Rand Paul: I Support Mitt, But Not His Foreign Policy

Rand Paul is campaigning for Mitt Romney this week, but the Republican senator wants you to know that doesn't mean he supports Romney's foreign policy ideas. Paul has sometimes been "encouraged"—like when Romney called for ending the war in Afghanistan "sooner rather than later" and reforming foreign aid. But for the most part, Romney's Monday foreign policy speech left Paul "dismayed," he writes on CNN. "Romney chose to criticize President Obama for seeking to cut a bloated Defense Department and for not being bellicose enough in the Middle East, two assertions with which I cannot agree."

On the first point, defense and war spending has been growing at an unsustainable rate since 2001, Paul writes. "If debt is our gravest threat, adding to the debt by expanding military spending further threatens our national security." On the second point, Paul stresses that he is "not an isolationist or a pacifist," but nonetheless he severely cautions against further involvement in the Middle East—because we don't know enough about the rebels we're helping, and what they would do with power if they seized it. "This 'act first, think later' foreign policy has real consequences," including major anti-American sentiment, Paul writes, and we need to stop rushing "headlong into more places [we] don’t understand." Click for his full piece. (More Rand Paul stories.)