In a de­bate that be­came something of a ref­er­en­dum on former Pres­id­ent George W. Bush’s in­ter­ven­tion­ist for­eign policy, the highest-pro­file com­batants were two fresh­man sen­at­ors:  Marco Ru­bio and Ted Cruz.  Ru­bio, in line with Bush’s leg­acy, called for a more ro­bust Amer­ic­an role in the Middle East and ag­gress­ive coun­terter­ror­ism meas­ures at home.  Cruz, des­pite em­ploy­ing fiery rhet­or­ic, ad­voc­ated a more lim­ited Amer­ic­an role over­seas while de­fend­ing his vote for le­gis­la­tion that cur­tailed the gov­ern­ment’s bulk col­lec­tion of metadata.

The big ques­tion after last night’s de­bate: Will the pub­lic’s mood in the wake of the Par­is and San Bern­ardino at­tacks trans­late in­to an in­creased ap­pet­ite for military intervention?  Or will cri­ti­ciz­ing Pres­id­ent Obama and sound­ing tough on ter­ror be enough to sat­is­fy a con­ser­vat­ive GOP elect­or­ate clam­or­ing for the ut­ter de­feat of IS­IS?

Read the article “Tough Talk vs. Military Muscle” on nationaljournal.com.