bush, and her line. a state department mentality of excessive caution and vagueness is hurting bush do you agree with that? not totally. there is a split in the republican party. you have the interventionist conservative from george bush s administration. and then the realist wing of the republican party. james baker who was secretary of state under bush 41 is among those. and so this is playing out folks who think that we should be involved in the middle east and others who are saying we don t want to get too entangled. it didn t work out. what about the new ideas? we are taking in the wires from all over the world. it is a very interesting time, you know that is an understatement in the middle east. we have seen drastic different
our allies, attack of the united states, attack of u.s. assets. a lot of reasons why we would have to defend ourselves. but civilian deaths have occurred really throughout the last several decades, throughout africa, russia, throughout china. we haven t always got involved with civilians deaths. show the the new and improved rand paul? or is this a new and improved messaging from the republican party? well, it is new and improved messaging from rand paul. he is rebranding isolationism as realism, basically. and he is co-opting the old realist wing of the republican party represented by george h.w. bush, he is considerably different from them though because they are actually internationalists. and i think there s a pretty good case that rand paul is the real deal. a real taftian isolationist. and we thought that when eisenhower defeated taft for the
mandate, it was, and he lost. and i think that the important point about the crystal comment is that there s now a wedge in the republican party that the president needs to exploit. there s a wedge between the realist wing and the kind of fa fantasy, childish wing. the realist wing understands the president has a mandate. democrats won the presidency and the senate. we won a majority we won the popular vote if you add up the house races as well. look, i think it s in both parties interest to avoid the fiscal cliff. neither of them want it for a whole host of reasons, including it will be damaging to the economy. we learned recently that president obama in august of 2011 was kind of ready to do a nixon goes to china moment on entitlements and i think that s still on the table. have real entitlement reform. on taxes it s as bill clinton said. it s simple math. spending is at 24% of gdp. taxes are at about 15% of gdp right now. even the most conservative member of congress only propose