The delegates and attendees we spoke with often diverged with the party message on stage, and that means something.
By Branko Marcetic, Responsible Statecraft
In a terminally polarized America, it can sometimes seem like there’s nothing that diehards of both major parties can agree on.
Yet at both the party conventions this year there were signs that Americans are ready for a new U.S. foreign policy — even if they had very different ideas of what that change should be.
Speaking to delegates and attendees at the Republican National Convention (RNC), again and again I heard the sentiment that the United States is too involved overseas, and that the treasure being invested in foreign wars should be reinvested back home.
“America is overstretched. We’re trying to do too much all over the world,” Michigan Trump delegate and sheet-metal union worker Ken Criden told me. His friend, James Hooper, agreed about the folly of foreign intervention. “You can’t predict what will happen when you involve yourself that way,” he said.
Shalira Taylor-Jackson, a disillusioned Barack Obama volunteer and an alternate delegate from Cleveland, complained to me about the massive military aid bill passed earlier this year for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. “You sent $100 billion over there,” she said. “If you just gave some of that to the inner cities.”
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