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"We had people coming to our Foreign Relations Committee and saying, "Oh, we need to arm the allies of Al Qaida." They are still saying this. It is a crazy notion. This is the biggest debate we should be having is is regime change a good idea; has it been a good idea."
"I can tell you who's planning terroris attacks. The leaders of ISIL. And I can tell you where they're at. They're in Raqqa, Syria. So for God's sakes, Mr. President Barack Obama , change your strategy. Come up with a ground force to go in and destroy the caliphate before we get hit here at home. That would be my advice to you."
"The Paris attack was highly sophisticated, well-planned, very clever, took months in the making, very much like 9/11. And there is a 9/11-style attack coming to America."
"The other thing to realize is that almost all these shootings, including this shooting [in San-Bernardino], happened in a government building where people are not allowed to defend themselves. While it's not the ultimate answer, the ultimate answer would be no violence, part of the answer is saying, "We need to allow people to defend themselves.""
"I think ultimately that the rules that you make for gun control, people who are intent on killing themselves aren't too concerned with the rules. Law-abiding citizens are."
"Every gun regulation that President [Barack] Obama has advocated for, California has already. And it didn't stop terrorism."
"Let's make the haystack smaller. Let's say for a while, until we can figure out who's coming, who's going, and who's overstayed their visa, let's have extra scrutiny and figure out what's going on, because there's a whole segment of the world that is intent on sending people here to attack us."
"I think when we think about the judgment of someone who might want World War III, we might think about someone who might shut down a bridge because they don't like their friends."
"On the Gang of Eight bill, there was no provisions really for extra scrutiny or safety for refugees. At the time the bill came up, two Iraqi refugees came to my home town, Bowling Green, Kentucky. Their fingerprints were on a bomb from Iraq. They were in the database, but we didn't pick them up."
"In a reality, what we should be doing is having quiet diplomacy with the Russians to convince them that it's in their self-interest to have a more stable Middle East because trade enriches us all."
"The question's whether or not there's an American interest in the Civil War [in Syria]. The question is whether or not a military strike on [Bashar] Assad will cause him to be encouraged to use more weapons or discouraged. It's easy enough to say - and the president [Barack Obama] says though this will teach him a lesson - but his military strike is intended not to target him individually, not to bring about regime change."
"I've thought for some time that the answer to a lot of problems in the Middle East, including Iran, include an active role with Russia. And I think, in some ways, we've taken show votes in the U.N. that are guaranteed to failure before we take them."
"I think there's evil on both sides [of Syria], and I think that's one reason I don't want to be involved in civil war. I see things in personal terms. I just can't see sending one of my sons - or your son or daughter - to fight in a civil war, where on one side we have a dictator, who in all likelihood gassed his people."
"If Americans were attacked, it does change the equation. The problem is, is that with regard to this is there've been horrendous killings of civilians with conventional weapons."
"I think you'll find that these are measures that have great bipartisan support, and so I expect, not only did we do well in the primary, I think we'll win by a wide margin in the fall because we're going to get a lot of independents and conservative Democrats coming to us."
"I think we have a Tea Party mandate, and that Tea Party mandate is for good-government type of things, things like term limits, things like a balanced budget amendment, things like read the bills for goodness sakes, things like that maybe Congress should only pass legislation that they apply to themselves as well."
"If I were to look at foreign policy, I would say John McCain has been wrong on just about everything over the last four decades."
"We shouldn't be fearful of freedom, we shouldn't be fearful of individual liberty."
"You either believe in the Constitution, or you don't."
"The First Amendment says keep government out of religion. It doesn't say keep religion out of government."