At a Dallas summit Saturday, Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz shared his foreign policy strategy for dealing with the militant group Islamic State: "bomb them back to the Stone Age," the Associated Press reported.
"They want to go back and reject modernity," Cruz, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, said. "Well, I think we should help them. We ought to bomb them back to the Stone Age."
Among an influential gathering of conservatives, Cruz made his remarks at a summit for Americans for Prosperity, the political arm of the billionaire GOP donors Charles and David Koch, according to Fox News. Speeches by a few other potential 2016 GOP White House candidates included Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.
Specifically, domestic issues such as the U.S. border/illegal immigration crisis and the Affordable Care Act were discussed by Cruz, who joked about an earlier invitation to President Obama to visit the southern border in order to witness thousands of unaccompanied immigrant children pouring into the country.
"I figured out the only way there is a chance in heaven he might come (is if) I'm inviting him to come to a golf course," Cruz said. "In the year 2017, a Republican president in the Rose Garden is going to sign a bill repealing every word of ObamaCare."
However, Cruz ignored direct questions about a presidential campaign when he met with reporters after the speech. "Each of you is here because we are part of a grassroots fire that is sweeping this country. ... We are building an army," he told conservatives in the audience.
Meanwhile, Obama's stark admission on Thursday that the White House had "no strategy" to combat the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) in Syria left Perry and Paul fuming on Friday.
"Yesterday, the president admitted he had no strategy to deal with ISIS," Perry said, drawing hoots and hisses from a packed convention hall. "The deepening chaos in Iraq, Syria, Gaza and Ukraine is all the clear and compelling evidence the world needs of a president one step behind, lurching from crisis to crisis."
While Republicans criticizing Obama's foreign policy is nothing new, there are deepening divisions within the GOP over how to move forward.
"The broader debate pits those who favor the GOP's traditional muscular foreign policy - a group that includes Perry and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio - and those, like Paul and Cruz, who prefer a smaller international footprint," according to Fox News. "The so-called isolationist approach plays well with grassroots activists and a war-weary public but worries many Republican officials and donors who prefer an aggressive American role in world affairs."
"The intra-party divisions largely weren't much on display at the Americans for Prosperity event, but will become clearer as the crowded group of possible presidential candidates tries to distinguish themselves in the coming months."
