The fight between GOP presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio continues to heat up. Cruz set things off last week with a direct hit against Rubio over the latter’s support for the Gang of 8 immigration plan, an attack that the Rubio camp seemed ready for. This week, their debate has moved on questions of surveillance and homeland security in the wake of the ISIS attacks on Paris, and it’s Rubio who’s the aggressor.
At a Monday forum hosted by the Wall Street Journal, Rubio criticized his fellow senator as he discussed the threats to Americans from both organized terrorist groups as well as “lone actors” working in the country.
“That’s why our intelligence programs are so important. I think it’s a distinctive issue of debate in the presidential race. At least two of my colleagues in the Senate aspiring to the presidency, Senator Cruz in particular, have voted to weaken the U.S. intelligence programs just in the last month and a half,” Rubio said, referring to the passage of the USA Freedom Act that ended government’s ability to hold on to bulk amounts of metadata. Cruz was a co-sponsor of the original Senate bill.
Rubio added this “weakening” has occurred not only through the USA Freedom Act but also due to “disclosures by a traitor, Edward Snowden.” The consequences of Snowden’s leaks have earned renewed scrutiny in the days since the Paris attacks, and Rubio appears eager to tie Cruz’s position to the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked details of the metadata program to the media. There’s support for that idea that the new law is something of a fulfillment of Snowden’s aims. Thomas Massie, one of the leading libertarians in the House of Representatives, claimed the USA Freedom Act’s passage “exonerated Snowden.”
Cruz has not been exactly forthright in his position on Snowden. At a Washington event hosted by The Blaze less than a week after Snowden’s first leak in 2013, Cruz declined to label Snowden as either a patriot or a traitor. The Republican senator noted that “we need to determine what his motives are” before making such a determination.
“If it is the case that the federal government is seizing millions of personal records about law-abiding citizens, and if it is the case that there are minimal restrictions on accessing or reviewing those records, then I think Mr. Snowden has done a considerable public service by bringing it to light,” Cruz said on June 11, 2013, echoing fellow senator and current presidential candidate Rand Paul. A few days later on June 17, Cruz cautioned Americans on Fox News against a “rush to judgment” on Snowden’s leaks and expressed skepticism about the power of any government agency, including the NSA, under the Obama administration.
But at the same time other government officials, from Republicans like House speaker John Boehner to Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Dianne Feinstein, were blasting Snowden as a “traitor” who committed “treason” and “should be prosecuted.” Rubio, for his part, said on June 12 that “anybody who reveals classified information is…undermining our intelligence programs.”
Cruz’s unwillingness to criticize Snowden came during a time when libertarians like Paul appeared to have an advantage in the debate over surveillance. But the rise of ISIS in the Middle East suggests the debate over surveillance, at least within the Republican party, has shifted somewhat away from that civil libertarian critique.
The Cruz campaign has not responded to a request for comment on the senator’s current view of Snowden and the leaks. The campaign has fired back at Rubio’s comments regarding the USA Freedom Act, with spokesman Rick Tyler noting that many other Republican senators—including three in each of the first primary states and another who has endorsed Rubio—voted for it. While it’s true Cory Gardner of Colorado and Tim Scott of South Carolina supported the bill from the get-go, Chuck Grassley and Kelly Ayotte did oppose it until after the Patriot Act was not renewed and the USA Freedom Act’s amendments were the only way to preserve some surveillance programs.
Still, Cruz’s response shows that Rubio’s attack has drawbacks for the Florida senator: If he wants to paint Cruz as a member of Team Snowden, he’ll effectively have to do the same to close allies like Gardner (who has endorsed Rubio) and Utah’s Mike Lee.
