this raises. what had been. a speech on a journey. where did it take the. time now for the main headlines here nazi the gloves are off for police in america as hundreds of occupy wall street demonstrators are arrested and nationwide clamp down on two month anniversary of the movement's founding. singing from the same song sheet leaders of russia but a recent meeting in moscow discussed the creation of a new eurasian body on new kenya. britain has reportedly been a divorce to lead a campaign against syria's president assad only diplomatic at this stage russia has

sounded the alarm bearing it will be to repeat of violence yet. another time when president obama's approach to the arab spring is questioned cross-talk looks now at whether his republican rivals have anything better to offer. twenty years ago in the largest country in the suitcases. the song was how did. the school janitor. where did it take them. to keep. the same.

welcome across time people about the g.o.p. race for the white house in foreign policy front runners for the republican presidential nomination have made it clear that they're almost all foreign policy hawks rough time china tough on iran and very pro israel how much is this a function of the parties traditional foreign policy positions or is it simply tacked on obama's track record the song became the center. to cross talk the g.o.p. presidential race i'm joined by bill schneider in washington he's a distinguished senior fellow in resident scholar at the third way in sacramento we cross to mark williams he's founder and former chairman of the tea party express and radio host and in columbus we crossed the cliff chester he's an author pundit and president of the practice cross talk raising effect gentlemen that means you can jump in anytime you want but first what you learned about some of the g.o.p. candidates well i don't know but you're right i can't. anyway when americans vote

for their president foreign policy is rarely on top of the agenda when it's they who us continues to fight two foreign wars in the arab world and threatens a military strike against iran and it's to be expected the presidential candidates are prepared to become the country's commander in chief but in this campaign there seems to be some doubt that a barack obama's republican contenders are. to this task traditionally u.s. presidential campaign focuses on the state of the economy and taxes and jobs this election cycle is no different but since the u.s. remains the world's only superpower experiencing global overreach the american president has no choice but to be engaged in foreign policy and congresswoman michele bachmann wants the job even if she's dicey with some basic facts but there's reports that have come out that cuba has been working with another terrorist organization called has a lot and has a law is potentially looking at wanting to be a part of missiles. in bachmann's case it appears that fear mongering has become a replacement for knowledge but then there is the case of candidate herman cain his

ability to talk about such important issues as libya borders on the humorous but it is also quite unsettling. the. president obama supporter. euros. president obama called the world. well that she would talk about the same thing before saying yes i agree i know what iran is another subject that's getting a lot of airtime in this election and with the only one exception congressman ron paul aspiring republican nominees are falling over themselves to show was the most hawkish when it comes to these lawmakers public former house speaker newt gingrich even has a plan to start a war with iran if elected president maximum covert operations. to block and

disrupt iranian program. including taking out their scientists including breaking up their systems all of that covertly all of a deniable second it appears that the former house speaker is oblivious to the fact that preemptive war is illegal and against international law and the growing to war is a decision for the u.s. congress and not the president across the board republicans have been extremely critical of obama's foreign policy which is to be expected in any election but one has to wonder how effective this criticism is when it is not even based on fact or knowledge so i don't know if i'm more amused or saddened by all this but what is amusing about this campaign take a bunch of people if i go to you first in washington when looking at the the last debate the republicans had on foreign policy did any of them flunk the commander in chief test. well a number of them have said some things that were very troubling and not necessarily in the debate herman cain seemed to have no answer when he was asked about these the position on libya in fact most of the republican candidates and seemed to have

much of an answer he stumbled around and with a little bit lost the same way some other candidates have done when asked about international affairs this election is not really about foreign policy at all in fact president obama's highest ratings have come on foreign policy so republicans are having a little trouble finding any inroad to attack obama ok market that's very interesting because it really is about the economy as much as report pointed out but is that why that be the issue of iran has been so high on the agenda because that's something that. they could get obama on because on national security credentials obama at least pretty safe there certainly not on the economy. well certainly the economy when you have people living in the streets literally people living in their cars and when you've got an economy that's just swirling around the bowl with no one no grown up supervision apparently in sight and people are worried about their lives they're worried about their next mortgage payment they're worried about their kids they're worried about their future. so ron is on the radar but it's somewhere

down the you somewhere down the list and what we're seeing play out with with the gaffes like herman's and the gaffes like rick perry's when you forget which agencies he wanted to eliminate as we're seeing the primary process do what it's supposed to do we go through the candidates and bring us the best of what with what we have ok cliff i think it's quite interesting that i live abroad obviously and i talk to a lot of people that look at america from the outside in and a lot of people did see that foreign policy debate was just a gas and how little be a republican nominees actually know about the world and how polarized they are on some sperry specific issues. well the stuff i'm sure i mean i've spent some time living abroad too and when you look back here. and things obviously have also changed in recent years you know as as a more conservative element as the tea party i was taking control of the primary process republicans have become a lot more hawkish and you know so you have a few you mention ron paul jon huntsman i believe is also for pulling out of

