Marco Rubio knocked what he called the “Obama-Clinton foreign policy” in a well-received, forward-looking appearance at the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday morning.
The Florida senator, who is considering a 2016 presidential run, is trailing other GOP contenders and has tried to distance himself in the governor-heavy field by stressing his experience with foreign policy. The first-term Republican is a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and Select Committee on Intelligence.
When asked what word he would associate with Hillary Clinton, the presumed 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, Rubio replied, “Yesterday.”
In addition to acknowledging his rocky history with immigration reform, Rubio stressed his opposition to “a national school board imposing a national curriculum on our country,” otherwise known as the Common Core, which fellow Floridian and likely 2016 presidential candidate Jeb Bush supports.
The senator drew heavy applause when he criticized President Obama’s foreign policy and touted American exceptionalism.
“After all,” said Rubio, “when was the last time you heard about a boatful of American refugees landing on the shores of another country?”
He slammed the White House for embracing a foreign policy that “treats the ayatollah in Iran with more respect than the prime minister of Israel.” And he called for a stronger challenge to the Islamic State.
“If we wanted to defeat (ISIS) militarily, we could do it.”
Obama does not have a military strategy in place, said Rubio, “because he doesn’t want to upset Iran. In his mind, this (nuclear) deal with Iran is going to be the Obamacare of his second term,” and sending military forces to the Middle East would upset Iran’s sense of authority in the region.
As a religiously Sunni group, said Rubio, ISIS needs “to be defeated on the ground by a Sunni military force with air support from the United States. … Put together a coalition of armed forces from regional governments to confront them on the ground with U.S. operations support, and then provide them logistical support, intelligence support, and the most devastating air support possible and you will wipe ISIS out.”
Ultimately, Rubio said, we need “an American foreign policy that tells the world very clearly it is bad to be our enemy and good to be our friend.”
Red-meat speeches, references to the Islamic State, and calls for a strong foreign policy have been popular at this year’s CPAC.
Carly Fiorina received the first standing applause, reports National Journal, when she thundered that Netanyahu “travels here next week not to offend our president, but to warn the American people that our president’s insistence on a deal with Iran at all costs is a danger to the world.”
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal spent his entire speech lambasting Obama for avoiding calling ISIS a group of Islamic terror. And even Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker noted that his battle with unions in his home state prepared him to tackle ISIS.
Rubio continued the theme, possibly in the hope that his rookie-of-the-year energy and Senate credentials can earn him a shot at the White House.
