Yesterday on C-Span’s Newsmakers, House Armed Services Committee ranking member Adam Smith (D-WA) reiterated his concern that Mitt Romney will carry over the Bush administration’s foreign policy should he win the White House this November. Given the number of Bush-Cheney foreign policy alumni advising Romney’s campaign, Smith said it’s a “legitimate question” to wonder whether his foreign policy as president will model George W. Bush’s:

SMITH: I think it’s the overwillingness to use the military. The over-willingness to use military action in the sort of belligerent, go it alone, no allies, no negotiations approach that I think is not well suited to our current national security needs. [...]

But what you get too much out of the Romney campaign — and certainly from Dick Cheney — is whenever there is a problem, we have to step in militarily. … Step after step after step, you have to wonder that if you have another Republican administration, how many more wars are we going to have to go through? And I think that’s a very legitimate question and I think they are too willing to use military action instead of looking at the other tools that are in our national security arsenal.

Q: So you think that Mitt Romney would be a carry over of George W. Bush when it comes to foreign policy?

SMITH: I think that’s a risk. Certainly. … He has relied a great deal on the Bush-Cheney administration national security leadership so I think it’s a worthy concern.

Watch the clip:

It’s not only concerning that many of Romney’s foreign policy advisers are holdovers from the Bush-Cheney-era but also, it appears that the so-called Cheney-ites on his team have the former Massachusetts governor’s ear. Moreover, Romney and Cheney actually share views on a number of foreign policy issues. And it appears that Romney is concerned about this perception as his campaign did not allow the media to photograph the two men together at a recent fundraiser.

Dick Cheney was on the Hill yesterday trying to rally his GOP troops to fight automatic military spending cuts. Cheney reportedly relied on his experience as Defense Secretary to make his case (ironic given the DOD’s budget fell drastically under his watch), but according to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Cheney’s real concern is about the next war:

Cheney, 71, said defense spending is “not a spigot you can turn on and turn off, that you need to keep money flowing in a predictable way so you can plan for the next war,” Graham said after the Senate Republicans’ weekly luncheon. They heard from the former vice president, who was President George H.W. Bush’s defense secretary from 1989 to 1993.

There’s absolutely no evidence that suggests the U.S. won’t be able to plan for or fight any wars should the military spending cuts sequester take effect. As the CBO reported this week, cutting military spending by $500 billion over the next ten years, as the sequester mandates, will still allow the Pentagon to spend as much money as it did in 2006. And at the time, the United States spent more on its military than any country in the world many times over and was engaged in two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that Cheney is worried about the U.S. not being able to fight/start a war. It’s also a bit concerning that he’s openly predicting a “next” one. Indeed, he lobbied hard in the waning days of the Bush administration for an attack on Iran and presumably he thinks he’ll get another shot at it should Mitt Romney win the White House.

Dick Cheney’s re-emergence tour continued today with a visit to Capitol Hill to get Republicans “ginned up” to prevent automatic cuts to military spending that are supposed to take effect early next year. Politico reports that in a meeting with Senate Republicans this afternoon, Cheney provided some words of wisdom based on his experience as Secretary of Defense during the George H.W. Bush administration:

Cheney didn’t push a specific policy remedy for avoiding the automatic cuts, several senators said. Rather, he focused on his time as the defense secretary in the 1990s — talking particularly about the need to plan years in advance for major investments in the military.

“He just talked about some of the critical investments that have been made over time and the lag time that it takes for those things to happen,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) “There was no policy issue; it was just the fact [that] sequestration is a blunt object, and it is.”

Whether Cheney talked about his time leading the Pentagon, the big elephant in the room here is that Cheney himself oversaw drastic cuts to the DOD budget during his tenure as Defense Secretary and even pushed for cuts to expensive weapons programs. George W. Bush administration Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell, who served as Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman during the elder Bush’s administration, pointed this out last year in making the case that the “defense budget cannot be sacrosanct” when figuring ways to cut spending:

“When the Cold War ended 20 years ago, when I was chairman and [Dick] Cheney was Secretary of Defense, we cut the defense budget by 25 percent. And we reduced the force by 500,000 active duty soldiers, so it can be done. Now, how fast you can do it and what you have to cut out remains to be seen, but I don’t think the defense budget can be made sacrosanct and it can’t be touched.”

