Just How Quickly Will GOP Ramp Up Defense Spending? Super-Quickly.

The Daily Beast’s
Eli Lake reports that in the wake of the GOP takeover of the
Senate, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and other hawks are set to fly
high on all things military:

McCain said his first order of business as chairman of the
Senate Armed Services Committee will be to end the budget rule
known as sequestration, which requires the U.S. military to cut its
budget across the board. “I want to start an examination of our
policies in the world and then find out whether we have the
capability to meet these expectations,” McCain said. McCain also
said he would use his chairmanship to root out overspending at the
Pentagon, but he emphasized his desire to reverse
sequestration.

And there’s this, which is heartening to the extent it suggests
the Constitution, which reserves war-making powers to Congress,
still matters:

On Wednesday Obama said he would ask Congress to vote on the new
war against ISIS during the lame-duck session of Congress that
starts in December.

“I think it’s time for an AUMF [authorization of the use of
military force], I do,” McCain said. “The one passed after 9/11
specifically talks about the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks and
ISIS has exceeded that definition.”

More here.

Lake quotes neocon
mag editor Bill Kristol: 

As Ron Paul, the isolationist father of Sen. Rand
Paul, tweeted
Tuesday evening: “Republican control of the Senate = expanded
neocon wars in Syria and Iraq. Boots on the ground are coming!”
William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly
Standard, was in rare agreement with the elder Paul. “I think
Ron Paul told the truth,” Kristol told The Daily Beast. “And the
truth is that his son had a bad election season and the Republicans
who were elected are various species of hawks and not Rand
Paul-like doves.”

Kristol may be right that the new GOP senators are hawks, but
that’s not the same thing as saying they were elected
because they are hawks or because Americans are ready to
extend old wars or start a host of new ones. The surge in support
for attacking Syria and staying in Afghanistan after the beheading
of two American journalists by ISIS was historically
weak to begin with. Putting new boots on the ground—constantly
broached by hawks—has never been popular. Given past experience,
it’s highly likely the GOP will misplay its hand as the
congressional majority, pushing its agenda even if it’s at odds
with the broader population’s.

The fact is that defense spending is way up from where it was at
the start of the 21st century and it’s been percolating just fine
overall since
Obama took office. According to Rasmussen,
about 57 percent of voters right before the election want to
see cuts to every major federal program, including defense. (Alas,
very few think spending will go down any time soon and only 19
percent trust the government to do what’s right in most cases.)

If the GOP figures this is their moment to pay out more money to
defense contractors and to start a new series of interventions,
well, it was nice knowing them.