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politics and politicians Title: How to twist a quote into a lie Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz was asked yesterday about his counter-terrorism strategy. It’s “simple,” the Texas Republican replied. “We win. They lose.” The obvious problem is that Cruz wasn’t describing a strategy. His little phrasing may make a fine bumper-sticker, and it may even describe an end result, but at least for adults, there’s a difference between saying you intend to win a conflict and having a strategy to achieve your goal. In other words, sloganeering is not a substitute for a responsible national-security policymaking. It’s a point President Obama emphasized at yesterday’s press conference at the G-20 Summit in Turkey.
Almost immediately, right-wing pundits expressed outrage – or at a minimum, faux-outrage – over the president’s dismissal of hollow slogans. TPM’s Josh Marsall noted, “Republican politicians and conservative pundits took a truncated version of the quote to say that the President had just declared he was ‘not interested’ in ‘America winning.’” All of this comes the day after GOP politicians and pundits reached for the fainting couch after hearing Obama say, in reference to ISIS militants, “[F]rom the start our goal has been first to contain, and we have contained them. They have not gained ground in Iraq. And in Syria, they’ll come in, they’ll leave. But you don’t see this systematic march by ISIL across the terrain.” All of this, by the way, happens to be entirely true, conservative hysteria notwithstanding. Folks, national security is a real issue. The nation and our allies face real threats. There’s ample room for a real debate about substance, policy, and the most responsible ways to deal with these issues. But in order to have this discussion, Republicans are going to need to send some grown-ups to the big-kids’ table. Four days after the terrorist violence in Paris, the right is still stuck in the phase in which they proclaim with glee, “Hey look! If we take some of the president’s words out of context, we can score some cheap points against U.S. foreign policy!” We need to be smarter about this. Republicans built an entire national convention around a stupid out-of-context “you didn’t build that” quote, and the underlying strategy is no better now. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Folks, national security is a real issue. The nation and our allies face real threats. There’s ample room for a real debate about substance, policy, and the most responsible ways to deal with these issues. If national security (and immigration) is the issue, the Dems, liberals, and socialists lose. The faux Republicans of the GOPe also lose.
in reference to ISIS militants, “[F]rom the start our goal has been first to contain, and we have contained them. This ranks up there with "Mission Accomplished," the great success in Yemen, and the $2,500 a year savings from the Affordable Care Act.
#2. To: nolu chan (#1) If national security (and immigration) is the issue, the Dems, liberals, and socialists lose. The faux Republicans of the GOPe also lose. Yep. Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen win. Good.
#3. To: Willie Green (#0) (Edited) In other words, sloganeering is not a substitute for a responsible national-security policymaking. It is today. People campain for office on slogans and govern according to slogans whether its hope and change or we win and they lose.
#4. To: Willie Green (#0) national security is a real issue. The nation and our allies face real threats. There’s ample room for a real debate about substance, policy, and the most responsible ways to deal with these issues. national security is an issue for who? someone who has been attacked or someone who has a real, substantive fear of being attacked. The problem for the US and others is not that they will be attacked by some external force, but they will be attacked from within. To prevent that they are willing to take security measures to level that restricts individual freedoms because there is a perceived threat. France has mobilised 115,000 police, etc because eight terrorists perpertrated an heineous or heinous acts. What has happened is the terrorists have succeeded, they have created an atmosphere of fear and mistrust that is crippling one nation with a three month state of emergency and causing other nations to become nervious nellies. The search for suspects has become very public and no doubt everyone on the list of suspects will be visited and interrogated but, and here is the real problem, some of these terrorists came from abroad, they were infiltrators. Should a continent or two or three continents be shut down because of the acts of a few? the real issue in national security is not to overreact but to be vigilant and make sure that everyone who crosses a border has a valid reason for doing so. We have to remember that more people are Killed by automobiles, by drugs, by guns and local thugs than are killed by terrorists and the real focus on security should address these issues rather than a photo-op on a "crisis" for momentary political gain
#5. To: Vicomte13 (#2) Yep. Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen win. That would be nice. Something we could agree on.
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