Jen Rubin posts nice little laundry list concerning the awfulness of Obama's foreign policy [and re Russia links to Hillary's 60 Minutes interview I'd forgotten about that's just devastating given recent events and should be an integral feature of any GOP advertising campaign in 2016 should she choose to run] - but it occurred to me that Obama has effectively soundly re-established the given that liberals are very bad, and in Obama's case abysmally bad when it comes to national security, foreign policy and defense issues and that this opens up an opportunity in 2016 for any GOP candidate who is very good at talking about such. Conventional wisdom holds that foreign policy doesn't play well in presidential elections because despite its importance it's too esoteric a subject, too removed from the average voter's daily concerns - but the potential certainly exists that Obama's foreign policy record could amount to such an excruciatingly awful thing that it plays big in 2016 - and that's a boon to any GOP candidate who excels at talking about foreign policy - which, from what I've heard, means Marco Rubio. All things being equal I'd prefer a governor for the GOP offering - I'm a big believer in executive experience - but governors, given their busy schedules and local concerns, are generally not very convincing when discussing foreign policy - of everybody out there considering a run for Republican presidential candidate only Rubio, and possibly Ryan, sounds credible on the foreign policy issue - everyone else just sounds like they're spouting bromides. Yes, people mention Cruz, and he certainly likes to sound tough on foreign policy in order to separate himself from Paul, but I don't see Cruz as a viable candidate - he's a guy who can never appeal to moderates and therefore he has no chance of winning a presidential election.
