The New York Times columnist Frank Bruni, July 8:
On Fox Business on Tuesday, [Marco] Rubio gave a pathetic master class in cowardly evasion, stammering his way though an interview in which he was asked repeatedly for an opinion about [Donald] Trump. You would have thought that he was being pressed for malicious gossip about the Easter bunny.
He never did manage to upbraid Trump, though he was careful to mention the “legitimate issue” of border security that Trump had raised.
As in 2012, Republicans can’t summon the courage to take on the dark heroes of the party’s lunatic fringe. As in 2012, this could cost them dearly.
…we also can’t indulge in wishful thinking, and worries that we’re doing that aren’t solely the province of Republicans. Senator Dianne Feinstein has registered doubts about our response to ISIS, qualms about refugees. So have other leading Democrats, to varying extents.
Senior administration officials, including the F.B.I. director, James Comey, have conceded risks to admitting Syrian refugees and challenges in vetting them. And a majority of Americans oppose letting them in, according to a recent Bloomberg Politics poll.
Obama doesn’t have to agree with that. I think he’s right to push back, in part because there’s no common-sense reason to believe that a terrorist is as likely to enter the United States amid those screened refugees as by crossing the Mexican border, which was apparently the intent of the five Syrians with stolen, doctored Greek passports who were stopped in Honduras last week.
Wait, wait, I thought talking about border security and the threat of those with malicious intentions crossing into our country was the sort of thing “the dark heroes of the party’s lunatic fringe” did!