Marco Rubio attacks Ted Cruz, Rand Paul on surveillance with ISIS lobbyist remark
Critics are saying the Florida Senator Marco Rubio is sounding desperate with his latest jabs at fellow GOP candidates for president. This time he takes aim at fellow senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz over foreign policy and their stance against the NSA surveillance program.
“If ISIS had lobbyists in Washington, they would have spent millions to support the anti-Intelligence law that was just passed with the help of some Republicans now running for president…” Rubio said during Monday’s speech.
photo donkeyhotey
Rubio said he would bring back the old Patriot Act program, which featured the bulk collection of telephone metadata by the National Security Agency.
“I will not only restore the intelligence programs Obama and Congress have destroyed, I will strengthen them. Because ISIS does not use carrier pigeons to communicate. They use sophisticated encryption and carefully secured networks,” Rubio said in Hooksett, N.H. “It was already difficult to infiltrate them, now it is even harder.”…
In an apparent jab, Rubio said that the security threats emanating from the Middle East that, “words and political stunts cannot ensure our security. ISIS cannot be filibustered.”
“ISIS cannot be filibustered” – a statement which sounds like Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi.
Hot Air asks: “Who’s the main target for this speech? The obvious answer is Ted Cruz, as he and Rubio have been throwing punches for weeks now over the USA Freedom Act, which Cruz supported and which replaced some of the key domestic data-harvesting provisions of the Patriot Act backed by Rubio. I don’t think it’s Cruz who Rubio’s worried about right now, though. Rubio is an also-ran in Iowa, which looks to be a two-man race between Cruz and Trump. He’s competitive in New Hampshire, but Rubio is worried less about finishing behind Cruz there than finishing behind Chris Christie or Jeb Bush, which would slot one of them into the coveted ‘establishment alternative to Cruz and Trump’ role ahead of South Carolina. Increasingly, I think Rubio’s team is prepared to suffer second- or even third-place finishes in the early states so long as they finish ahead of Christie and Bush, knowing that those two guys will then begin to fade and that Rubio will be left to clean up in the delegate-rich winner-take-all blue-state primaries later on the calendar.”
Rand Paul on the campaign 2015 photo/ Gage Skidmore