afghanistan for the most part the guys are in the lead or just trying to jump on top of each other and those are not just foreign policy concerns those are domestic concerns very very popular among evangelical christians to be very pro israel for. a variety of religious reasons so that affects that stance and again you know that they want to try to make president obama look weak i think that's going to be difficult obviously you know whether you want to give him all the credit some of the credit none of the credit whatever you want to try to play it osama bin ladin has been found and killed under his watch and he was killed and you know he's gotten us out of iraq and so a number of things have happened that i think most of the country if you look at polls are in favor of ok mark do you think. that none of them are attributable to barack obama barack obama's foreign policy is forrest gump foreign policy just happens to be there when something happens why were we bombing this in other libya lie were we there why are we not out of iraq as he said we would be why are we not

out of afghanistan as you so more would be why are we still bumbling around the barn on green like you and why is the rest of the world i think it was france to agree with you in libya but ok can i have a second here i'll agree with you on libya because our that's not a war that i thought made sense either but when you're talking about you know barack obama happened to be there well george bush happened to be there and we didn't capture some good law so what would be the explanation for that yeah that's right he happened to be there when you know we literally needed to be ourselves involved in a war in iraq based upon false information i think if you're comparing foreign policies. i mean george bush. the president ok bill if i go to washington bill but you know i was going to disagree with you george bush was a disaster all right let me but you heard bush is the one who started this economic catastrophe with his tarp program in the bailouts and taking money from the working stiff and giving it to the bad i say with foreign policy bill if i can go to you in washington a lot of people around the world would say that they don't bomb it has a very hawkish foreign policy in that it's not much different than george w.

bush's but the republicans that we heard a few days ago are you say that you give the impression that he's actually quite weak and maybe even dovish inexpertly will talk about iran later. well yeah i mean look i was some of bin laden dead anwar aki dead the market guffey dead that sounds like a pretty tough pretty aggressive pretty hawkish foreign policy and americans do give him pretty high ratings on his foreign policy the problem is for a lot of americans he doesn't talk tough he doesn't have any swagger and a lot of americans continue to think of him as a weak leader mostly because of their perception in domestic politics and i think you see mark i mean so you know that's why it's going to be difficult to go after obama because he's a hockey after all. well again he's not a hawk after all the fact that osama bin laden is dead this the fact they could die off he's dead. because these are already in the works we've been fighting al qaeda

since two thousand and one actually before that covertly so this is nothing that obama went out and did it's not like he's rambo ripped off his shirt stuck a knife between his teeth and went out this is a president who goes around the world apologizing for this country apologizing for the american people apologizing for what we've done in the world but before foreign leaders bowed before the saudi king even baal before a mayor in louisiana or this is a guy who has you know or foreign policy what he does have is a thirst for at a loss to for the use of power ok cliff cliff we're going to go ahead cliff jump in but that's patently ridiculous i guess and more actually be preferable if we had a president who declared victory in iraq and got up on an aircraft carrier and pumped his own chest before thousands of americans died in a war that wasn't planned out where paul wolfowitz said oh the oil will pay for the whole thing in the us that's ridiculous you know i could bring back pictures of george w. bush walking holding hands with the saudi leaders and frankly pretty bad out of the

saudis it was the bush family it was the barack obama look at you know the stories of the boys now what mr president the whatever whatever other positions he takes you know domestically as you pointed out he hasn't been as tough he often has been willing to deal with republicans when frankly they've been acting insane and he probably shouldn't be and that's made him look weak and that's been his mistake is actually not being tougher on the other party and standing up stronger but again this myth that he didn't do anything with it was nice but i love how it how little we are you guys will take it with ronald reagan doing here that ronald reagan ended the people right ronald reagan ended the cold war singlehandedly with a knife between his teeth crawling across the border and killed him all right just like in a john wayne movie but obama didn't do anything ok whatever you say more ok i want to get i want to go i want to go to bill isn't it just to live a day let me go to bill in washington it's in the past you know go ahead. it is simply that in the. precursor to the death of osama bin laden there were weeks of

meetings covert meetings which somehow didn't leak out of the white house obama was present at every one of those meetings he knew every detail of that bearing rein to eliminate osama bin laden he was watching all of happened he was very much involved in the planning of this and it was his misson mission the same way the elimination of our locky was very controversial a lot of liberals said the president should have gotten legal opinions was it constitutional to send a drone to another country to eliminate an american citizen he went ahead and you're going to jump in here are you going to show our break in after that short break we'll continue our discussion on g.o.p. candidate state with our. kate snow.

