Graham: Donald Trump’s Proposed Muslim Ban ‘Only Helps ISIL’

Terrorism dominated the debate as candidates pushed their strategy to defeat ISIS in the wake of the deadly Paris attacks and the ISIS-inspired San Bernardino killings. Graham said he would probably “sleep in” on nomination day if Donald Trump is the chosen Republican candidate but pledged to support whoever the party wants to be the next President of The United States. Cruz, a chief antagonist of Republican leaders in Washington. As Politico put it: “There’s no escaping Donald Trump-even when he’s not on the stage”.

Another dynamic in Tuesday’s debate involves Cruz and Florida Sen.

Lindsey Graham was similarly harsh on Trump’s plan to keep Muslims from entering the US.

Trump, visibly annoyed, mouthed: “Give me a break”.

Perhaps one of the more surprising comments from Graham came when he said: “I’m exhausted of beating on Bush”. “But we need toughness”.

“I tell you what – I have been in the Air Force 33 years”. (Is this her version of a cute-kid story?) There’s a long internecine struggle between Cruz and Rubio on their respective votes on legislation about phone privacy, which is punctuated by Cruz calling Rubio a liar and accusing him of launching what sounds like a “Linksy attack”. After all, it’s been good for Trump’s polling.

“The most important and effective thing you can do to a bully is punch ’em in the face”, the former governor said. “Who are you going to call?”

That was the message from former Pennsylvania Sen. Neither he nor Democrat Hillary Clinton are fit to be president, he said.

“He was fighting to grant amnesty and not to secure the border”. It takes me a minute to realize that this is a reference to Saul Alinsky, a leftist community organizer and author of Rules for Radicals, a guy who no one but New School students circa 1980 and Cruz seem likely to have heard of.

The senators – both Cuban-Americans in their 40s – also clashed over whether the USA should seek to remove dictators in the Middle East, including Syrian President Bashar Assad.

They also said there is no way to legitimately vet Syrian refugees trying to come into the US, and they should therefore be denied entry. “Neither is fit to be president of the United States”.

Heading into Tuesday’s debate, the stakes were higher than ever for the White House hopefuls.

Trump remains the undisputed national GOP presidential front-runner.

Mr. Santorum and Mr. Graham dueled again over the possibility of deploying American soldiers to fight on the ground against ISIS, with Mr. Graham being the more aggressive this time. But the candidate has shown little appetite for publicly engaging Trump.

Trump was the target of plenty of criticism during the earlier so-called “undercard” debate. The fact of the matter is that not all Muslims are jihadists.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who’s staked his campaign on hawkish foreign policy positions, apologized to US allies in Muslim countries for Trump’s rhetoric and offered a plea to GOP primary voters. The candidates criticized his stance in one way or another, with Graham being the most hawkish. “But the reality is, all jihadists are Muslims”, he said.

But Santorum blasted a culture of political correctness that he faults for blunting debate over the role of Muslims in society.

He says Muslim-Americans are the solution to radicals.