Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and Chris Christie are all in agreement that young women should be eligible for the draft, while Ted Cruz calls the idea “nuts.” During Saturday’s ABC GOP debate, moderators pressed the candidates on the recent Defense Department policy change, and whether they would support a measure requiring women to register for the Selective Service.
“There’s no reason why…young women should be discriminated against from registering for the selective service,” Christie said. “The fact is, we need to be a party and a people that makes sure that our women in this country understand anything they can dream, anything that they want to aspire to, they can do. That’s the way we raised our daughters and that’s what we should aspire to as president for all of the women in our country.”
Ted Cruz later blasted his competitors for supporting such a proposal, and said he would not be willing to put his own daughters in such a situation.
“It was striking that three different people on that stage came out in support of drafting women into combat in the military,” Cruz said at a New Hampshire campaign event. “I have to admit, as I was sitting there listening to that conversation, my reaction was: Are you guys nuts?”
“We have had enough with political correctness — especially in the military,” he continued. “Political correctness is dangerous, and the idea that we would draft our daughters, to forcibly bring them into the military and put them in close contact — I think is wrong, it is immoral, and if I am president, we ain’t doing it.”
Last week, Army and Marine leaders said “all eligible men and women” should be required to register for the draft in a hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), the only female veteran on the Senate committee fully supports the changes, as long as no standards are lowered for women.
Some Democratic lawmakers — including Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) agreed. Many Republicans on the committee voiced concern, and Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) said the changes were coming too fast without enough study on the possible implications.
Rep. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.), a retired Air Force colonel and the first female fighter pilot to fly a combat mission, has not yet voiced an opinion on the draft debate. After the hearing, she said she still wasn’t sure whether the Selective Service should be eliminated altogether or expanded to include women.
McSally does, of course, fully support women in all military roles. In response to the original announcement back in December, she said “it’s about damn time,” and “our military is strongest when it prioritizes merit and capability, not gender.”