Indeed, as a recent CAP report pointed out, the budget authority for the Defense Department fell by nearly $100 billion during the George H.W. Bush administration, or Cheney’s time as Defense Secretary.

Also most likely left unmentioned in Cheney’s meetings with Republicans on the Hill is that overwhelming majorities of Americans in both Democratic and Republican congressional districts favor military spending cuts and the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said this week that even the most drastic cuts would merely take the Pentagon’s budget back to 2006 levels.

Late last month, a senior GOP operative told Reuters that, when faced with foreign policy questions, Mitt Romney’s “instinct is to call the Cheney-ites” — those whose views align with former Vice President Dick Cheney. Just a day later, the New York Times reported that a former Cheney adviser guided Romney’s “hard line” on China policy.

Cheney’s and Romney’s views on foreign policy line up on a host of issues — something put on stark display last week when the former vice president hosted a fundraiser for Romney at his Wyoming home. The disastrous policies of the Bush era apparently remain unpopular enough that the Romney campaign barred photographs of the candidate with his host, but not enough to keep Romney from taking advice from the controversial figure. In an interview with National Review, Romney was asked about their meeting:

NATIONAL REVIEW: A few days ago, you visited Vice President Cheney. Did he have any advice for you?

ROMNEY: We did speak, at some length, about foreign-policy matters, in particular the circumstances surrounding some of the foreign-policy decisions of the Bush administration.

It’s worth remembering that Cheney was known to be a central figure in aggressive Bush administration policies that led, among other outcomes, to a costly and unnecessary war in Iraq (something several Romney advisers supported). Cheney — like some Romney advisers and other fundraisers — supported attacking Iran (in contravention to Romney’s espoused Iran policy). Cheney also considers himself a “big supporter of waterboarding,” and thinks the U.S. should revive the practice that most consider torture.

Romney previously called Cheney “a man of wisdom and judgement.” Now he’s actuating that assessment by taking advice from the former vice president.

Dick Cheney hosted a fundraiser for Mitt Romney last night at his home in Wyoming. Donors paid $1,000 to attend a reception, $10,000 for a picture with Romney and $30,000 to eat dinner with Romney and Cheney in the former vice president’s home. While reporters were on hand to cover some of the events, media were not allowed to take photos of Cheney and Romney together. The Los Angeles Times explains:

Because of the unpopularity of Bush and Cheney, Romney has kept his distance — never appearing publicly with either man during his 2012 campaign. Though both leaders are admired by many in the Republican Party base, any perception of closeness with Romney could be harmful as the unofficial Republican nominee seeks to draw in independent and moderate voters.

Indeed, it seems that Romney has been playing a double game this campaign season in an effort to draw away any attention to his neocon-inspired foreign policy. In public, he either chooses to ignore national security issues or he and his advisers don’t distinguish the presumptive GOP nominee’s foreign policy from President Obama’s too much.

Behind the scenes, however, it’s quite a different story. As Bush administration Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell noted recently, Romney’s foreign policy advisers “are quite far to the right.” Many of them advocated for the Iraq war and now want war with Iran.

And the ones who want war reportedly have Romney’s ear as one top Republican operative told Reuters recently that the moderate camp inside Romney’s foreign policy team “are very concerned about the fact that if Romney needs to call anyone, his instinct is to call the Cheney-ites.” Another Romney aide, Vin Weber — who has received scrutiny for lobbying for countries with poor human rights records — told the Washington Post that “it’s inevitable” that the Bush-Cheney alumni advising Romney on foreign policy are going to “have some influence.”

Cheney praised Romney last night as the “only” candidate to make what he thinks are the right foreign policy decisions as commander-in-chief. In fact, Romney shares Cheney’s views on a number of national security issues, as Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) observed in an article in Foreign Policy yesterday: “A Romney presidency promises to take us back to something all too familiar: a Bush-Cheney doctrine — equal parts naïve and cavalier — which eagerly embraces military force without fully considering the consequences.”

This evening, former Vice President Dick Cheney will host a fundraiser for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.

A GOP operative told Reuters that Romney’s “instinct is to call the Cheney-ites” on foreign policy issues, and indeed, Romney reportedly turned to a former Cheney aide to guide his hard line on China. Romney’s Cheney-esque foreign policy raising questions about how much a Romney presidency would resemble the disastrous Bush-Cheney administration.

