Note: This is not a personal endorsement of Christie or a discarding of Cruz as a Candidate. I just believe that these issues are what is going to stick in the minds of voters unless Cruz is extremely prepared for this. I expect he will be, but I still don't think Rubin is wrong on this one.
FWIW a lot of us here on FR got a whole lot of lectures from Cruz supporters when we were questioning why Cruz would want to pass ANYTHING about trade while Obama is in office.
Everything I have seen indicates Cruz is considering his possible positions. Unfortunately this is a wicked problem, before it can be solved you first have to define multiple ill defined terms.
Syria? Is it a geographical location or a Nation? Iraq? see Syria.
Do we support anyone there? All factions we do not support will blame us for supporting the other guy. Factions we could support range from the problematic to the bad with a few who are simply horrific.
Finding a strategy that can both work and fit on a bumper sticker seems problematic at best. (”Nuke it till it glows” is unserious)
Right- we heard Rubio’s argument from his Pac, the WSJ, the WashPost-— they all picked it up, of course, because it was rhe Establishment’s orchestrated attack on Cruz (just as it has been placed on FR several times)-—
Result????
For the 1st time, Cruz is ahead of Rubio in NH.
Idiots! No one is going to believe Ted Cruz is “soft” on national security— no one!
Bull spit.
Storing my metadata so that IF I ever become a politician or other blackmailable figure, the establishment can comb through years of my gps and call/texting data to find a mistress or some other goods to keep me in line - has nothing to do with national security.
But they’d never do that and I should take off my tin foil hat!?
Ask the 700 people with FBI files in Hillary’s possession of they’d ever use data like that against political opponents. Hell, ask tea party orgs if the IRS would ever do something like that.
Any politician in any debate that tells me that the gov’t has to spy on ME to keep ME safe doesn’t deserve my support.
National security my crack. Establishment security more like it.
The metadata and the San Bernadino terrorists is a non-starter. The FBI knew he was communicating (via phone & social media) with known terrorists/organizations. Any warrant they needed they could easily get. Collecting metadata on all Americans is wrong. Period.
Her closing paragraph tells us all we need to know about her thesis & argument:
This was not Cruz's crowd. The problem for him is that a great number of middle-of-the-road Republicans are just like them. The whole piece is wishful thinking and inartful twisting. There's no there there.
Cruz has been CORRECT on national security. You go back and watch his foreign policy speech of a few years back - it was Reaganesque and statesmanlike. he made the right call on Iran deal, on ISIS, on Putin and on Israel support.
His statements recently on Libya too have been correct. Obama intervened to support islamicist victories in Libya, and it was NOT Cruz’ approach but the Obama approach - which Rubin/McCain/Rubio endorsed btw - that led to Libya being what it is now, and which led to Benghazi. Rubin has got revisionist history going on.
It’s easy to be better than the horrible Obama, but Cruz is also better than the two extremes in the GOP - our neo-cons on one extreme and the isolationists on the other extreme. Cruz is right in the middle, focussed clearly on US national security interests, willing to fight when we need to but not willing to expend US blood and treasure when its ‘not our fight’ and focussing our efforts on maintaining US national security as #1 goal.
Yes, the neo-con wing of GOP will try to attack Cruz as not warmongering enough, but people are waking up to the fact that the simplistic interventionism isn’t right. Where it COUNTS, Cruz is tough as nails. Cruz won’t degrade ISIS but defeat them, and his gameplan is similar to how Rumsfeld and our DOD took out the taliban in 8 weeks from power in Afghanistan. It’s absurd that ISIS holds *any* ground when in fact a real US effort could defeat them in that amount of time or less.