Why Republican Hawks And Rand Paul Are Perfectly Compatible

Weigel finds neocon uberhack Jennifer Rubin stating the obvious about why the Paul filibuster found plenty of favor among Bush-loving hawks:

He wasn’t attacking the war on terror. He wasn’t attacking drone use overseas. He surely wasn’t attacking indefinite detention at Guantanamo for enemy combatants. He was objecting to the refusal of the administration to say whether it is constitutional to use drones on U.S. soil against U.S. citizens who are not combatants… It is not inconsistent, media mavens, to support drone use against terrorists overseas or to deal with enemy combatants at Gitmo outside the civilian judicial system and to oppose the ludicrous position that the government can target Americans on U.S. soil when they aren’t engaged in hostilities.

Again, the problem with the argument that only partisan tribalists could be skeptical of Rand Paul as a spokesman for treating suspected terrorists is that if you look at the issues carefully Paul is to Obama’s right (the same at best on targeted assassinations, worse on civilian trials for terror suspects. And, by the way, you can’t enthusiastically applaud Paul’s ineffectual filibuster while giving Obama no credit for attempting to close Gitmo and getting thwarted by veto-proof majorities in Congress.)