Skip to content
Subscriber Only
Opinion
James Gibney

Needed: 'Tax-and-Defend' Republicans

Reagan's military budgets won't work in 2017.
U.S.S. Ronald Reagan sails into uncharted fiscal waters.

U.S.S. Ronald Reagan sails into uncharted fiscal waters.

Photographer: Dylan McCord/U.S. Navy via Getty Images
By

Support for higher defense spending is axiomatic for the nine declared Republican presidential candidates, even the libertarian Rand Paul.

Yet few of these candidates have been as forthright about how they would get more bucks for the bang while keeping the deficit in check, also a key part of the Republican catechism.