The main lesson Jeb Bush drew from recent experience in the Middle East was that the United States needs a “strategy to get in and a strategy to get out”.
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Both Trump and Cruz largely limited their attacks to the so-called “establishment” candidates, like Sen.
“Donald Trump has done the one single thing you can’t do: Declare war on Islam itself”, Graham said, calling the proposal a coup for Islamic State militants trying to recruit new members. Trump asks the interviewer, “Why do we care?”
The two confrontations dominated the interchanges, while the rest of the candidates concentrated their attacks on President Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Other issues that came up in the debate included whether attempting to topple dictators overseas is a good idea.
Next to trump, Ben Carson got the most new followers on twitter last night, weighing in on ISIS in Syria: “There will be boots on the ground, and they’ll be over here if we don’t get them out now”, said Dr. Ben Carson, (R) Presidential Candidate.
In the Trump vs. Cruz war of words, Trump who suggested that Cruz was a “maniac” last Sunday now suggested during the debate, “I have gotten to know him [Cruz] over the last three or four days, he has a wonderful temperament”.
On the Las Vegas debate stage, Donald Trump finally became a side note.
Bush leaned into that message Wednesday, saying during interviews on “Fox and Friends” and CNN’s “New Day” that the celebrity businessman now leading the GOP pack is “not a serious candidate”. There aren’t large chunks of time when they remain silent.
He added, “So Donald, you know, is great at the one-liners, but he’s a chaos candidate. He’d be a chaos president”.
Trump stayed firm on the travel ban and proposal to “close” parts of the internet to prevent ISIS online recruitment.
With Cruz’s criticism on an audio recording, there was an expectation that Trump and Cruz would finally set aside their truce, especially after Cruz had seized the lead in a major poll this week of Republican voters in Iowa, the state which on February 1 holds the first nominating contest of the election. Does Ted Cruz rule out ever legal identifying people in this country illegally now.
“He’s the weakest of all the candidates on immigration”.
As they did in their latest debate Tuesday, Republicans are eager to say they will be tougher on terrorists than Barack Obama. It is radical Islamic terrorist. He did not elaborate on the practial reality of doing so, other than to say he would enlist the best and the brightest from Silicon Valley to out-hack the jihadis. “I’ve gained great respect for the Republican leadership”. “And we’ve opened up a very big discussion that needed to be opened up”, the mogul said.
In both the first and second debates, candidates repeatedly pushed for more military funding. But during the debate, it was Senator Marco Rubio of Florida who took aim at the Texan.
But Rubio noted that Cruz had voted against defense authorization bills and had supported defense cuts that would make such bombing impractical.
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“Ruthless is not necessarily the word I would use, but tough, resolute, understanding what the problems are and understanding that the job of the president of the United States is to protect the people of this country and to do what is necessary to get it done”, Carson said, generating resounding applause.
