Two Of The GOP's Top Presidential Prospects Are Engaged In A Very Public Feud
On Saturday, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul won the presidential straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference by a landslide for the second consecutive year. Conservative firebrand Texas Sen. Ted Cruz came in second, but he actually gained the most ground of any candidate year-over-year.
On Sunday, Cruz began making a play to draw foreign policy distinctions between himself and Paul, both of whom are considered two of the GOP's top presidential prospects.
"I'm a big fan of Rand Paul. He and I are good friends," Cruz said on ABC's "This Week" Sunday. "I don't agree with him on foreign policy. I think U.S. leadership is critical in the world. And I agree with him that we should be very reluctant to deploy military force abroad. But I think there is a vital role, just as Ronald Reagan did. ... The United States has a responsibility to defend our values."
Cruz's comments came two days after Paul thrilled the CPAC audience by blasting President Barack Obama's drone policy. However, Paul didn't mention the preeminent ongoing geopolitical conflict - the crisis in Ukraine.
Paul's noninterventionist views on foreign policy have attracted a libertarian-leaning crowd. In the CPAC straw poll, 57 percent of respondents, when asked about the U.S.'s "role in the world," identified with this statement: "Nearly 70 years after the end of World War II, it's time for our European, Asian and other allies to provide for their own defense."
Only 37 percent, on the other hand, agreed with this statement: "As the world's only superpower, the U.S. needs to continue to bear the responsibility of protecting our allies in Europe, Asia and other parts of the world."
But with the return of the Reagan-era, Cold War tough talk, Cruz appears to have picked this moment as an opportunity to provide a contrast between himself and Paul.
Paul returned fire in an op-ed published on Breitbart Monday. He did not mention Cruz by name, but from the first sentence, it was clear who he was talking about.
"Every Republican likes to think he or she is the next Ronald Reagan. Some who say this do so for lack of their own ideas and agenda. Reagan was a great leader and President. But too often people make him into something he wasn't in order to serve their own political purposes.
Reagan clearly believed in a strong national defense and in "Peace through Strength." He stood up to the Soviet Union, and he led a world that pushed back against Communism.
But Reagan also believed in diplomacy and demonstrated a reasoned approach to our nuclear negotiations with the Soviets. Reagan's shrewd diplomacy would eventually lessen the nuclear arsenals of both countries."
Paul also said while he doesn't "claim to be the next Ronald Reagan," he doesn't "attempt to disparage fellow Republicans as not being sufficiently Reaganesque" - an apparent reference to Cruz's CPAC speech, in which he said Republicans erred in choosing insufficiently conservative presidential nominees over the past two cycles.
"But I will remind anyone who thinks we will win elections by trashing previous Republican nominees or holding oneself out as some paragon in the mold of Reagan, that splintering the party is not the route to victory," Paul wrote.
The feud with Cruz isn't Paul's first clash with one of his potential 2016 rivals. Last summer, Paul got into a very public spat with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie amid the debate over the National Security Agency's surveillance programs. Cruz's views on foreign policy, however, have been far less hawkish than Christie.
Paul also published on op-ed in TIME Monday, in which he outlined specific steps he would take to respond to Russian military intervention in the Crimean region of Ukraine.