TheDailyBeast.com: on War & Peace

Jeb Bush: OpEd: Not distancing himself from brother's Afghan policy

To seriously challenge for the presidency, a Republican will have to pointedly distance himself from Jeb's older brother: acknowledging that George W. Bush squandered the budget surplus he inherited. No Republican will be able to promise foreign-policy competence unless he or she acknowledges the Bush administration's disastrous mismanagement in Afghanistan and Iraq. It won't be enough for a candidate merely to keep his or her distance from W: Romney tried that and failed. To seriously compete, the next Republican candidate for president will have to repudiate key aspects of Bush's legacy. Jeb Bush would find that excruciatingly hard even if he wanted to. And as his interviews Sunday make clear, he doesn't event want to try.

Lincoln Chafee: Iraq war was on hawks' wish list; feared another Vietnam

Thomas Ravenel: Republicans are pro-invading this or that country

"As a Republican, if you're not anti-gay, anti-immigrant, pro-war and pro-invading this or that country, you get the cold shoulder," he said from his Mt. Pleasant, S.C. real estate office. "At some point you rationalize certain viewpoints, cognitive dissonance notwithstanding, and you adopt that platform. And the Democrats do the same thing on their side."

He also speaks of the overarching need for Americans to reevaluate their relationship with their government, "We need to ask not what your government can do for you, but what you can do for yourself and where necessary, what you can do for others."