ON TUESDAY, Rep. Rob Gibbs, R-Ohio, declined to endorse Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s call for law enforcement to preemptively “patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.”
Cruz’s statement came after this week’s terrorist attacks in Brussels, and was swiftly criticized by civil liberties activists and Muslim civil rights organization.
Speaking to The Intercept on Capitol Hill, Gibbs said that in response to the terror attacks, “We need to work with the Muslims because I think the majority of them are good people. … They need to be part of the solution.” Asked directly to respond to Cruz’s proposal, Gibbs said, “I don’t know what he’s thinking there. I think, hopefully, the Muslim community will come forward and work with the proper authorities, but we shouldn’t have a police state, no.”
Watch Gibbs’s remarks below:
Cruz attracted controversy last week over his decision to bring on a number foreign policy advisers with a long history of anti-Muslim bigotry, including Frank Gaffney, who has claimed that President Obama is the “first Muslim president” and that Muslim immigration into the United States represents a “civilization jihad.”
Cruz defended his proposal on CNN on Wednesday, noting that the New York Police Department had once pursued similar discriminatory strategies. He also blasted critics, saying, “Democrats are more concerned about political correctness than they are about keeping us safe, and that’s why people are so fed up.”
News for Rep. Rob Gibbs, R-Ohio:
The US is already a police state, something a conservative would be quite opposed to.
cruz is certifiable.
I honestly do not know which candidate is the greater lunatic. Trump, Hillary or Cruz. And I’m not even counting the nutters like Huckabee and Rubio.
What I find amazing is the GOAL of 911 seems to have been to cause Americans to fear and hate Muslims. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED; but, without ever coming right out and saying. So Donald Trump going off on Muslims is using the neoCON Zionist’s own message by putting it into the words they won’t say themselves and then have the audacity to criticize Trump for using what they did themselves to the innocent Muslim community. The same thing with Iran when Trump says we gave them 150 billion. It’s almost comical how the neoCONs don’t dare correct Trump when he repeats their same lie and makes the American people believe it’s OUR $$ when in truth it was Iran’s $$ to start with. Trump is using the neoCON Zionist’s own game to beat them. He even sucked up to AIPAC.
What is also interesting — aside from the fact that Cruz’s suggestion of police patrols in Muslim neighborhoods is pure fascist political theatre — is that the official media response has been quite tepid, if not explicitly silent.
Recall the hysteria when months back Donald Trump suggested a pause in the fevered call to admit thousands of supposed Syrian “migrants” into the US as “refugees.” This despite the fact that they were quite safe where they were already living in Turkey. Not on generous welfare of course.
For his sensible comment that we should pause and carefully vet each supposed refugee from Muslim areas one-by-one (not “ban” them as the lackey media fashioned that idea), the Establishment accused Trump of racism and anti Americanism.
In fact Trump’s proposal is very similar to what the Obama regime is already doing. They aren’t suspending the normal bureaucratic screening of special status immigrants.
Now that Cruz is suggesting some sort of neighborhood fascist patrols, looking for stray jihadists wearing, what exactly?, the hysteria is largely absent. Yes, a few critics of Cruz’s nutty idea have emerged, but nothing like the continuing hate campaign against Trump, based upon exaggerated and incorrect formulations of his refugee screening idea.
So, one standard for the thuggish opportunist Cruz, another for the Establishment wrecker candidate Trump. My my.
A person who says something like this has no place in the Republican Party. I’d bet even money they astroturf up some suit backed by a couple of big contributions and put him out on the street in the next primary. I mean, anyone remember Arlen Specter? Even the most heavily entrenched sensible people have long since been purged from the Party.
He is trolling for votes; his statements should be taken as the result of his understanding of what potential voters want to hear modulated by his need to stand out from the other candidate. If elected to president he would probably do something else, probably much worse, if he can.
Same thing on economics. No one can put the US back on the gold standard. But calling for it signals that he will give the rich everything they want by taking from everybody else. There is a kind of symbolism in his defense of his wife: she is the gold standard, a combination of religiously pure background and practical work in the banking industry. So Trump’s attack on her was a multilevel outrage to Cruz.
