National Security Conservatives Remain on Sidelines Despite Obama's Vulnerabilities

When Navy SEALS rescued a cargo ship captain from Somali pirates on Easter, President Obama scored the kind of simple victory that every American could understand: Saving an American from the bad guys. Period.

The same was true yesterday, with the release of two journalists held captive in North Korea.

Both events fall under the rubric of national security/foreign policy and, interestingly, this is the one area where conservatives have not been able to gain any momentum in opposition to Obama. That's ironic -- one might have predicted that an inexperienced president with a history of "palling around with terrorists" would be most vulnerable in this regard.

Failure to gain traction on this front is bad news for conservatives, in that it is widely believed that lasting conservative success is contingent on motivating the three legs of the conservative stool (sometimes called the "Reagan coalition") -- social conservatives, economic conservatives and national security conservatives -- to focus on a common enemy and, thus, overlook the flaws they find in each other.

In the past, communism was the great unifier. It gave each leg of the movement a common enemy: Social conservatives could fear the godless communists; economic conservatives could fear the Soviet Union's anti-capitalistic system; and national security conservatives could look past their differences with the other wings of the movement to unite against the Soviet Union's nuclear threat and quest for global dominance.

Cliff May, president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, agrees with this assessment. But according to May, foreign policy conservatives have been largely silent because the Obama administration retained Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. Ray Odierno, Iraq has not been abandoned, and more resources are going to Afghanistan.

However, May believes there are very real reasons why national defense conservatives should be concerned with administration policies. May cites cuts to missile defense, efforts to close the Guantanamo detention center without an alternate plan, continued calls to prosecute former Bush officials and "a steady creep back to viewing the Islamist war against the West as merely a criminal justice problem."

Other worried national security conservatives note that while social spending is increasing at alarming rates, Obama is looking for savings in the area of national defense. For example, conservatives noted the administration's recent zeal in ending the F-22 Raptor program, effectively cutting production on the world's most advanced tactical fighter. And according to a recent op-ed by Adm. Paul Rohrer, "the Congressional Research Service (CRS) announced . . . a much greater shortfall in Navy and Marine Corps strike fighters than was previously estimated. Last year, CRS predicted a shortfall of 125 Navy fighter jets by 2017. They now predict that the shortfall will more be more than 300 jets."

But defense cutbacks -- no matter how egregious or dangerous -- are not likely to provoke much outrage from the general public.

A recent Quinnipiac University poll shows Obama's approval numbers slipping to just 50 percent. Social conservatives and economic conservatives have contributed to these numbers, but national security conservatives have thus far remained relatively quiet. One wonders what would happen if the Reagan Coalition were to unite in opposition to the president's agenda.

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