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IPFS News Link • Politics: Republican Campaigns

How Republican Primaries Create More Pentagon Pork

• theamericanconservative.com

When Carly Fiorina told a Republican debate audience what the country needs to have "the strongest military on the face of the planet"—50 Army brigades, 36 Marine battalions, at least 300 naval ships, a rebuild of the Sixth Fleet and an upgrade of "every leg of the nuclear triad"—it sounded a bit familiar.

"These numbers seem to be pulled straight from a report released by the conservative Heritage Foundation this year," noted The Daily Beast's Kate Brannen, and many of them were. While analysts like Brannen were able to discount the numbers as nothing more than a wish list with a likely $500 billion price tag, Fiorina had already appeared steely and well-informed. The September 16 debate helped propel her forward, both in the polls and the eyes of the fickle media.

Republican candidates use the "super size me" rhetoric to burnish their national security credentials because it works, at least in the short term. It's a perennial sideshow that has become more gratuitous—and less convincing—as the 9/11 attacks have receded further in the rear view.


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