Speaking at The Citadel today, presidential hopeful Fred Thompson gave the “I want to beef up the military” stump speech that has become compulsory for Republican presidential candidates stopping at the official military college of South Carolina. But Thompson, closely trailing in most S.C. polls, took on frontrunner Rudy Giuliani by trumping the former mayor’s calls for an additional 100,000 soldiers to the Army.

Thompson said Tuesday he wants a military ground force that includes 775,000 in the Army and 225,000 Marines. That would be 23,000 more Marines than the Pentagon currently is seeking.

“Half measures and small increases will no longer do. We need the best all-volunteer force that can meet the security needs of this country. And they must be organized, trained and equipped to deal with tomorrow’s threats as well as today,” Thompson said.

Thompson didn’t say how he would pay for or recruit those forces. He did say that military spending should be set at 4.5 percent of the value of the goods and services the nation creates, or gross domestic product. His campaign later said it should be set at up to 4.5 percent and that would be the equivalent of increasing current military spending by up to $150 billion a year, but that increases would be phased in and depend on economic growth. [JIM DAVENPORT - AP]

We support a strong military and we agree that defense spending should be priority numero uno, but where the heck are we supposed to find an extra $150 billion per year? Unless we are willing to really sit down and lop out that much in pork programs each fiscal year — which would certainly be possible were it not for the current set of earmark-lovers in Congress — then there’s just no way we could ever afford this kind of ground force increase.

It’s a great idea, and it really energizes a crowd, but these are the kind of myopic policies that get us in trouble.