Marco Rubio
makes his case.
Marco Rubio thinks he might have the most foreign policy experience of the GOP lineup contemplating a presidential bid.
"If I run for president," Rubio, a 43-year-old U.S. senator from Florida told The Des Moines Register in a telephone interview Wednesday, "I don't know what rest of field would look like, but I would certainly say that about most of the people that are being mentioned. Few, if any, have spent the amount of time on it that I have."
A foreign-policy off between Rick Perry and Marco Rubio. Won't that be fun to watch.
Rubio is one of four Florida residents vying for Iowa GOP caucusgoers' affections, along with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former brain surgeon Ben Carson. All three are currently more popular than Rubio, who ranked ninth out of 16 Republicans tested in an Iowa Poll in late January.
Rubio's right, he does have more foreign policy experience than any of those people. A foreign policy fight between Marco Rubio and former brain surgeon Ben Carson would be a sight to behold. Jeb Bush might counter by saying that he had a lot of input into his brother's foreign policy ideas, at which point any sensible debate moderator would order him catapulted off the stage and into a nearby lake.
Like Every Republican Candidate, Rubio's main foreign policy stance is that we need to be acting more aggressively toward ISIL. How aggressively? Take whatever the last guy said and add "plus one" to it, boom, you're done. The last guy is wrong and you're a damn foreign policy genius.
Later Wednesday, in remarks on the Senate floor, Rubio said: "I would say there is a pretty simple authorization he could ask for, and it would read one sentence. And that is: We authorize the President to defeat and destroy ISIL, period. And that's, I think, what we need to do."
Now I'm left wondering how much of our national response to ISIS/ISIL in the next two years will be motivated primarily by election jockeying. The general American public may not want "boots on the ground," but the general American public isn't made up of people who are seeking the nation's highest office based on their ability to one-up the other guy's demands for doing the most violent possible thing.
Sorry, that was overly morbid. I'm sure everyone only has America's best interests at heart. Happy thoughts!