Ballot Boxing: Ted Cruz evolves on Syrian refugees

Welcome to Ballot Boxing, WORLD’s weekly roundup of political news and views from the presidential campaign trail.

Presidential politics went global this week, as the 2016 contenders staked out positions on national security in the wake of last week’s brutal terrorist attacks in Paris.

The hottest point of debate: Syrian refugees.

As House Republicans passed a bill to tighten security measures for Syrian and Iraqi refugees, nearly every Republican presidential candidate called for a halt to all or most Syrian refugees entering the United States.

Before the Paris attacks, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, already had declared he would end the Obama administration’s plan to allow up to 10,000 Syrian refugees into the United States next year. On Monday, Cruz doubled down on his position, saying bringing more Syrian refugees to the United States would be “nothing short of lunacy.”

That’s a shift for Cruz. Early last year, the senator defended admitting Syrian refugees, and said the United States should continue to accept them. In a video still posted on Cruz’s U.S. Senate website (and embedded below), he told Fox News:

“We have welcomed refugees—the tired, huddled masses—for centuries. That’s been the history of the United States. … We have to continue to be vigilant to make sure those coming are not affiliated with the terrorists, but we can do that.”

Now many Republican candidates say we can’t do that.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said the desire to help Syrian refugees was good, but background checks can’t ferret out a few terrorists among millions of refugees: “Who do you call in Syria to background check them?”

The dynamic certainly has worsened since the rise of the Islamic State last summer, but the same question also could apply to refugees from troubled nations all over the world, including other countries with terror networks active long before the ISIS advance.

Other GOP candidates took harder lines.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told radio host Hugh Hewitt he doesn’t trust the Obama administration to vet refugees, adding, “I don’t think that orphans under 5 should be admitted to the United States at this point.”

Those comments came less than three months after the world convulsed over the image of Aylan Kurdi’s dead body washed up on a beach in Turkey. The small child was a 3-year-old Syrian refugee.

The Republican front-runners also called for a halt to Syrian refugees entering the United States.

Donald Trump said he would not only stop more Syrian refugees from arriving, he also would deport any Syrian refugees already allowed into the country under the Obama administration.

“They’re going to be gone,” the billionaire businessman told Yahoo News. “They will go back. … I’ve said it before, in fact, and everyone hears what I say, including them, believe it or not. But if they’re here, they have to go back, because we cannot take a chance.”

Fellow front-runner Ben Carson didn’t call for deporting Syrian refugees, but the retired neurosurgeon did say that after the Paris attacks “the U.S. simply cannot, should not, and must not accept any Syrian refugees.”

At a campaign stop in Alabama yesterday, Carson spoke about protecting the nation from terrorists by saying, “If there’s a rabid dog running around in your neighborhood, you’re probably not going to assume something good about that dog. And you’re probably going to put your children out of the way. That doesn’t mean that you hate all dogs.” (By the end of the day, Carson was referring to good and bad “apples” instead of “dogs.”)

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush called for a cautious approach, saying the United States should pause the refugee program until officials are sure the vetting process is sufficient, but then should continue to allow “a limited number” of refugees. He also cautioned against becoming overzealous in rhetoric about all refugees: “There ought to be a balance.”

As politicians continued to debate the balance between security and compassion, theologian Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, offered perspective in a Washington Post column.

Read Moore’s entire column for context, but here’s an excerpt to chew on:

“While this kind of complicated geopolitical situation requires prudence, it also requires virtue. We should debate what it would take to ensure adequate vetting of refugees, but we should not allow ourselves to engage in the kind of rhetoric we’ve heard in recent days—about, for instance, requiring ID cards for Muslim American citizens or considering warrantless searches of their homes or houses of worship.

“It is one thing to have disagreement about whether the vetting process is adequate. It is quite another to seek to permanently turn our backs on Syrian refugees altogether.”