The McBama National Security Consensus and Republican Foreign Policy after the 2008 Election
The McBama National Security Consensus and Republican Foreign Policy after the 2008 Election
This chapter argues that an essential consensus obtains within mainstream American politics on the imperatives of national security strategy—the McBama consensus—that both candidates in 2008 articulated. It suggests that there are several reasons to suppose that President Obama will increasingly work within this consensus and in so doing continue the Democratic cooptation of a strategy begun under George W. Bush. How Republicans might prosper in such an environment is considered and a typology of conservative foreign policy persuasions and their attendant prescriptions is analyzed. Continuity in US national security strategy represents a substantial electoral problem for the Republican Party. The chapter asks how the GOP can capitalize on an approach its most recent president created and that Obama has adapted rather than repudiated—though with not much more success.
Keywords: Obama, McCain, conservatism, neoconservatism, realism, Bush foreign policy, war on terror, terrorism, Iraq, Afghanistan, think tanks, Reagan legacy, isolationism, foreign policy continuity
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