Romney fading, Rohrabacher, Bolton rising for State as 'consensus package'
By PAUL BEDARD • 12/3/16 4:49 PM
Mitt Romney's chances for being secretary of State in a Trump administration are fading amid a deep division among President-elect Trump's team, and that is giving rise to dark horse candidate Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a foreign policy tough guy who once arm wrestled Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to insiders.
The Trump cabinet executive committee is also eyeing long-time Republican diplomat John Bolton as deputy secretary of State, though there are some who prefer him in the top job.
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Representative Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., left, meets with U.S. soldiers during a congressional visit to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan Wednesday, April 3, 2002. The delegation, which was on a fact finding mission to Afghanistan, stopped at Bagram to express their support for U.S. troops in the field. (AP Photo/Greg Baker)
Two sources late Saturday said that there is an emerging "consensus package" of Rohrabacher, a long-serving California lawmaker who heads a House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee, as the secretary and Bolton as his chief deputy.
"This is percolating through the system and Dana the dark horse is emerging from the back of the pack," said one transition source. Another said, "I'm feeling like a surprise might be in order."
According to the sources, Trump advisors Stephen Bannon and Peter Thiel have spent four hours on the phone with Rohrabacher and found that he agrees with all Trump top policy agenda items. He was a supporter of Trump also. One source said that Rohrabacher may be headed to Trump Tower next week for a meeting with the President-elect.
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California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher in his office. AP Photo
He is a former Reagan speechwriter and expert on Afghan policy. He also has one of the most interestingly-decorated House offices and is even a California surfer.
Sources said that he was previously asked his interest in being No. 2 at State under Romney, but said that he couldn't work for a secretary who did not support Trump during the campaign.
Romney was harshly critical of Trump during the election, though he has eaten crow in two meetings since Trump was elected president-elect.
For many Trump insiders, notably campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, that's not good enough to then be rewarded with one of the administration's top jobs.
Bolton, like Romney, also has champions on the Trump executive committee. He worked for former President Reagan and both former Presidents Bush, mostly in key State and diplomatic roles, including as ambassador to the United Nations.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/ro...rticle/2608799
Trump Would Find A Foreign Policy Ally In Secretary Of State Dana Rohrabacher
BY TOMMY BEHNKE
10 HOURS AGO
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The American people elected Donald Trump in part because of his success at exposing the hypocrisy of career politicians like Lyin’ Ted Cruz, Corrupt Kane, and Crooked Hillary. It’d be a shame if the president-elect turned into a textbook case study of the self-fulfilling prophecy by becoming a run-of-the-mill, doublespeak politician on his own merits.
For several weeks, it appeared that this would inevitably come true. With the media playing up hawkish defense figures like John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani, and Mitt Romney for his Secretary of State nomination, it seemed as if Trump might strike down one of his paramount campaign promises: put America first by stopping costly, unnecessary foreign interventions.
Today, however, things look differently. With the Trump camp reportedly in a civil war over the prospect of a Romney or Giuliani-headed State Department, reports now say that a dark-horse compromise candidate is rapidly gaining steam: Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA).
Recent rhetoric from Trump’s own mouth paints optimism for the potential Rohrabacher Secretary of State portrait. At a victory speech last Thursday, President-elect Trump echoed candidate Trump’s foreign policy views by proclaiming that his administration “will pursue a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past." He continued: "We will stop looking to topple regimes and overthrow governments, [because] remember: $6 trillion — $6 trillion in the Middle East. $6 trillion.”
One can only hope that Trump will not just talk the talk, but also walk the walk by nominating Rohrabacher, one of the only realist foreign policy voices included in his Secretary of State shortlist.
Rohrabacher has been on the Foreign Relations Committee for almost two decades. Throughout his tenure on the committee, he has understood that, as Trump says, “you can’t win by fighting two wars at one time.”
It’s why he admitted that the Iraq War was a big mistake. “Once President Bush decided to go into Iraq, I thought it was a mistake because we hadn’t finished the job in Afghanistan,” he said. Although Rohrabacher's Republican colleagues eventually swayed him into voting for the war, he was quick to fess up and call it a gross misjudgment on his part - something that fellow Iraq War supporters John Bolton, Mitt Romney, and Rudy Giuliani have still failed to do thirteen years later.
But Rohrabacher didn’t just stop there; he learned from his mistake and matured into one of the most non-interventionist voices in the halls of Congress. In 2007, he voted NO on redeploying US troops out of Iraq. Romney, Bolton, and Giuliani all supported keeping forces in there, wasting approximately $270 million per day as a result. According to the American Friends Service Committee, that money could have instead bought homes for almost 6,500 families, provided health care for 423,529 children, or outfitted 1.27 million homes with renewable electricity.
Four years later, Rohrabacher voted to ban armed forces in Libya without congressional approval - a laudable move considering that Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution states that Congress alone can declare war. The Orange County Republican was quick to see that the war was not a just one; we spent $1 billion of our own tax dollars under the pretext of humanitarian intervention, but instead created further chaos by propping up radical jihadists. Trump now concurs with Rohrabacher on Libya, while Romney and Bolton were outspoken supporters of the U.S. invasion.
Rohrabacher then followed his non-interventionist streak by completely bashing President Obama’s reckless war in Syria. He said that apologists for the intervention “should have learned [their] lesson in Iraq,” meaning that when you try to stop human rights abuses abroad with military strikes, you end up killing thousands of Americans and wasting scores of tax dollars, all while harming the cause you intended to help.
Rohrabacher was correct: we should have put America first by focusing on domestic issues and refraining from intervening, because getting involved did nothing but increase ISIS’s prevalence in the region. Donald Trump agrees, while Romney and Giuliani both supported arming the Syrian rebels.
Last week, Rohrabacher said that he is “very willing” to be Trump’s Secretary of State:
"[I am] excited about what Donald Trump stands for, and how he’s going to take American policy and make it … aimed at not some globalist theory of making the whole world better, but, instead, based on something that’s going to be good for the security of the people of the United States.”
Trump is quick to point out that as a result of Bush and Obama’s neoconservative foreign policy, “we’ve spent $6 trillion in the Middle East,” “haven’t won anything,” and “lost thousands of lives.” If he wants to make bad on his campaign promises by pleasing special interests and continuing with the same, ineffective policies of the past, then he has his pick from a wide array of hawkish conservative figures.
But if Trump truly wants to drain the swamp, put America first, and work with someone who thinks like him, then his choice for Secretary of State is abundantly clear. Here’s to hoping that the president-elect's actions will match up with his rhetoric. The fate of our nation's security depends on it.
http://ijr.com/opinion/2016/12/26238...f-state-trump/
