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Wingnut war cries in South Carolina

Wingnut war cries in South Carolina

by digby

So a bunch of Republican hopefuls went down to South Carolina to beat the war drums for the folks. The man who seems to have made the biggest impressions was this one:

Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio summed up his hawkish foreign policy in a speech at the South Carolina Freedom Summit on Saturday with a reference to the 2008 thriller Taken.

“On our strategy on global jihadists and terrorists, I refer them to the movie Taken. Have you seen the movie Taken? Liam Neeson. He had a line, and this is what our strategy should be: ‘We will look for you, we will find you, and we will kill you,’” the Florida senator said in Greenville.

The line — referring to Neeson’s character, a CIA operative threatening a human trafficker who had kidnapped his daughter — earned the top-tier candidate thunderous applause.

He is such a dreamboat.

Yes, that’s the level of sophistication we are seeing among the war hawks in the GOP. The base is thirsting for blood again after too many years of having to pretend they only care about keeping taxes low on rich people. (That just doesn’t get the old heart pumping, KWIM?)

He wasn’t the only one who gave the folks a little (tainted) red meat though:

Others framed their speeches as critiques of President Obama’s foreign policy. Former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who often speaks of his commitment to religious liberty and social issues, spent more time than usual attacking Mr. Obama’s leadership on foreign affairs.

“Heck, I would just be happy if the president would be able to tell the difference between our friends and enemies,” Mr. Santorum said. “Let me give the current president a little primer: Iran, enemy. Israel, friend.”

South Carolina, which hosts the first primary in the South, could play an outsize role in the 2016 Republican nomination process, even as many Southern states have moved their contests earlier. The current and prospective candidates all promised that they would be back plenty.

“The great state of South Carolina plays a pivotal role in our nation,” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said. “Y’all have the blessing and the curse of being an early primary state, so you’re going to see presidential candidates descend upon you like those federal regulators and locusts,” he added, referring to a joke he had made earlier about the differences between the two.

“My one request is: Please hold back on the pesticide,” he joked.

Never say he doesn’t live his principles. He doesn’t believe the government should regulate pesticides. He thinks we should just ask nicely that people not use them. Freedom.

And he’s right about one thing. South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union and the first shots of the Civil War were fired there. Pretty pivotal. Of course that’s a tough thing to say outloud. Not because South Carolina is ashamed of its Confederate heritage, far from it. But Ted Cruz is having to walk a bit of a fine line between his wingnut constituents in Texas who insist that Navy Seal death squads are coming to kill small town American Patriots and South Carolina which fetishizes the military to an extreme.

It all gets very confusing in wingnutland around this stuff what with the confederates, the patriots, the anti-government zealots and the pro-military extremists. They don’t know whether they’re coming or going.

And then there’s the Great Whitebread Hope:

Mr. Walker personalized the debate over national security.

“National security is something you hear about,” he said. “Safety is something you feel.”

He described a fear that “it is not a matter of if” but when another “attempt is made on American soil.” He then delivered a line that brought his biggest standing ovation of the day: “I want a leader who is willing to take the fight to them before they take the fight to us.”

Mr. Walker, who does not have as much experience as some of his potential rivals on foreign policy, sought to demonstrate that he is working to address what could be viewed as his greatest weakness. Hours after he left the stage, he boarded a plane to Israel for what is being billed as a “listening tour,” which he has said includes a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. According to a schedule of his trip obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Walker will also tour the Western Wall in Jerusalem, meet with members of Parliament and the Israeli Defense Forces, and take a helicopter tour of Israel.

Oh good. That should clear up any further misunderstandings …

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