I read Pawlenty’s foreign policy address, and I was not particularly impressed, but I really didn’t have much to comment on it. I consider myself to belong to the realist school of international relations, and thus Pawlenty’s focus on promoting democracy has no appeal for me; however, this post from Foreign Policy caught my attention, and I don’t want to wait until tomorrow to address this in my weekly campaign round-up. In his speech, Pawlenty made the following comment:
And parts of the Republican Party now seem to be trying to out-bid the Democrats in appealing to isolationist sentiments.
I’m pretty sure Pawlenty has no idea what isolationism is (in fact, I think his entire foreign policy is nothing more than a collection of buzzwords), but when asked to identify who those parts are, Pawlenty pulled the same spineless crap he pulled during the debate saying that he wouldn’t name names. If you won’t name who the isolationists are, then don’t attack candidates and members of your own party for being isolationists. And if you want to distinguish yourself from the other candidates on the foreign policy front, then call them out. Seriously, Pawlenty’s poltroonery has completely turned me against the man, whereas before he was just boring and of no consequence to me.
I’ll have you know that I was ahead of the curve on thinking Pawlenty was a spineless sack of buzzwords. Though I’ll give you credit for beating me to the label “poltroonery.” It’s a good match.
