Where Are The Realists?

Quote worth thinking about from Ross Douthat:

The vacuum that Paul [Congressman and Presidential candidate Ron Paul] currently occupies is supposed to be filled by an internationally-minded realism. Indeed, it's precisely the coexistence of realism and idealism in Republican foreign policy, the fruitful tension between the two strains of thought, that has long made the GOP the party to be trusted in international relations - because the idealists elevate the realists, and the realists keep the idealists grounded. When the pendulum swings too far in one direction or another, this tension has usually produced a correction, of the kind that, say, the original neocons and then Reagan provided to the cynical machtpolitik of Kissinger. But there's no sign of a realist corrective in the current GOP field: There were ten candidates on that stage besides Ron Paul yesterday night, and not one of them was willing to call the Iraq War a mistake, which seems to me like the place that a serious realist critique of his Presidency's foreign policy needs to begin.

I am not sure I agree with the last sentence, but I think he is spot on when it comes to the tension between realism and idealism in American foreign policy. The party that seems to capture the right mix is the one that captures the country's imagination.