Debate Divides Candidates on National Security

Na­tion­al se­cur­ity di­vided the 11 Re­pub­lic­an can­did­ates in­to two camps dur­ing Wed­nes­day night’s de­bate: those who looked like fu­ture com­mand­ers in chief and those who looked un­ready for prime time.

Sen. Marco Ru­bio of Flor­ida, des­pite lim­ited speak­ing time, made the most of it with a thor­ough re­sponse on deal­ing with a newly ag­gress­ive Rus­sia and an ex­plan­a­tion of why he hes­it­ated to sup­port Amer­ic­an force in Syr­ia. New Jer­sey Gov. Chris Christie re­minded view­ers about his pro­sec­u­tion of ter­ror cases as a former U.S. at­tor­ney. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas de­livered a me­tic­u­lous in­dict­ment of the Ir­an deal. Carly Fior­ina, in a strong over­all de­bate per­form­ance, demon­strated a de­tail-ori­ented fa­cil­ity talk­ing about for­eign policy. And Jeb Bush de­livered the line of the night in em­bra­cing his broth­er’s re­cord of pre­vent­ing a ter­ror­ist at­tack on U.S. soil after the 9/11 at­tacks—a quip that seemed to quiet Don­ald Trump for the rest of the de­bate.

The losers? Trump, who still in­sisted air­ily that he will be able to learn more about for­eign policy be­fore he’s elec­ted pres­id­ent. Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s em­phas­is on mul­ti­lat­er­al solu­tions to worsen­ing in­ter­na­tion­al con­flicts is un­likely to res­on­ate with an in­creas­ingly hawk­ish party. Wis­con­sin Gov. Scott Walk­er still needs to demon­strate he’d be ready for that 3-in-the-morn­ing phone call. Ben Car­son even sug­ges­ted that Osama bin Laden could have been cap­tured un­der George W. Bush had the coun­try be­come “pet­ro­leum in­de­pend­ent.”

For all the talk of the Re­pub­lic­an Party look­ing past Bush’s pres­id­ency, the real­ity is that his for­eign policy leg­acy is still de­fin­ing today’s GOP. Re­pub­lic­ans see ter­ror­ism and na­tion­al se­cur­ity as be­ing equally im­port­ant as the eco­nomy, ac­cord­ing to polling, even as it’s a sec­ond­ary con­cern for Demo­crats. The rise of IS­IS dur­ing Barack Obama’s pres­id­ency is only in­tensi­fy­ing con­cerns that the coun­try is at risk of an­oth­er ter­ror­ist at­tack. The loud ap­plause Jeb Bush re­ceived after in­vok­ing his broth­er’s se­cur­ity re­cord was the most telling mo­ment of the de­bate.

The can­did­ates who ig­nore this fun­da­ment­al dy­nam­ic will find them­selves los­ing ground as voters start pay­ing closer at­ten­tion. Kasich doesn’t have to be the most hawk­ish can­did­ate in the field, but fail­ing to out­line the ser­i­ous con­cerns Re­pub­lic­ans—and a ma­jor­ity of voters—have with Pres­id­ent Obama’s Ir­an deal was a polit­ic­al blun­der. Don­ald Trump re­spon­ded to a ques­tion of wheth­er voters would trust him with nuc­le­ar codes with a bom­bast­ic at­tack against Rand Paul. Car­son, the oth­er front-run­ning out­sider, looked out of his ele­ment when asked about his ap­proach to na­tion­al se­cur­ity. Mean­while, Paul force­fully ex­plained his non­in­ter­ven­tion­ist pos­ture, but it re­mains out of step with a ma­jor­ity of Re­pub­lic­an voters.

Ru­bio was the clear win­ner on the for­eign policy front. Giv­en his youth and re­l­at­ive in­ex­per­i­ence, his biggest cam­paign chal­lenge has been to con­vince po­ten­tial sup­port­ers that he’s pre­pared to be pres­id­ent. His spe­cificity on for­eign af­fairs ques­tions should go a long way in mak­ing the case to skep­tics. In­deed, he ar­gued that pre­par­a­tion on for­eign policy should be a lit­mus test, mak­ing that case dir­ectly to Don­ald Trump. “These are ex­traordin­ar­ily dan­ger­ous times that we live in. And the next pres­id­ent of the United States bet­ter be someone that un­der­stands these is­sues and has good judg­ment about them,” Ru­bio de­clared.

Fior­ina was the only one of the three polit­ic­al out­siders run­ning who looked steady talk­ing about for­eign af­fairs. Asked about how she would deal with Rus­si­an ag­gress­ive­ness, she eagerly show­cased her ex­pert­ise (and im­pli­citly cri­ti­cized Trump’s lack of know­ledge about for­eign fig­ures laid bare in a re­cent ra­dio in­ter­view with mod­er­at­or Hugh He­witt). “The reas­on it is so crit­ic­ally im­port­ant that every one of us know [Ir­a­ni­an] Gen­er­al [Qassem] Sulei­mani’s name is be­cause Rus­sia is in Syr­ia right now,” Fior­ina said, “be­cause the head of the Quds force traveled to Rus­sia and talked Vladi­mir Putin in­to align­ing them­selves with Ir­an and Syr­ia to prop up Bashar al-As­sad.”

It’s no co­in­cid­ence that Ru­bio and Fior­ina re­ceived among the strongest early re­views of all the can­did­ates—and that Bush turned his de­bate per­form­ance around with a res­on­ant re­sponse on na­tion­al se­cur­ity. The can­did­ates wer­en’t quizzed on eso­ter­ic for­eign policy trivia, but they were asked prob­ing ques­tions test­ing their read­i­ness to be pres­id­ent. Those who didn’t pass the test, no mat­ter their cur­rent stand­ing in polls, will ul­ti­mately have a tough time win­ning their party’s nom­in­a­tion.