Sen. Ted Cruz, responding to President Obama’s criticism of Republican rhetoric of the Islamic State, challenged the president to a debate on refugee policy.
Advertisement
Cruz and his fellow candidate, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, distinguished themselves by declaring that the US should accept refugees from Syria – but only if they are Christian.
Cruz’s father emigrated to the United States from Cuba and said he was the victim of brutal beatings at the hands of the Cuban dictator before Fidel Castro. We don’t think so, because – who knows? “Maybe you could be somebody who is going to commit crimes against Americans'”.
And Cruz isn’t the only candidate calling for a Christian-focused refugee screening.
“With his excuse-laden and defensive press conference, President Obama removed any and all doubt that he lacks the resolve or a strategy to defeat and destroy ISIS”, said Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee.
“Indeed just yesterday, President Obama attacked me directly and called me Un-American”, Cruz told supporters. “That’s not who we are”, the president said during a news conference at the G20 summit in Turkey on Monday.
During testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in October, the head of the United States’ Citizenship and Immigration Services’ Refugee Affairs Division, Chief Barbara Strack, also noted that the agency had implemented additional security protocols for Syrian refugee applications, referring many cases to fraud detection officials for additional review and research. “I don’t think so”, McCain said.
Here’s the map of which states are “rejecting” refugees, via CNN. In other words, Ted Cruz is part of a theocratic and political movement that promotes murdering or forcibly converting those who don’t share their extreme faith. Now they have made the refugees fleeing terrorist violence in Syria into a political wedge, and they’re doing it in the most obvious, despicable fashion imaginable.
BASH: What about protecting those people?
CRUZ: There is no doubt that millions of people are suffering from the rise of radical Islamic terrorism. Christians are suffering; Jews are suffering; and other Muslims are suffering. They’re not saying all Muslims are terrorists, but what they are saying is that you can’t trust any Muslims because you can’t tell the good ones from the bad ones.
– The situation here is “entirely different” from Europe, where Syrian refugees are flooding across borders.
Bash spent the rest of the November 17, 2015 segment on the senator’s proposals for combating ISIS.
President Obama suggested [Monday] that the governors were “shameful”, but their concerns are based on common sense.
It didn’t take long for Republicans to find a novel way to politicize the terrorist attacks in Paris, and not just through the normal bleating about doing what President Obama is already doing, but doing it more/better/louder. I’ve described this as a photo-op foreign policy.
“I don’t believe the answer is sending boots on the ground to Syria”, Cruz added, saying that too many people are eager to get Americans involved in a civil war there.
Advertisement
Cruz’s opposition to allowing Muslim refugees to enter the United States has been echoed by at least, who say they plan to deny Syrian refugees entry into their states.