on. a very warm welcome to you this is your news today protesters on the polls. they have . essentially it's a good chance to choose instead to get with the status of the human experiments to . see weeks you'll see this rap music what it knows movies lately trying to make sense of global economy and it's all changed things as financial tips to be clambering to maintain confidence in markets in vietnam wants to be seems way to balance his recession looks maybe missions close to collapsing a subprime loan foreclosed homes. some fail circulates again feeling like think if the us crash and imminent smashed killing team simply isn't like ultimate

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welcome back across time to mind you we're talking about republican presidential candidates. ok mark if i can go to you and sacramento i mean with the exception of we can say and ron paul and maybe a few other candidates i mean it seems pretty universal that the next president if it's a republican is the first quarter of business this is going to. hell and that's what it sounds like from the republican foreign policy debate you know. paul i think by the time the election rolls around iran will already have been bombed the hell most likely by israel whatever it can be done to prevent your brains from getting a nuclear weapon has got to be done i mean it's insanity to deal let them have that weapon because we all know what they'll do with it the idea that the girl in the hands of a criminal is the same as a gun in the hands of

a cop is crazy nuclear weapon in the hands of russia or the united states or france is over tool for peace nuclear weapon in the hands of iran is a tool for genocide and extension ok if i can go to you in washington just be kind of counter-intuitive here you know we have an election coming up in a year in the united states and considering the rhetoric that we've heard from the united states and other western capitals for years about iran i've been around is doing everything it possibly can he can a nuclear weapon now because they know that the next president the united states will probably go to war with them so i'm just trying to be counter-intuitive here i mean you can reach that was talking about covert covert covertly which is actually quite hilarious because he was saying you know we can do it all deniable it's all deniability ok i was actually hysterical watching that debate because he just gave his game plan away to a potential for a real phone in his mind. and for all i know we're doing it we're doing all those things which was certainly trying to organize the world to impose tougher sanctions on iran there's some talk about taking sanctions against the bank of iran that

could have devastating impact on oil markets but those are the things that are going on right now it's just that if it's covert you don't want to talk about that iran is a problem but i'll tell you the first thing in a republican president would do would have nothing to do with iran the first thing the republican president would do we need would be to get rid of the president's health care plan that's the centerpiece of their agenda ok i would stay with foreign policy exactly right you know if this election is all about domestic policy and this program is about foreign policy will do domestic politics another time cliff if i can go to you i mean everyone seems to be the public and seem to be really energized by the iranian issue and it is something we mention the first part of the program because there isn't a whole lot of other things for them to pick on because. obama like it or not is actually turned into a foreign policy president and usually doesn't happen to a president the first term. well i mean look if you look at those debates i mean anytime that we're talking about someone being executed in texas or somewhere else the crowds getting up and cheering i mean there seems to be almost as blood lost i

mean look as iran need to be prevented i agree that it's a bipartisan effort to try to stop iran from getting their hands of nuclear weapons and that absolutely in my opinion should be done but again you know we need to think out our courses of action before we take them i mean herman cain probably thinks iran is somewhere in the south of africa you know and rick perry you know if he's able to talk because he's not on too many three pills this whole time of these debates you know is what he would say i mean again there's this group of guys you know that want to be president seem more like talk show hosts we don't just you know we do we need to potentially take military action we might but this is something to be seriously thought about considering we're involved in in three different countries right now ok bill i'd like to go to you and i think some talk show hosts are kind of intelligent but that's a different topic here i mean how much how much is the it's got these comments that you know like herman cain because i know he has traction when it comes to the economy but does it really devastate people when he just can't have it does have a clue about libya because most americans probably don't have

a clue about libya either so they hold it against him and most americans are not running for president in two ways and he's supposed to have a clue about a lot of things i would argue that the republicans running to arguably three of them look like they have the standing the knowledge to be commander in chief certainly newt gingrich was been speaker of the house mitt romney who's never had a foreign policy role but he's been around the track before and jon huntsman who is the ambassador to china they usually know what they're talking about the rest of them really don't what do you think about that mark i mean when you look at michele bachmann and herman cain i mean are they really punished by a potential voters out for their performance of past comments and gaffes. well of course they are but you also have to remember their role in the process that's playing what their role at this point is we all we all know the presumptive nominees mitt romney the role being played by the other candidates right now is to bring up the issues to bring up the discussion to put it before the people to to

create an interest among the american people in libya you're right most americans don't know squat about libya they know qaddafi's name and that's about it but what they what they now have is they have got their presidential summit some of them their presidential choice who's who's gaffing on it so they have to go out and figure it out now when they're a little bit more this whole it's a process that's playing out here that molds the final candidates selected by the g.o.p. and do the best they can do to go up against the incumbent and what do you think about that cliff i mean when you're looking at these the last debate foreign policy debate about the republican candidates you think the obama campaign sitting kind of . you know nice and pretty right now thinking they're they don't have to at least worry about being challenged on the foreign policy front not that it would happen and usually most americans don't vote on foreign policy. no i think i'm going to i mean look we don't have the kind of foreign policy coverage we should and to be clear because of course i do love talk show hosts like yourself i was referring to the conservative talk radio host that is the mentality that i was trying to get at

