George W. Bush & Ronald Reagan’s Foreign Policy Advisers Love Clinton
WASHINGTON – Unless you are a political junkie then the name Richard Armitage, is likely some whose name might sound familiar but you can’t quite place why it sounds familiar. Those who do follow politics know him to be one the foremost experts of defense and foreign affairs.
Armitage, held top national security positions in the administrations of former Presidents George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, and despite being a lifelong Republican, he rocked Washington, by announcing that he would vote for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over her likely Republican rival, Donald Trump.
He first made the announcement to POLITICO, “If Donald Trump is the nominee, I would vote for Hillary Clinton,” Armitage, who served as a deputy secretary of State under Bush and as an assistant secretary of Defense under Reagan, told the publication today.
“He doesn’t appear to be a Republican. He doesn’t appear to want to learn about the issues. So I’m going to vote for Mrs. Clinton.”
Clinton hit Trump earlier this month on national security, saying his ideas would put America in greater danger and inspire more terrorist attacks.
The neoconservative Right would have you believe this election affords them a uniquely tough choice. On the one hand, there’s Hillary Clinton, liberal bogeywoman and hated embodiment of the Democratic establishment. On the other, there’s Donald Trump, who has repeatedly called the Iraq war a mistake, accused the Bush administration of lying to drag the United States into said war, claimed he would be “neutral” in his dealings with Israel and just recently sketched out an “unabashedly noninterventionist approach to world affairs” for the Washington Post editorial board.
Whether or not Trump believes any of this is, as usual, up for debate. But some neocons are so disgusted with his rejection of foreign policy establishment thinking that they’ve declared the unthinkable: They’re going to vote for Hillary Clinton.
Concerned that Trump would “destroy American foreign policy and the international system,” author Max Boot told Vox that Clinton would be “vastly preferable.” Historian Robert Kagan has also come out in favor of Clinton, saying he feels “comfortable with her on foreign policy.” Eliot Cohen, a former Bush administration official who has been called “the most influential neocon in academe,” declared Clinton “the lesser evil, by a large margin.”
It would be convenient to accept that this support is just part of a Faustian bargain neocons have reluctantly entered into because of the looming specter of Trump. But the truth is, neocons and assorted war hawks have long had a soft spot for Clinton and her views on foreign policy.
Makes you wonder if the Bush family will be voting for Clinton in November.
