The "Gang of Eight" was bi-partisan and occurred years after Bush was gone. If you're going to take bi-partisan legislation and spin it as "GOP/Bush policy" then I don't know what to tell you. That entire line of logic is self-defeating, and is my main problem with that entire article.
The truth is lots of people share lots of the same policy positions. Bush feeling a certain doesn't make it a "Bush" policy... for the same reason that policies Trump supports that Clinton agrees with (and there are some, as illustrated by that policy survey-quiz-thing a bunch of us took previously) doesn't mean that "Clinton is a Trump clone."
The best example of this is probably this immigration policy we're talking about right now. Bernie Sanders supports amnesty, Rubio supports amnesty, and Clinton supports amnesty. How can ANYONE possibly frame that position as being a "Republican establishment" position or going for a "future that looks exactly like the Bush administration."?
How are those two positions mutually exclusive?
Both major parties support amnesty/ open borders because it benefits their donor classes. Large portions of the base for both classes are harmed by that policy, but are overruled by their elites. Pointing out Rubio's support for that same policy isn't to prove that he's just like Bush, but that he's an
Establishment candidate, who supports many of the same terrible policies
both parties have inflicted on us for decades. So the claim that Rubio is a "true" conservative or some sort of outsider just isn't true. He's definitely electable, but people need to realize what they're voting for.
So now pragmatic, strong foreign policy is "sparking WWIII"?
Just to be clear, you think spending hundreds of billions invading Syria to depose Assad (thereby creating yet another power vacuum in which Islamist extremists can flourish)
and risking a nuclear confrontation with Russia is "pragmatic, strong foreign policy"? Please give me a few sentences on how that's remotely possible given the obvious risk/ benefit calculations for us.
Turkey shot down a Russian jet the other day. Did that start WWIII? Turkey warned them, Russia did what they do to everyone and said "fuck you, we're Russia, what are you going to do about it?", and then Turkey shot their plane down.
It could have, which made it a colossally stupid f*cking thing to do. They weren't "standing up to Russia" so much as making an extremely risky gamble to
advance their local realpolitik. Just the most recent example of why that alliance needs to go the way of the dinosaur.
Standing up to Russian territorial aggression is smart. Allowing key regions to destabilize and then letting Russia fill the power vacuum is not.
Pray tell,
who destablized the Middle East? It sure as f*ck wasn't Russia, and yet you're defending a candidate who wants to topple
yet another Middle Eastern dictator. Surely
this time freedom and prosperity will follow, right?
That's how you actually get WWIII, by allowing Russia to continue to grow as a geopolitical threat. Russia has not been this dangerous to global peace in DECADES... and the reason they are is because of the soft responses of NATO, the UN, and our country to escalating acts of territorial aggression.
"Soft responses of NATO"? Like attempting to add their immediate western neighbors-- Georgia and Ukraine-- to an explicitly anti-Russia alliance? Russia's current military capabilities are pathetic compared to the Cold War levels, and there's no honest case to be made that they represent a real threat to US interests. If we could restrain the idiotic neocons in our government from poking the bear for a few years, there's a lot we could gain from improving relations with Russia-- chiefly a soft-power check on their recent foreign adventures.
See, this is -- IMO -- a crock of crap. That article is written with few specifics and broad brushes and inflammatory language of the "future being just like Bush" as an anti-Rubio hit piece. It's nothing more, nothing less. There is no fair discussion of policy or contrast in the entire piece.
I mean we're literally talking about immigration policy that is similar to the positions of Sanders and Clinton as indicative of him being a GOP-establishment lackey that will have a Bush-esque presidency if elected. Come onnnnn.....
You've said that several times already, and yet you haven't been able to distinguish Rubio's policy positions from Bush's. And as I mentioned above, the point isn't to tarnish him by association with a toxic political dynasty, but the illustrate how little he differs from the GOP Establishment on almost every substantive policy area.
