Yes, of course, it's Election Season (when is it not Election Season any more), but public's ginned-up fear over Da'esh and domestic Islamicist terrorism has the GOP presidential hopefulls falling all over themselves to be the hardest, toughest, leaderiest candidates with the one, true, solution to dealing with Da'esh and other thorny Middle Eastern condundrums.
Which answers, of course, can be summed up in short, pithy, sound-bitey phrases that draw applause but really don't mean a lot other than the candidates being either clueless or deceptive about how "simple" it will be to deal with said problems.
'To a degree, you can’t blame them — if there was an easy solution, the administration certainly would have been more than happy to use it. The trouble is that there are nothing but bad options. But presidential candidates aren’t supposed to express caution and concern about unintended consequences. They have to be confident and strong, assuring voters that there’s no problem they can’t solve.'
Damn the IEDs! Full speed ahead.
Let's see how many journalists are able to pin down these folk on specifics as to their easy "tough leader" solutions for these problems — or, really, any of the problems they say they can fix (at least for areas that the public hasn't had its policy analysis organs hardened into partisan binary flag-waving choices that are taken as axioms, e.g., "Cutting taxes is an morally objective good thing").
Seven things that show the GOP candidates are clueless about the Islamic State
How to spot the baloney in what the candidates are saying.
GOP candidates are clueless.
Period.
+James Karaganis "Clueless" is likely unfair, at least in some cases. "Disingenuously glib" probably applies, as most of these "seven little things" are less about cluelessness (as nobody has any simple, straightforward, workable answers to that particular mess) than in conveying the impression that they have the straightforward, morally unambiguous, and obvious answer, when even they must know they do not.
The ones to fear are the ones who think they do have such answer, so easily boiled down.
I’m wondering if it would be as bad if your elections didn’t last TWO FREAKING YEARS. Too much time to fill.