Campaigning on terror

In 1992 strategist James Carville hung a sign in Bill Clinton’s Little Rock campaign headquarters. Of three mantras for campaign workers, No. 2 would be immortalized: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

In the same way the Clinton campaign sought to strike President George H.W. Bush where he was vulnerable, GOP candidates hope to hit Democrats where they are weak in 2016: their handling of foreign adversaries.

What has traditionally rated at the bottom is rising in the issues polls—particularly since the Nov. 13 ISIS attacks in Paris that killed 130 people. In September 2015, 2 percent of Americans ranked terrorism as the most important problem facing the United States, according to Gallup. By the first week of December, 16 percent of Americans were calling it the No. 1 challenge.

Leading GOP candidates in 2016 “are all internationalists,” according to Elliott Abrams, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who served as deputy national security adviser under former President George W. Bush. “The debate this time is about what form internationalism takes, it’s about not walking away from the world,” Abrams told me.

In contrast to President Obama, who has focused the fight against the Islamic State on airstrikes and a few hundred U.S. military advisers working alongside Iraqi forces, the GOP candidates each promise increased engagement. Donald Trump has vowed to destroy ISIS but has given few specifics on how, besides limits on immigration to keep terrorists overseas. Trump has said he would “ban Muslims” from entering the United States and promises to build a wall across the southern border.

Sen. Ted Cruz, too, promises to “build a wall that works,” and if elected “on day one” will increase deportations and suspend H1B visas, a nonimmigrant visa that allows U.S. companies to employ specialty foreign workers. Cruz wants to fight ISIS by “rebuilding” the U.S. military, but departs from other candidates in calling for military intervention. He opposes arming Syrian rebels and is against ousting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Cruz in particular has tried to separate himself from other GOP contenders, saying he will intervene less often but when he does it will be with massive military power. In December he said of ISIS in Iraq, “We will carpet-bomb them into oblivion.”

Candidates Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and Chris Christie all favor expanded U.S. military presence in the Middle East to combat Islamic terrorism. “Make it a war,” Bush said after the Paris attacks.

Bush has argued for letting U.S. military commanders decide combat strategy, but he favors an extended military presence in the Middle East. “Ultimately, the goal is not just taking out ISIS, but creating stability, so when we leave, we don’t have to come back again,” Bush said in December.

Gov. Chris Christie has taken hits for lacking fluency on foreign policy. He counters that as governor of New Jersey, “you have to deal with Bill de Blasio every day. That’s foreign policy.” Christie can point to crisis management in Hurricane Sandy and other events, plus post-9/11 work as a federal prosecutor in New Jersey—all demanding the kinds of executive decision-making experience most of his counterparts lack.

Christie has parted with others in the GOP field, saying, “Iran is a greater threat than ISIS.” But he has taken a recent, and less noted, hard line on Syrian refugees, telling radio host Hugh Hewitt in November he would not allow a 5-year-old Syrian orphan into the United States: “No refugees until we can vet them.”

Sen. Rubio of all the GOP candidates has gone to greatest lengths to lay out his foreign policy. In an essay in Foreign Affairs, he wrote it will “take years” for the next president to counter the “residual effects” of Obama’s foreign and defense policies. He argues for building up U.S. military forces to counter ISIS and for negotiations with rogue states like Iran or Russia only from a position of flexing U.S. military might: “President Obama became so publicly opposed to military action that he sacrificed any option that could have conceivably raised the stakes and forced the mullahs into making major concessions,” he wrote of the Iran nuclear agreement.

Despite the onstage jousting, the Republicans are less divided than they appear. “I don’t really see them as day-night differences,” said Abrams. “We are in the middle of a campaign, and the candidates are trying to make differences look much greater than they are.”

What’s the leading foreign policy issue that should be on the table and so far is getting little attention? For Abrams it’s religious liberty and the worldwide persecution of Christians. A member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom from 1999 to 2001, Abrams in 2014 testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the rapid growth of Christian persecution.

“I am quite surprised more of the candidates have been scared off by Obama and The New York Times and are not saying we need to take more Christians in,” Abrams said. “The Obama administration has called it bigotry to single out Christians for refugee status, but we did single out Baha’is, Soviet Jews, and now Yazidis. American refugee law covers religious persecution. We have GOP candidates who understand our refugee laws and they aren’t speaking about this. It’s a real disappointment.”