Texas Sen. Ted Cruz clarified his own foreign policy doctrine Wednesday, distancing himself from the more anti-interventionist posture of his tea party colleague, Sen. Rand Paul, despite their shared opposition to military action in Syria.
Asked by a questioner at The Heritage Foundation whether he falls more in line with Paul’s worldview or that of Sen. John McCain’s, Cruz planted his flag firmly in the middle.
“I consider myself somewhere in between those two poles,” the freshman Republican said. “There is a balance that I would characterize as somewhere in the middle.”
Cruz referred to Paul as a friend and lauded him as “fearless” while heralding McCain as a hero who he respects “immensely,” but he attempted to forge a third approach to foreign policy that he believed reflected American public opinion.
“I agree with Rand Paul that we should not intervene militarily in Syria. But I also agree with John McCain that if Iran is on verge of acquiring nuclear weapons, that we should intervene militarily … because it’s in the vital national security interests of the United States.”
Paul, who has become the leading Republican voice against Syria intervention, has previously signaled opposition to a conflict with Iran. Last year, he authored an amendment on sanctions legislation to make sure it could not be “construed as a declaration of war or an authorization of use of force against Iran or Syria.”
Iran, in fact, could be the flashpoint issue that separates Paul and Cruz, who outlined three central pillars that form his worldview: Focus directly on securing national interests, speak with moral clarity and always fight to win.
During his speech at The Heritage Foundation, Cruz bemoaned the media’s black and white coverage of hawks and doves regarding the Syria crisis.
“You’re either for every military conflict or no military conflict,” Cruz complained before criticizing President Obama as “too hawkish and too dovish at the same time.”
He explained that the president was too hawkish when it came to defending international norms and too dovish advocating for U.S. interests.
Cruz said the president should send an unequivocal signal to Iran that if it proceeds with the development of nuclear capacity, the U.S. would use “overwhelming force” to prevent such activity. That is a significant difference with Paul.
Cruz said his opposition to Syria is due to the fuzzy ultimate objective the Obama administration has laid out.
“It is not the job of military to send statements about international norms,” Cruz argued. ”If your objective is to send a statement, you’re not winning or losing. A statement is fundamentally a press release.”
The Heritage lecture series Cruz participated in was named after the late former North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms, the conservative firebrand who led a filibuster to delay the implementation of a federal holiday for Martin Luther King Jr.
Cruz’s praise of the controversial Helms will surely be stored away by Democrats to be used against him in any future run for national office.
“The willingness to say all those crazy things is a rare, rare characteristic in this town,” Cruz said of Helms. ”We need a hundred more like Jesse Helms in the U.S. Senate.”
Cruz said the first donation of his political career was to Helms in the amount of $10.
Later, a self-identified North Carolina native in the crowd told Cruz, “You are definitely following in his footsteps.”
But Cruz also showed a flash of humor and a dig at another potential 2016 rival from his homestate.
When presented with three questions at once, he replied, “You’re asking me to remember three things and Texas politicians have not had a good record on that front.”
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