Hawks Are Outsiders in the GOP? Tell Me Another One

Regrettably, the hawks haven’t gone anywhere and haven’t been cast out, and we know this because when Trump was president he put them in charge of his foreign policy.

Rosie Gray writes some amusing fiction:

But after the changes Mr. Trump put in motion, the hawks are now the outsiders.

The idea that Trump has driven hawks to the margins of the Republican Party appeals to many different groups, but it has the tiny flaw of being completely untrue. Anti-Trump hawks like to pretend that they have been driven out to explain why they no longer support their old party, and Trumpists like to pretend that their leader has wrought major changes to the party’s foreign policy. Centrist and liberal internationalists will chime in with their agreement so that they can pretend that Trump is an “isolationist” and has nothing in common with their foreign policy views.

Regrettably, the hawks haven’t gone anywhere and haven’t been cast out, and we know this because when Trump was president he put them in charge of his foreign policy and agreed with them about practically everything. The great populist “disruptor” ended up mostly governing like a Marco Rubio clone and even let Marco Rubio design some of his policies for him. My guess is that Trump is far too cynical to be a true-believing fanatic on any of these issues, but he is happy to pander to the fanatics and tell them what they want to hear. In the end, the results are much the same.