i knew you'd appreciate that they bring into this in sort of where you're trying for controversy you're really going for ratings over substance and some of the some of the talk radio that goes on in the united states that herman cain was in talk radio i think as bill said yes jon huntsman certainly look at they're looking for someone who understands foreign policy you go with jon huntsman mitt romney again my big problem with him would be i don't know what position he's taking on things because he changes them but i think he has the knowledge is that obviously it was a governor who ran for president he comes from his family comes from his background with the olympics and so i would give him that but if the doubt to the same with newt gingrich even though i massively disagree with what his policy prescriptions are the rest of them obviously and i may be missing one or two but you know they don't they don't seem to have any knowledge and again that's the is the biggest role for a commander in chief in the end because you have to make some decisions that are pretty important sometimes at a very very short notice and so i don't think any of the others have shown themselves to be up to that you know bill it's very interesting i've followed some of the debates here in almost every single time when the candidates are introduced

on the podium ron paul gets a real loud round of applause and he doesn't seem to get the same kind of traction in the media be done the same kind of attention but he is very much different than his other republicans and he's very much against going to war i mean he's the end of the republican camp and it seems to me in these in the us in isolation but it's very very interesting is that when i look at how people react to him and he has a very hard core following because he can explain issues in a way that's simple enough because like michele bachmann leads to the extremists in a scaremonger which it's attractive to listen to ron paul that on the other hand is a bit dry and very specific and he's very law driven. well he is he has a base these are libertarians it's a really small base there with him they're going to stick with him they are not regular republican voters he's going to get his vote the problem is his base is the

limit of his support he can't get many other votes and it's very hard to see how he could get them because he when he talks about foreign policy he antagonizes a lot of republicans he really is a classic american isolationist he's anti war he was anti war in iraq he believes the united states should limit its foreign commitments abroad limit its foreign aid so my feeling is he's got a certain percentage of the vote but he can't get any more ok mark before we enter the program how much of it is that is the issue of israel going to be. front and center for obama's foreign policy going into reelection here and how the republicans going to do that because there will be plenty of people like apac and other lobby scroope saying that obama is not a good friend of israel how much is that going to play into the election i think though. it's going to play in considerably to have to agree to a vote in this country because barack obama has consistently thrown israel under the bus at every opportunity and embrace the terrorists that surround them so the republican party is returning or will return we store our support for israel our

steadfast support for israel and our absolute opposition to any kind of any kind of terrorist state grafted onto them and that barack obama continually throws israel under the bus with the terrorists and goes and deals before their kings and ugs them is going to be a factor that said foreign policy is not is not v major issue for voters in this country there's a great deal more interest in american foreign policy overseas then there is in america which is in a way sad that's why it's very sad when the superpower has been so much like that cliff what do you think about the israeli issue right there. i think look i mean look one of the most hawkish of those on israel which is a former mayor of new york city and i support many republicans just came out and supported barack obama a number of other ones do he's been you know enough support the far right like cooed element in israel but he supports israel in general i just found it amusing

when i'm listening to someone tied to the tea party saying he's you know cuddling up to the terrorists and not israel concerning their big thunder the koch brothers that was just exposing bloomberg of course has been using subsidiaries in europe to trade with iran against our more ago so frankly you know if anybody has been you know over the last twenty thirty years it was the reagan administration helped arm iran it's the koch brothers that are trading with iran frankly if the right would stop doing business with iran maybe they wouldn't be as strong as they are right now when you think about the israeli issue. give you probably the last word in the program here because there's a lot of people that they would say that obama hasn't done enough a lot of people say to their disappointed that he wasn't even stronger i mean there's a very heated there's very heated debate around this issue. well it's a heated debate mostly on among conservatives who do not believe he's been a very good friend to israel israelis probably feel the same way is this all an appeal to jewish voters well then the republicans are hoping they can peel off some jewish votes but chooser a very small proportion of the electorate it's more an appeal to conservative

voters who are intensely pro israel particularly voters affiliated with the religious right who have a geat the affection for and support for israel and i think it's a way of keeping them energized most american voters support israel but they're not it's not very high on their list of priorities and even jewish voters who are worried about obama on israel you know what they're going to do in their vote for obama they always do ok gentlemen interesting discussion we'll see how this campaign continues many thanks to my guest today in washington sacramento and in columbus and thanks to our viewers for watching us here to see you next time and remember prospects. can see.