I’m guessing and hoping, from what this congressman said, that he is not just responding in healthy antipathy to Cruz’ appalling and utterly revolting psychopathic persona, but to the implications of an actual imposition of a full police state and all it stands for, a mere few steps beyond where we are now. It is heartening to hear this. He sounds far more sane than most of the “Democrats”.
Of course, Cruz, like Trump, Clinton, Obama,Bush, Cheney, Kerry, etc. ad nauseam, could not give a flying f$%k about maintaining democracy, or any shred of the constitution. Their first entry on any personal wish list to Santa is
police state.
Everything else follows.
“Democrats are more concerned about political correctness than they are about keeping us safe, and that’s why people are so fed up.” Citizen’s are fed up with your big, stupid, mouth Cruz, and that is why you should butt out and shut up!
The attack on being respectful, also known as “political correctness”…
Where what was once shameful is now openly chanted.
Where attacking a person’s heritage and pride is considered beneficial for the “Motherland”. A “Motherland” that killed nearly all its natives and STILL ignores what remains of them to this day.
When did America start becoming the things it supposedly hated?
Liberties can’t be replaced with material goods forever.
Anyone got a mailing address for the RNC? I’ve got a tombstone for them.
Peter Bergen’s new book, the United States of Jihad, chronicles many of the wonderful ways that the FBI and police have been policing the Muslim communities oh, and uh, keeping us safe.
From Common Dreams, July 2014: “Federal officials and law enforcement agents are treating American Muslims like “terrorists-in-waiting,” according to a new report released Monday by Human Rights Watch and Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute.”
The FBI, under pressure to appear effective and worthy of its $8.4-billion budget, has “targeted American Muslims in abusive counterterrorism ‘sting operations’ based on religious and ethnic identity”; sent informants to mosques to “troll for leads”; and in some cases encouraged or even paid individuals to undertake terrorist acts, the report (pdf) reveals.
And further down, “…many of these people would never have committed a crime if not for law enforcement encouraging, pressuring, and sometimes paying them to commit terrorist acts.”
Another augury. The conservative columnist at the SF Chronicle doesn’t like Hillary Clinton but finds Cruz and Trump unacceptable, at least on security matters. This after Clinton’s talk at Stanford on Wednesday.
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/saunders/article/Clinton-talks-strategy-GOP-candidates-talk-tough-7003324.php
Ted Cruz and his ilk are only fanning the flames to get bigoted citizens here in the US to join his “cause”. Cruz has demonstrated his true colors of late on how he has a total disregard for most forms of civil liberty. To even mention mass surveillance on a portion of US citizenry just shows he would do the same to any group he despises. He seems to have a theocratic vision of the US that goes against all we treasure as a free society. Yes the terrorists are scary but to impose more stringent controls is not the way to run the US. Go back to the senate, Ted, where you can just be an asshole to your “buds” on the hill.
Rep. Gibbs does not understand that Tailgunner Ted would say ANYTHING to be the nominee. And, in fact, he is saying just about anything to win votes from Trump.
Trump would not build a wall. Cruz would not impose patrols on “muslim neighborhoods.” He’s just trolling for votes.
Like all social organizations of humans, this country would slide right into a feudalist police state given half-a-chance. Some would say we’re well on the way. I say, not quite yet. There are a few cards to play.
Thing is if and when we do slide into such a State, the person pushing it on will never cop to it. Luckily neither Tailgunner Ted nor Trump are very good liars, fortunately for us. They won’t be able to fool enough people in the General. But both are canaries in the coal-mine. We ALL need to pay more attention to our politics, somehow.
I want to agree with Rep. Rob Gibbs that “…we shouldn’t have a police state, no.”
However the totality of his statement begs that somehow “we” should drag Muslims into being some kind of stasi against themselves, and snitching on their own “… I think, hopefully, the Muslim community will come forward and work with the proper authorities…”
His statement only reinforces the doctrine of a “police state”.
Yes, even the good cops are quite bad.