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| A Civilizational Struggle |
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXmMl0_RnXg
Here is the verbatim transcript:
"This is a civilizational struggle between the values of freedom and liberty and radical islamic terror. What happened in Paris could happen here. There is no middle ground. These aren’t disgruntled or disempowered people. These are radical terrorists who want to kill us because we let women drive. Because we let girls go to school. I’m Marco Rubio. I approved this message because there can be no arrangement or negotiation. Either they win or we do."
I will be back in the field after the new year, but this ad is a primary source look at the frame of the Republican primary. Everyone is Trump now, and the fight is which candidate is the best Trump.
Donald Trump himself is the original, but he is no longer the purest expression of Trump-ism. Cruz and Rubio are out-Trumping Trump, and moving up in the polls.
This ad positions Rubio as tougher than Trump, and more importantly now, tougher than Ted Cruz, too. Rubio and Cruz are fighting each other to the the other-Trump. Rubio cites Cruz's reluctance to authorize some government surveillance of phone and internet use by Americans, calling it an invasion of privacy. Rubio says internal surveillance is necessary. Cruz responds by saying we cannot trust our government when it comes to privacy, then compensates by using the strongest language of any Republican candidate.
Cruz: "We will carpet-bomb them into oblivion. I don't know if sand can glow in the dark, but we're going to find out!"
So the candidates are staking out their ground, but it is all the same ground. Trump ground. All the viable Republican candidates are either original-Trump or new-Trump. The debate over content is over: Regular native born English speaking Christian Americans have been led by weak people (Obama the Muslim sympathizing weakling and Hillary who "lacks stamina") and those contemptible traitors ignore the existential threat of foreign enemies, both trade competitors and Middle East terrorists.
Briefly Cruz may have been sounding stronger, more bellicose, carpet bombing civilian neighborhoods. This made him briefly the strongest and most popular version of Trump, better than Donald Trump himself, at least in Iowa.
Rubio is fighting back. This TV ad is Rubio's raise at the poker table. This is a war against Islam, period, said loud and clear., no code. Rubio criticized Trump for saying that we should prohibit the entry of all Muslims to the USA, sounding "establishment" and honoring the rules of equal-protection and freedom of religion. This TV ad reverses direction and adopts full-on-Trump. Of course, if we are in fact in a non-negotiable war with Islamic civilization, then keeping all Muslims out of the US would be a reasonable step, but one which offends the constitutional establishment part of the GOP. Rubio is deftly getting it both ways. He condemns Trump for flouting the Constitution then then runs an ad that appeals, in stronger terms than Trump, to the same fear Trump addressed and adopts the same frame. We are at war with radical Islam.
Plus, by characterizing Islam as primarily an attack on women he is inoculating himself against the charge that he himself is at war with women by opposing abortions even in the case of rape or to save the life of the woman. Very adept. Two birds with one ad.
Rubio's ad sidesteps the awkward fact that the leading country prohibiting women from driving and education of girls is Saudi Arabia, our Middle East ally against ISIS. Also sidestepped is that Rubio himself agrees that we need Muslim-majority countries to put their soldiers on the ground. Only Muslims can defeat ISIS.
But I doubt if he will be called on this. The media has lost credibility to be a referee. And it is better politics in the Republican primary to condemn Islam than to acknowledge that America needs allies.
The ad is not an analysis of how to win a war. Winning a war comes after winning the elections. For now the ad is a weapon in the fight for the Republican nomination, and the battle lines have been drawn: Americans versus Islam; we versus other. "Either they win or we do." Trump set the agenda, and Rubio is hoping to win at Trump's anti-Muslim game, more bellicose but Constitutional, too. Perfect positioning.
Everyone is Trump, except the candidates who are more so.
1 comment:
There is little that is controversial, and nothing out of the mainstream in the premises of Rubio’s ad. In 1993 Foreign Affairs published an article titled "The Clash of Civilizations?" Bernard Lewis, a professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University with acclaimed expertise in the history of interaction between Islam and the West, published an article in the September 1990 issue of The Atlantic Monthly titled "The Roots of Muslim Rage". The phrase “clash of civilizations” was used even earlier by Albert Camus in 1946. See, “Clash of Civilizations” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clash_of_Civilizations. Perhaps what is most remarkable in Rubio’s ad is that he did not use terms as strong as “clash”, nor even the most popularized “war of civilizations”. He kept lower key with the word “struggle”. Polls and surveys show that the clear majority of Americans in both parties agree with Rubio that, at minimum, the U.S. and Europe are “in a civilizational struggle between the values of freedom and liberty and radical Islamic terror”. Large majorities in both parties also agree with most if not all of Rubio’s factual assertions. In taking them one by one, public agreement to these three is universal:
(1) “What happened in Paris could happen here.”
(2) “These aren’t disgruntled or disempowered people.”
(3) “These are radical terrorists who want to kill us …”.
It is not even contested fact that Rubio is correct when he says that radical Islam (which includes our ally Saudi Arabia) does not let women drive. It is consensus U.S. politics that the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan launch murderous and acid-in-the-face attacks to stop girls from being educated. Perhaps we democrats want to rewrite recent history that Hillary Clinton and the majority of democrats voted for a bloody war against Osama bin Laden and radical Islam in Afghanistan? Perhaps we want to invent a new justification that avoids the words “Muslim” or “Islam” for President Obama’s unprecedentedly voluminous drone strikes across Muslim lands on two continents; or better still, attribute that mayhem to Republicans?
Although imbued with rhetorical flourish of the type used on both left and right, including the liberal meme that Rubio and Republicans are “at war with women” because they oppose abortion rights, Rubio is correct that radical Islam does not allow women to be educated, drive cars, or vote. It is also stock Democratic politics that in our war with radical Islam, to quote Rubio:
(4) “There is no middle ground” to be pursed or accepted with Islamic terrorists.
(5) “There can be no arrangement or negotiation” with Islamic terrorists.
(6) “Either they [the Islamic terrorists] win or we do."
As Democrats and Hillary Clinton denounce Republicans for their anti-Islamic terror rhetoric, we are denouncing the super-majority of American voters. Soon perhaps we will shun Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai for her denunciations of radical Islam, and caution her against overreaction to being shot in the head for advocating education for Muslim girls in Pakistan. Clinton almost certainly would hesitate to share a stage with Malala if she would not tone down her prepared remarks that “I am a victim of radical Islam”. In the meantime, Rubio, Cruz and Trump will continue to poach an even broader demographic of our party than Reagan Democrats because we are submitting to Hillary’s rhetorically gentle “be tolerant” strategy with radical Islam. With the growing armies of ISIS soldiers and inspired homegrown terrorists in the West, Rubio, Cruz, Trump and other straight-talking Republicans will allow us Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
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