans, the challenge is actually deeper than being out of power. For more than a generation, stretching back to the age of Vietnam and the Cold War, the GOP has been the electorate?s default choice on national security. Not so this year, when the party and its presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, have struggled to confront both internal divisions and a landscape of global challenges that defy straightforward, doctrinal definition.

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It?s not a unique predicament for either political party to struggle on national security issues when the other guys are running the Pentagon, State Department and National Security Council. Both parties are still grasping for overarching policies that make sense of a world beset by still-potent terrorist networks, the unpredictable aftermath of the Arab Spring and an economically ravaged Europe.

(PHOTOS: Anit-U.S. protests in Middle East, North Africa)

Still, Republicans aren?t accustomed to fighting an uphill battle when it comes to the country?s defense. For the entire span of the Bush administration, the party was united by its pride in the president?s response to Sept. 11 and its support for the White House?s ?freedom agenda? ? promoting democracy across the Muslim world, in some cases with the help of the armed force.

Now, up against a Democratic president who seldom passes up a chance to note that Osama bin Laden was eliminated on his watch, the GOP is finding that it?s a whole new political world out there on national security. The strengths and vulnerabilities of both parties have changed, as have the preferences of the electorate. Ideological divisions persist within the Democratic Party, but they?re simply less salient when a Democratic commander in chief is leading the ticket. Up-and-coming Republican stars are more passionate about economic and social policy than geopolitics. To some on the right, it?s starting to feel like the bad old days of the 1990s, when the end of the Cold War left Republicans casting about for a new foreign policy framework, torn between wanting to outflank Democrats on toughness and distrusting expensive military adventures overseas.

A Gallup poll released Thursday showed that for the first time since 2007, voters were just as likely to call Democrats the better party to fight terrorism as they were to name Republicans. Polls have consistently shown that about two-thirds of voters believe the Afghan war, once a symbol of necessary U.S. intervention, is no longer worth fighting.

Jamie Fly, who heads the conservative Foreign Policy Initiative, said it?s been a challenge for Republicans to convince a war-weary U.S. electorate that President Barack Obama?s more cautious, consensus-oriented approach to foreign policy has been a failure.

?The president and his administration have done a good job of trying to convince the American people that they are running a very effective foreign policy that gets results, that is low-cost,? Fly said. ?I think that we?re going to start to see, unfortunately ? and you?ve started to see this in the last 48 hours ? is some of it?s a false sense of stability and a false sense of success.?

Fly, who traveled with Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan on the campaign trail earlier this week, acknowledged that economic hardship at home ?has taken a toll on American support for certain activities in the world? ? specifically, waging war in places like Afghanistan.

What that means for the GOP ? an interventionist-leaning party that has swerved toward more parsimonious fiscal conservatism in the past few years ? remains to be seen. So far, the 2012 campaign hasn?t done much to illuminate the question.

Source: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81232.html

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