BRAVE NEW SENATORS – AT 8:46 A.M. ET:   While I haven't seen definitive proof, there is a substantial belief that much of the Tea Party movement wants America to scale back its international actions, resorting to a kind of isolationism.  We recall just where that got us in the 1930s.

There are some gutsy new Republican senators who aren't buying it, and are sticking up for the McCainian and Bushian view of the world, and they're drawing a line in the Capitol Hill cement separating themselves from the new isolationists.  From The Politico:

Political uprisings in the Muslim world, and now the death of Osama bin Laden, are giving rise to a new generation of foreign policy hawks in the Senate who are breaking with the tea party when it comes to America’s role in the world.

Three Republican freshmen — Marco Rubio, Mark Kirk and Kelly Ayotte — share the tea party’s goal of slashing domestic spending but have rejected the movement’s isolationist inclinations and called for greater military action and tougher sanctions overseas in places such as Libya and Syria.

The senators have appeared on cable news programs, written op-eds and introduced bills pushing for more U.S. involvement abroad, and they’re building their national security credentials by taking every chance to travel to conflict zones.

It’s a route that has helped build the careers of prominent senators like Republicans John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who have long driven the foreign policy debate in Washington. For the freshmen, taking the establishment path on foreign policy could help raise their profiles and even lay the groundwork for a presidential bid, which many observers expect of Rubio in 2016.

COMMENT:  Isolationism, which is being pushed by the Ron Paul faction of the party, is a disaster.  It never works, and never has.  I don't usually quote Marxists here, but Leon Trotsky did say one wise thing when he noted that "you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." 

Isolationism may delay conflict, but it never avoids it.  We're watching Marco Rubio very carefully, and we like the fact that he is taking a wise, principled stand on foreign policy.  I think the great majority of conservatives will be with him, as most don't yearn for the 1930s.

May 9, 2011