Washington Conservatives Worried About Movement Conservatives on Defense - Marc Ambinder
This is a rift I’ve also written about here in comments and posts — as the War becomes entirely Obama’s war, it’s going to be hard to tone down some L leaning Conservatives, and it’s predictable that there will be a strong opposition to defense and the war within the ranks of the GOP. Are Ron Paul and others like him the real RINOs? With the current deathgrip on the party by the religious right and social conservatives this will be an interesting tussle if it continues.
Washington conservatives will send their more libertarian-inclined movement brethren a message on Monday: don’t short change national defense.
In an op-ed to be published in the Wall Street Journal, the heads of the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Foreign Policy Initiative warn that there will not be “long-term prosperity” if the US military is “hollowed out” and can’t defend the country.
Although the op-ed, written by FPI’s Bill Kristol, AEI’s Arthur C. Brooks and Heritage’s Edward Fuelner, sets up the Obama administration as its foil, the real purpose to nudge Tea Party conservatives back into line on defense spending, according to a Republican strategist who is working on the program.
“We agree with them on 90 percent of things. But this last ten percent is very important,” the strategist said.