{"id":65703,"date":"2017-02-09T15:50:14","date_gmt":"2017-02-09T19:50:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=65703"},"modified":"2017-02-09T15:50:14","modified_gmt":"2017-02-09T19:50:14","slug":"rand-paul-to-oppose-elliott-abrams-for-state-department-slot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=65703","title":{"rendered":"Rand Paul to Oppose Elliott Abrams for State Department Slot"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

by MATTHEW BOYLE
\nBreitbart<\/p>\n

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, will oppose Elliott Abrams if President Donald Trump nominates him to serve as the Deputy Secretary of State, a senior aide to Paul confirmed to Breitbart News late Monday night.<\/h2>\n

Paul\u2019s decision to come out against Abrams strikes a damaging blow against\u00a0his chances of ever receiving Senate confirmation should he be nominated, outside of bipartisan support that he\u2019s unlikely to receive or a full-court press by Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.<\/p>\n

With 21 members\u201411 Republicans and 10 Democrats\u2014if the Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hold strong against Abrams should Trump select him, Paul\u2019s vote would be the deciding vote and he would fail in Committee. His decision to oppose Abrams per a senior aide puts the kibosh on Abrams\u2019 chances once and for all, unless a Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee comes out for him\u2013or unless McConnell and Corker try to bring him up straight on the Senate floor despite failing in Committee, something a senior Senate aide tells Breitbart News is not usually done.<\/p>\n

Given how difficult Paul\u2019s decision here would make it to get Abrams through the Senate to confirmation should he be nominated, it\u2019s unclear if Trump and his White House would want to go to such lengths to fight for someone who disagrees with the president on so many core\u00a0policy visions. Abrams does not believe in an \u201cAmerica First\u201d foreign policy vision, is from a wing of the GOP that Trump regularly criticizes, and has significant disagreements with Trump\u2019s stated vision on core matters like the Middle East and the Arab Spring.<\/p>\n

Paul\u2019s efforts, a senior aide adds, are meant to be constructive. Since Abrams\u2019 policy viewpoints don\u2019t match Trump\u2019s vision for foreign policy, Paul believes that Trump should turn to someone else.\u00a0Paul will make this argument, and officially make his announcement against Abrams, in an op-ed that will be published on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a country of 300 million people, surely there are reasonable foreign policy experts who have not been convicted of deceiving Congress and actually share the President\u2019s foreign policy views,\u201d Paul writes in an excerpt of the op-ed that will run in Rare, obtained by Breitbart News ahead of its release.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

The fact Abrams is even being considered for the slot is baffling to many Trump supporters, given that he was aiding the \u201cNever Trump\u201d movement inside the Republican Party\u2014and that he has a foreign policy worldview much more in line with the political dynasties Trump crushed on his way to the White House, the Bushes and the Clintons.<\/p>\n

\u201cElliott Abrams, a neoconservative who has long argued for an activist foreign policy that spreads American values around the world, was advising Republicans just last spring to \u2018keep your distance\u2019 from Donald J. Trump and offering advice about what the party should do after the \u2018Trump collapse,\u2019\u201d the New York Times\u2019<\/em> Gardiner Harris and David E. Sanger wrote<\/a> on Monday night.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Abrams has a meeting scheduled on Tuesday at the White House with President Trump to interview for the number two position in the State Department.<\/p>\n

The Times<\/em> reports that Abrams is known in foreign policy circles as \u201ccontroversial,\u201d but his conviction over misleading Congress in connection with the Iran-Contra scandal from the Ronald Reagan administration \u201cdeeply understates the case.\u201d Abrams was later pardoned by Reagan\u2019s successor in the White House.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is remembered best for the days when he was an assistant secretary of state during the Reagan administration, and his conviction in 1991 on two misdemeanor counts of withholding information from Congress during the Iran-contra affair,\u201d Harris and Sanger wrote. \u201cHe was later pardoned by President George Bush, and that moment has largely receded from memory \u2014 although if he is nominated, there is little question that Democrats will bring it up again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July, the National Interest\u2019s Daniel DePetris noted in a recent piece<\/a>, Abrams pushed for Republicans to challenge Trump head on at the convention where he would be chosen\u00a0as the GOP nominee for president.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo not allow the Republican convention to be a coronation wherein Trump and Trumpism are unchallenged,\u201d Abrams said, urging the Never Trump movement to challenge him on the floor of the convention. \u201cThere\u2019s no reason others who won many delegates, from Rubio to Cruz to Kasich, should not have their names put in nomination. The party needs to be reminded that there are deep divisions, and Trump needs to be reminded of how many in the party oppose and even fear his nomination.\u201d<\/p>\n

Abrams also called for Republicans to \u201cseize the party machinery back\u201d from conservatives and grassroots Trump supporters \u201cimmediately after the Trump defeat\u201d by Hillary Rodham Clinton, something the man President Trump is now considering for the second highest diplomatic post in his administration said was inevitable, but which turned out not to happen.<\/p>\n

P.J. Media\u2019s David Goldman writes that selecting Abrams would be like picking an \u201carsonist\u201d to serve as a town\u2019s \u201cfire chief.\u201d While Goldman understands that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson may need an experienced diplomat to help run the State Department and \u201chas few good choices,\u201d picking Abrams would be a mistake.<\/p>\n

\u201cBringing the Bush Utopians back into the picture, though, would be a cure far worse than the disease,\u201d Goldman wrote<\/a>. \u201cDuring the campaign, Abrams made clear that he would rather see his party fail than see Donald Trump succeed. Inside the administration, Abrams would have the opportunity to make this happen. Arsonists may have great experience with fires, but that doesn\u2019t qualify them to become the captain of the fire brigade.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, with Rand Paul coming out against Abrams preemptively\u2014before Abrams even meets with the president on Tuesday\u2014he may be saving the movement the trouble of a fight.<\/p>\n

___
\nhttp:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/big-government\/2017\/02\/06\/exclusive-rand-paul-oppose-elliott-abrams-state-department-slot\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by MATTHEW BOYLE Breitbart Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, will oppose Elliott Abrams if President Donald Trump nominates him to serve as the Deputy Secretary of State, a senior aide to Paul confirmed … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65703\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}