Marco Rubio's First Campaign Ad Goes Too Far

Presidential candidate Marco Rubio will be releasing his first televised campaign ad on Tuesday, but the 30-second spot has already been posted online. It's rather minimalist, featuring the Florida senator facing the camera and discussing the recent Paris attacks and nothing more. Marco Rubio's campaign ad goes too far for evoking such a tragedy for the sake of political gain, playing on unnecessary fearmongering and an "us versus them" mentality.

His thoughts don't appear that original, either, hearkening back to former President George W. Bush, whose famous "you're either with us or against us" speech was coincidentally made during a news conference with then-French President Jacques Chirac. Rubio used similar scare tactics in his campaign ad, making it seem as if ISIS is only targeting the United States when the group appears to have its eyes on numerous countries around the world:

This is a civilizational struggle between the values of freedom and liberty and radical Islamic terror. What happened in Paris could happen here. There is no middle ground. These aren't disgruntled or dis-empowered people. These are radical terrorists who want to kill us because we let women drive, because we let girls go to school. I am Marco Rubio. I approve this message, because there can be no arrangement or negotiation. Either they win or we do.

Rubio's ad appears to stoke anti-Muslim sentiments, a major problem for the GOP that has been frequently seen when candidates have spoken about the Syrian refugee crisis. At a recent campaign stop in Iowa, Rubio stated that he and his fellow candidates were being singled out for "being xenophobes because we want to protect America." But what Rubio is actually doing is suggesting the systemic denial of the entrance of Syrian refugees.

Aside from the fact that it's incredibly tasteless to use tragedy as a means of campaigning, Rubio also appears to contradict himself. Speaking with The Washington Times on Sunday, the GOP presidential hopeful failed to mention the threat of terrorism occurring in the United States, instead choosing to focus on combating ISIS abroad. Rubio made it clear he wants little on the ground involvement from the military and would only deploy a few U.S. special operators. Instead Rubio believes that "[ISIS has] to be defeated by a ground force and have to be made up primarily of Sunnis." Rubio is one of the few Republican candidates to consistently highlight his foreign policy acumen, though he misses the mark in his latest campaign ad.