McKeon to give “Major policy address” to Heritage Foundation

If the Republicans end up re-taking the House of Representatives this fall, Congressman McKeon will likely take charge of the House Armed Services Committee, a very powerful post.

You can bet McKeon is excited about the prospect. Indeed, he’s auditioning before the conservative and influential Heritage Foundation this week on the subject of national security:

Washington, D.C.—As President Obama completes his first year in office serving as Commander-in-Chief, Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.) will offer a major policy address at the Heritage Foundation next week in order to evaluate the Obama Administration’s national security policies and challenge the liberal notion that America is in inevitable decline.

By advocating for a renewed emphasis on American exceptionalism, McKeon will argue for winning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, improving our security at home, increasing investment in defense, continuing support for our international partners and allies, and national security policies that maintain America’s global supremacy.

This should be an interesting speech. I’m not sure Congressman McKeon has ever given anything like it. Holding an Animal Husbandry degree from BYU, he’s not generally mentioned in the pantheon of influential conservative foreign policy thinkers, but he’s been Ranking Member on the ASC for a year now and is getting increasing attention from the media as a military and foreign policy expert.

Note that from the start, he’s going to set up a straw man (“the liberal notion that America is in inevitable decline”) in order to knock it down. I’m not aware of any liberals who think America is in inevitable decline; indeed, most liberals who say America is in decline offer ways for America to arrest & reverse that decline and argue that it is anything but inevitable.  But McKeon doesn’t do nuance.

No doubt McKeon will portray Barack Obama as soft on terrorism (as he did all of 2009), but how is he going to deal with the fact that the President has ordered an additional 50,000 troops to Afghanistan? Or the fact that drone attacks have killed more Al Queda terrorists in AfPak in 2009 than they did in 2008? What about the sale of $6.4 billion in arms to Taiwan? Are these the actions of a peacenik President who doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism? Wish I could ask him.

Following his Heritage Foundation address, McKeon will return home to host a Women’s Conference at COC aimed squarely at the SCVMOMSBLOG demographic featuring Senate candidate Carly Fiorina. He’s covering all the bases ahead of his reelection this fall and faces no real challengers in a year in which the GOP is ascendant.