Speaking to Republican supporters at the Sunshine Summit in Orlando, Florida, Carly Fiorina, the former tech CEO, criticized the Obama administration for the “murder, the mayhem, the danger, the tragedy that we see unfolding in Paris, in the Middle East, around the world and too often in our own homeland”.
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The aftermath of the Paris attacks is likely not just to fuel Republican criticisms of Obama’s record but to offer an opening for GOP candidates to distinguish themselves on national security.
The Latest from the Florida Republican Party’s Sunshine Summit, where the major GOP presidential hopefuls are wooing voters and activists for their support in the state’s March 15 primary.
The debate’s early exchanges suggested that she hadn’t figured out how to harness her record as an advantage rather than a liability – a resume that exposes her to attacks on President Barack Obama’s perceived policy weaknesses during her time working for him in his first term.
He tweeted: “President Obama said “ISIL continues to shrink” in an interview just hours before the Paris attack”.
“We must wage this war and we must win”, Fiorina said though she added she was opposed to “nation building” and policies used in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last decade. Instead, he read from notes he said he wrote down the night before.
“He sees the world as he likes to see it, as fantasy”, Christie said.
Christie said his time as U.S. Attorney in the wake of those attacks shaped his understanding of terrorism and the threat it poses and lamented that the country had “lost its focus” since the uncertainty that plagued Americans in the months and years that immediately followed.
“We must never allow this cult of evil to take hold in our country or to live amongst us”, he said.
He says he tried to get an amendment to bolster such screening of foreigners as part of an immigration bill sponsored by Florida Sen.
“We can not let those who seek to disrupt our way of life succeed”, said Rubio, who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He said the US should be more aggressive against IS and called the United States “insane” to accept any refugees from Syria in the wake of the Paris attacks.
Jindal began his remarks criticizing Donald Trump for comparing Dr. Ben Carson to a child molester at an event in Iowa on Thursday. Obama once referred to ISIS as “the J.V.”, or junior varsity, and Christie said he was wrong to dismiss the terrorist group behind the Paris attacks and a string of violent occupations of territories in the Middle East.
Trump for instance, said this week that he would “bomb the s- out of ISIS”, and while he may be tapping into deep public anger at the group, his comments hardly hint at a thought-out military strategy, nor does his other recent claim that he knows more about ISIS than USA generals. “It makes no sense whatsoever for us to be bringing in refugees who our intelligence can not determine if they are terrorists here to kill us or not”. “I see the world as it really is and it’s time to have a president who sees the world as it really is, not how he wishes it would be”.
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He later told reporters that IS is fighting the United States and winning because there’s no plan to take land back from the group.
