By Steve Hynd
John McCain worries in public on behalf of the neocon wing of the Republican Party. It's what he does. Entirely.
Now he's worried "a lot about the rise of protectionism and isolationism in the Republican Party" represented by a handful of Tea Party backed lawmakers like Rand Paul, Tom Coburn and Johnny Isakson who are willing to butcher the neocon's sacred cow and take a knife to the bloated defense budget. That he did his public worrying during a conference put on by the neocon Foreign Policy Initiative where he was sure of a receptive audience is just par for the course for the man who can't remember how many houses he owns.
I don't think McCain needs to worry too much. The defense-cutting caucus in the Republican Party is surely smaller than that in the Democratic Party - and between them they could only muster 55 signatures for a letter urging cuts on President Obama last month. The bi-partisan consensus is still to raise the defense budget by over 4% when GDP is expected to rise by only 2%.
The Tea Party faction within the Republican Party - and I don't think anyone can deny that the former is a full-on subsiduary of the latter any longer - is extremely confused about its foreign policy. It doesn't really know whether it is neocon, libertarian or End Times, and thus is just as confused about its stance on massive defense spending. I fully expect that fairly soon the freshmen Tea Partiers on the Hill will be partying like it's 1994, vows forgotten, as the big estabishment money behind the movement corrupts absolutely. The likes of Sarah Palin, Christinne O'Donnell, Marco Rubio and Mike Lee are the neocon trojan horses willing to help that corruption along.
By 2014, many Tea Partiers will be as disillusioned as the Obamatrons.
So John McCain shouldn't be so worried. Still, he'll continue to say he is, publicly. It's what he does. Entirely.
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