Presidential Candidates Don’t Want Ground Troops in the Middle East, but Voters Do

If there is one thing on which all the candidates for president seem to agree, it’s the refusal to endorse “ground troops” in Iraq or in Syria to combat Daesh/ISIS. Even when Donald Trump tried to criticize Hillary Clinton for ruling out an on-the-ground deployment, he was more upset about Clinton saying the policy out loud than the policy itself (which he did not specifically criticize – Slate). Evan McMullin (the choice of some Never-Trump Republicans) criticizes the president’s errors in Syria and in Iraq without really fleshing out his own policy – and he refuses to mention an on-the-ground deployment. The other candidates – Clinton, