Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and the politics of toughness

Last week, GOP presidential candidates and fellow freshman senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz squabbled over immigration. Now, in the wake of Paris being attacked by a murderous gang of Islamist terrorists, they're fighting over foreign policy.

Rubio is much more of a "neoconservative," at least in the foreign-policy sense, than Cruz — and the Texas senator is subtly attacking him for it. In an interview with The Daily Caller, Cruz insisted that America's foreign policy touchstone "should be the vital national security interest of America" — but cautioned that he didn't share the "full neocon" or the "libertarian isolationist" view of just what, exactly, that means.

Translation? Marco Rubio is as wrong, in his own way, as Rand Paul.

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Rubio has taken the bait, bashing Cruz's record on defense at a Wall Street Journal forum. "I think it's a distinctive issue of debate in the presidential race," Rubio said. "At least two of my colleagues in the Senate aspiring to the presidency, Senator Cruz in particular, have voted to weaken the U.S. intelligence programs just in the last month and a half."

Translation? Ted Cruz is as wrong, in his own way, as Rand Paul.

It's not as if these two Republican sparring partners are worlds apart, of course. Cruz has tossed out his share of red meat on the campaign trail, vowing to nuke the Iran deal and scoot the U.S embassy in Israel over to Jerusalem. With regard to ISIS, he has warned that "radical Islam" must be named and opposed, and insinuated support for bombing runs that increase civilian casualties. But in spite of his apparent jingoism, Cruz has danced deftly away from the boots-on-the-ground protestations of the likes of John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Marco Rubio.

Right there on his website, Rubio boasts a "Plan to Defeat ISIS," complete with Special Ops forces embedded "at the battalion level to assist Iraqi and other local forces." In a Rubio administration, Syrian rebels would be trained — perhaps in the "safe zones" he'd establish — to beat up ISIS and Bashar al-Assad alike. For good measure, he'd directly arm both Sunnis and Kurds.

It's all very tough sounding. It also may be an enormous overreach.

Rubio drew howls — and not just from libertarian isolationists — when this spring he pushed out a thick slice of campaign hyperbole: "Nothing matters if we aren't safe." And this week, his eager-beaver approach to toughness drew fire from The Onion — never a good sign. "Vowing to hunt down and destroy every last vestige of the extremist group, Senator Marco Rubio announced Tuesday that his presidential campaign was deploying 6,000 ground troops to the Middle East to combat ISIS militants," joked The Onion.

Of course, ISIS has trampled its way into the immigration debate, too. Rubio tardily flipped his stance toward keeping out Syrian refugees, while Cruz took a beating from McCain — and liberals — for suggesting that Christian refugees, and not Muslims, should be greenlit for U.S. resettlement.

The political terrain is still shifting, but one thing is clear. As a litmus test for Rubio and Cruz, immigration ain't what it used to be. Rubio successfully broke away from the pack by pivoting out of his right-wing apostasy on immigration. Cruz, though tough enough on immigration to have blasted Rubio, had lapses of his own in the past. At September's Values Voter Summit, Rick Santorum inveighed against Cruz's onetime amendment "to allow people to stay in this country indefinitely. To me, that is amnesty," Santorum cried.

Foreign policy, so dominant now in the race, could come to define the future of the GOP as Rubio and Cruz envision it. And though there's still a lot of road ahead, for now the advantage rests with Cruz. As any Trump supporter will tell you, Republicans just aren't as Dubya-like as they used to be. And so it's Ted Cruz, master litigator, who's poised to unleash a real courtroom surprise: In today's GOP, you shouldn't take toughness too far.