Marco Rubio used his closing statement at the GOP debate as a pitch to millennials about the future, but it’s a canned line with a dangerous foreign policy behind it.
“You know, I see a lot of young people at my events around the country. I feel great when they come,” he said. “And I always tell them that despite the hardships of the moment, I honestly believe that today’s millennials have a chance to be the greatest generation we’ve had in 100 years. I really do.”
It’s a line that Rubio is fond of as part of his outreach toward millennials. In his ads, he pitches his candidacy as the way of the future for millennials in “a new American century.”
For that century, millennials will need to be empowered to develop economic growth in a safe world.
“The world today has hundreds of millions of people that can afford to be their clients, their customers, their partners, people they collaborate with. But that won’t happen if the world is dangerous and it’s unstable,” Rubio said. “And that will require strong American leadership.”
Promises of economic growth from Republican candidates isn’t new. It’s something of an empty schtick. Promise an economic boom, blame the Democratic competitor for high-tax and low-growth policies, rinse, and repeat.
It’d be a mistake to focus on Rubio’s economic plans, however. He might talk to millennials about the economy, but he’s talking to everyone else about foreign policy and a Bush-era neo-conservative approach.
“Foreign policy is not only consequential, I think much of our future now depends on it,” Rubio said in the debate.
For as much as he likes to brag about his foreign policy expertise, Rubio has made foolish judgments in that direction, as Daniel Larison has noted for The American Conservative.
“More so than any Republican candidate still in the race, Rubio was on board with Obama’s foolish military intervention in Libya, which helped to destabilize Libya and its neighbors for the last five years …He may not be alone in his supporting reckless actions in Syria that risk war with Russia, but that by itself shows that his judgment is worse than that of at least a couple of his rivals. Any Republican candidate unwilling to risk an armed confrontation with a nuclear-armed major power over Syria has already shown that his judgment is better than Rubio’s,” Larison wrote.
On a host of foreign policy issues, Rubio has shown himself to be an “unabashed hawk.” His devotion to more wars and overseas interventions, and his absurd belief that George W. Bush “kept us safe” by fighting the Iraq War, shows him to be out of touch with American opinion. Millennials, who have lived in an America that has been at war for the majority of their lives, are reluctant to embrace a war-happy foreign policy.
That doesn’t mean that Rubio couldn’t beat Hillary Clinton in a general election, or that millennials automatically write him off. He’s been smart not to write off millennials as entitled and ungrateful, and his optimism for young Americans matches their own hope for the future. Based off his past and present stances on foreign policy, however, promising a stable and safe world for American millennials to develop economic dominance is questionable, if not delusional, campaign rhetoric.