The questions are more than reasonable: Romney and Cheney already share controversial positions on matters like ending the Iraq war and whether the U.S. should torture terror suspects. Here’s a quick rundown of their positions on some top issues:

	CHENEY	ROMNEY
TORTURE	Cheney said he was a “big supporter of waterboarding,” an interrogation method that is considered torture. “I would strongly recommend we continue it,” he has said.	Romney agrees. His aides have said he does not believe waterboarding is torture,” and refused to rule out the technique’s use by a potential Romney administration.
IRAQ	Cheney supported starting, continues to defend, and opposed ending the Iraq war. He said ending the costly war “would be a real tragedy.” When the war was winding down over his objections, Cheney said the U.S. should “negotiate with the Iraqis on some stay-behind forces.” But Cheney and his comrades seem not to care at all about what Iraq’s democratically-elected government had to say about it.	Romney also said withdrawing from Iraq was “more than unfortunate. I think it’s tragic.” Like Cheney, Romney called for the U.S. to maintain “an ongoing force, somewhere between 10 and 20 and 30,000 [troops] there,” without ever raising what Iraqis might think about it.
IRAN	Cheney said in 2009 that he wanted the United States to attack Iran in the waning days of the Bush administration. “I was probably a bigger advocate of military action than any of my colleagues,” Cheney said.	While Romney tries to keep quiet on Iran during the campaign, his top foreign policy advisers don’t. John Bolton, who regularly calls for war with Iran, said recently that he hopes negotiations fail. And a host of Romney advisers — many of whom helped bring about the Iraq war — also advocate for war with Iran.

With their closely mirrored language on these controversial issues, it’s no surprise that Romney said last year that Cheney was a “man of wisdom and judgment.” For good measure, Romney added: “That’s the kind of person I’d like to have [as vice president] — a person of wisdom and judgment.”

That sort of lavish praise and the fundraising relationship could portend more war and strife for the U.S. in a potential Romney administration. Cheney is the second Romney fundraiser host this week who has been intimately involved with advocating for an attack on Iran.

Reuters reported yesterday that sharp disputes have erupted within Mitt Romney’s foreign policy team. One “long-time Republican activist” close to the campaign’s moderate wing expressed concern that Romney’s “instinct is to call the Cheney-ites.” In other words, the neoconservatives on Romney’s team often win out over moderate voices.

Today, a New York Times report reinforced that view with a more concrete example. During the diplomatic crisis over Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng, who escaped house arrest and sought refuge in the U.S. embassy, Romney took the Cheney-ite “hard line” on the advice of a former adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney. Romney, at the time, blasted the Obama administration’s handling of the crisis — before it was resolved.

According to the Times, this “hard line” adopted by Romney came directly from a literal “Cheney-ite” — not a Cheneyesque ideologue, but an actual former adviser to the ultra-hawkish former vice president. According to Romney advisers who spoke to the Times anonymously:

One adviser said to favor a more calibrated approach was Evan A. Feigenbaum, a co-chairman of Mr. Romney’s Asia-Pacific working group and a former State Department official. Arguing for a relatively more aggressive response was Aaron L. Friedberg, another co-chairman who was a national security aide to Vice President Dick Cheney. Mr. Friedberg is known for favoring a hard line on China, and others say it was almost certain the two men would stake out different ground.

Before the Chen incident, Romney-endorser and former U.S. ambassador to China Jon Huntsman said Romney’s China bluster was “typical” campaign rhetoric. As the Times put it, “Romney and his team respond to foreign crises and formulate policy in a highly charged political atmosphere.” The Times went on:

Mr. Romney and his tightknit staff often seek the most expedient way to gain political advantage and attack rivals. That can mean staking out ground well to the right in order to sharpen contrasts with Mr. Obama.

Romney probably stakes out these sorts of positions because his national security and foreign policies lack substance and, at other times, are difficult to distinguish from Obama’s. Romney presses for more military spending, but can’t overcome contradictions in his plan to reduce the debt and deficit. His bluster appears to draw distinctions on issues like Iran — where, despite past and some present hawkishness among advisers, Romney’s campaign positions looks a lot like Obama’s — and Syria, where Romney calls for arming rebels, something the Obama administration is already facilitating.