It’s disquieting, but unfortunately not all that shocking, that the Democratic candidates revealed during Saturday’s debate that they’re still in support of accepting Syrian refugees. After all, Bernie Sanders unabashedly answered that he still sees climate change as the greatest threat to national security.
The Republican candidates have taken a starkly different approach. A particularly notable response comes from Marco Rubio, who spoke with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week.
Rubio was sharing his general thoughts on what to do after the terrorist attack in Paris, but his point about refugees is particularly worth highlighting.
He was asked to respond to statements from Sen. Rand Paul that Rubio blocked a national security amendment involving more scrutiny for refugees and immigrants. Rubio insisted he did not, and pointed to how Paul has wanted to get rid of metadata efforts to track terrorists if a similar attack had occurred in the United States:
He also made the point that even if there is only one out of 1,000 refugees who may be ISIS, that’s still a problem:
During Saturday’s debate, Hillary had emphasized a screening process. Rubio’s answer may have been in response to her as well as to Paul then.
As a final question, Rubio was asked “how have these attacks changed the race for the White House.” Rubio instead answered that it is the federal government’s “number one obligation… to provide for our security.” He had begun his answer by saying “I don’t think this is time to be doing political analysis on all of this.”
Rubio’s efforts to not politicize the attacks did not go noticed by ThinkProgress, however, who wrote Monday morning “Rubio Already Using Paris Attacks for Fundraising.” ThinkProgress points to how viewers are prompted to donate. As of Monday afternoon though, the link provided directs to the video in the “News” section it is filed under, without such an opportunity to donate.
Eventually, in the last paragraph of the piece, they criticized Rubio more on substance, in an attempt to rebut his point about background checks.
