“So Rubio’s foreign policy and national security strategy is to invade Middle Eastern countries, create power vacuums for terrorist organizations, allow their people to come to America unvetted, give them legal status and citizenship, then impose a massive surveillance state to monitor the problem,” Alice Stewart, a national spokeswoman for Cruz, said in a statement to the Guardian.
“I’m trying to figure out if it is more incoherent than dangerous or vice versa."
Alex Conant, a Rubio spokesman, hit back:
“No amount of false rhetoric will cover up the fact that Cruz voted for Rand Paul’s isolationist budget to slash military spending and gut US intelligence programs. Cruz might talk tough, but he would endanger America by partnering with rulers like Assad and Putin. Marco has consistently fought to strengthen America’s military, intelligence programs and border security, and as president his top priority will be to keep Americans safe.”Rubio vs Cruz, the gloves are coming off! Credit to both of them for taking logically consistent positions that coincide with their overall views on immigration. The rhetoric here is particularly fierce and with good reason. Due to the attacks in Paris and California, national security is likely to be a big part of the 2016 presidential election and the GOP candidate will want to lean heavily on their perceived superiority over Clinton on the issue of national security.
If Democrats tend to have an easier time casting themselves as the party that takes care of social concerns, Republicans still know how to win national elections by promising law and order.
You'll remember that I laid out two main directions for the GOP in this election with four different pathways/candidates. The first direction was the anti-establishment candidates Ted Cruz and Donald Trump who want to upset the tables and change how the Republican party approaches issues in order to represent smaller interests who are often ignored in Washington. The second direction was with the establishment candidates Marco Rubio and Chris Christie who will look to evolve the Republican party into a new century with fresh strategies for maintaining some conservative principles in a liberalizing nation.
Two directions on national security
The establishment of the party is controlled by powerful interests, including globalist economic interests who have a lot at stake in all of the power brokering that takes place in international politics. The anti-establishment party is controlled by everyday Americans, who's interests are strictly American which means they are narrower in focus and generally fairly ignorant of geo-political concerns.
The establishment is eager to have a hand in matters that take place around the world, including helping to topple Assad in order to open a pipeline of oil into Europe that would limit Russia's ability to hold Western nations captive to buying their petroleum.
Immigration plays into this issue on two levels. First of all, globalist economic interests are keen to flood the US with immigrants so they can have access to more skilled workers from Asia and more cheap labor from Mexico and Latin America. The more workers they have in each labor force the cheaper the costs and the better the options.
Secondly, there is an inherent fairness in the idea that if you're going to mix your hand into Middle Eastern politics than you should be willing to take in the people who's homes you've destroyed and who's neighborhood you've transformed into a disordered mess.
The anti-establishment side of the party sees things very differently. The everyday American doesn't like immigration because it lowers his wages and results in the creation of neighborhoods that he doesn't want to live in, forcing him to spend more money on housing location which he struggles to do because of his depressed real wages. As a result he'll tend to have fewer kids while the immigrants have several, leading to his country becoming less defined by his own people group and values and more defined by those of the immigrants.
The average American can be convinced by the establishment to engage in this or that war for heroic causes such as the defense of American liberties (it's not always clear which ones are at stake) or the defense of some helpless and oppressed people against the dictator that's oppressing them. However, as they become aware of the costs of such ventures, such as increasing immigration or higher body counts for their sons, they become less and less easily persuaded.
Who's winning this battle within the GOP?
Ted Cruz's line of rhetoric here is very interesting on two different levels.
The first is that he's very aware that he needs to appear tough on national security in the midst of people feeling more and more at risk due to Paris or California but yet he's embracing the anti-establishment arguments as he does so rather than conventional GOP wisdom on how to appear tough.
The idea that the establishment's foreign policy can be summed up as "invade the world, invite the world," originates in the blogosphere and sums up the anti-establishment intellectual rhetoric against the GOP's typical foreign policy.
Normally Republicans convince voters that they are tougher than the Democrats because they are more willing to go kick a** internationally and also to increase national surveillance and police operations to tighten down on potential domestic terrorists. You'll note that these are issues which the Clintons typically don't allow themselves to be flanked on by Republicans.
This may still be a popular message but it falls flat these days with the more intelligent of the anti-establishment elements of the GOP who notice that with the US toppling Saddam Hussein (Iraq), Muammar Gaddafi (Libya), and potentially Assad (Syria) the risk never seems to shrink and the more radical terrorists seem to grow in strength while also gaining increasing access to the US.
So when Rubio's spokes person says "Cruz might talk tough, but he would endanger America by partnering with rulers like Assad and Putin," that line of argument is increasingly falling flat. It seems more and more obviously true that while surveillance programs routinely fail to stop terrorism in the West, allowing dictators to maintain control in the Middle East has the positive effect of curtailing radical Islam.
No one is less interested in radical Islam gaining momentum in the Middle East than the dictators who are attempting to control the regions and stand to lose everything.
As for Putin, if you took an opinion poll in the GOP base these days you may find that the Russian leader would poll ahead of much of the field.
Cruz's line of rhetoric is also interesting because, before Trump, it's not one that establishment Republican candidates had to take very seriously. Back in the day when Ron Paul would say things like this the other candidates would wave their hands and talk about how Ron Paul was a wacko who would allow terrorists to run amok and give your kids free heroin.
But now? The nationalist side of the GOP is gaining steam and it has a coherent policy for national security that has appeal to the party's base of every day people. Namely, "what if we stopped de-stabilizing already volatile regions and stopped importing the people from volatile regions into the US? Wouldn't that make us safer in addition to serving several other national interests? Maybe then airport security wouldn't have to take so dang long and we still wouldn't have to worry about being blown up by armed Muslims."
Dismiss it as simplistic if you like but it's actually quite logical and very easily communicated and understood by the average voter.
It'll be interesting to see how Rubio (or Christie, who's probably more up for this fight than Marco is) responds to this line of rhetoric if it continues to be successful in connecting with the base. In the midst of repeated military disasters and failures by the government to recognize the threat from the California shooters or the Tsarnaev brothers, everyday Americans have little reason to trust the establishment's plan to protect them with more military and police spending.
After all, don't the military and police already have exponentially more resources than America's enemies? Will having six million times the funding make a difference that having five times the funding didn't?
Whoever wins this debate will then have to carry their argument against Hillary Clinton, who should be vulnerable here, but they better make sure their own side believes it first.
Given that the Clintons have also supported foreign intervention, regime change, increased policing, and flooding the US with immigrants, the anti-establishment argument may be the one where Republicans can actually offer substantial choice. Here's hoping the Ted wins this debate and we have an actual discussion in the general election on what America's grand strategy for defending her citizens should be rather than a nuanced discussion focused on to what degree either side will do virtually the same thing.
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