National Review‘s Bob Costa interviews Marco Rubio, and discovers that the Florida Tea Party senator is conciously a foreign policy hawk, trying to follow in the late Jesse Helms’s foosteps. 

“It is so important that conservatism does not translate into isolationism,” Rubio asserts. “Isolationism has never worked for America. It is not going to work in the 21st century.”

“That doesn’t mean confrontation for the sake of confrontation; that doesn’t mean we go around and settle every dispute in the world,” Rubio says. “But if America is engaged, we have influence, and if we have influence, we can help determine the outcome. We cannot guarantee outcomes, but we can help determine them in a way that is positive for the world.”

Rubio also lists his recent reading: former Bush speechwriter Mark Thiessen’s Courting Disaster, Power, Faith, and Fantasy by former Israeli ambassador Michael Oren, and Bush’s Decision Points. Sadly, Rubio claims to read no fiction.