Just an anecdote
This evening I talked to two friends of mine who are about as hardcore Kansas Republican as it gets. Both of them are men in their mid-thirties and well educated. The two of them represent two different elements of the base; one is a relatively well-off political operative, the other lives close to the poverty line and has worked a variety of jobs, most recently operating a gaming store.
Both of them have impeccable credentials as both fiscal and cultural conservatives. These were not Paulites by any means. At various times their talking points veered from “we need to stop spending our grandchildrens’ money” to “the culture of sexual permissiveness is at the root of the lack of accountability in our society.”
I encountered very little in our conversation which suprised me until I brought up Fort Hood. I asked the two of them what the government’s response to the tragedy ought to be.
Their response? Not that Muslim servicemembers should be expelled from the military, or that America should redouble its wariness of global jihad, but that the US Government ought to reduce its overseas military deployments.
The conversation within the Republican Party is changing.
There’s always been this objection to the large-scale peacetime deployments from some on the Right. Mistaken, I think — it forgets the nature of how American power and world economic dominance arose and how the US could continue to punch above its economic weight as other nations or groups of nations go past them — but I’ve heard it before.
As for it being a response to Fort Hood, that’s ridiculous. Guy was a freakish nutjob and in any case, some killings on US soil are the motivation for withdrawal? People are just shocked, I think.
Comment by Adam — 11/9/2009 @ 3:58 pm
It struck me as kind of weird at that level too. I get the impression that these people may have been leaning in that direction for other reasons, including stress on military personnel, and that Fort Hood served as an opportunity to voice the belief.
But then, why this particular opportunity?
Comment by Rojas — 11/9/2009 @ 7:01 pm