REPUBLICAN DEBATE - What They Got Wrong

"What did GOP candidates get wrong in debate on national security?" PBS NewsHour 12/15/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  At the debate Tuesday night in Las Vegas, Republican presidential candidates competed to prove who would be best prepared as commander in chief to keep the country safe.  Angie Holan of PolitiFact joins Gwen Ifill to examine some of the claims made by the candidates on vetting Syrian refugees and boosting border security.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  But, first, nine candidates made it to the main stage for the final Republican debate of the year.  Four others appeared in an earlier undercard face off.  The candidates left Las Vegas much as they arrived, jockeying to survive into the new year.

The cast of characters has shifted, but there has been one constant this Republican debate season, front-runner Donald Trump center stage.

Last night, the candidates competed to prove who would be best prepared as commander in chief to keep the country safe.

For Trump, it meant defending his plan to ban Muslims, at least temporarily, from entering the U.S.

DONALD TRUMP, Republican Presidential Candidate:  We are not talking about isolation.  We’re talking about security.  We’re not talking about religion.  We’re talking about security.

GWEN IFILL:  For former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, it meant seizing the opportunity to try to take Trump down a peg.

JEB BUSH, Republican Presidential Candidate:  Look, this is not a serious proposal.  In fact, it will push the Muslim world, the Arab world away from us, at a time when we need to reengage with them to be able to create a strategy to destroy ISIS.  He’s a chaos candidate.  And he’d be a chaos President.  He wouldn’t be the commander in chief we need to keep our country safe.

GWEN IFILL:  And for the rest, the night was spent making the case that they are, in fact, qualified.

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who has stumbled over foreign policy questions of late, said he would take the fight to ISIS, up to and including deploying U.S. ground troops in Syria.

BEN CARSON, Republican Presidential Candidate:  You know, we have got a phobia about boots on the ground.  If our military experts say we need boots on the ground, we should put boots on the ground and recognize there will be boots on the ground, and they will be over here, and they will be their boots if we don’t get them out of there now.

GWEN IFILL:  For two senators recently on the rise, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, the clashes came over the tradeoff between safety and surveillance.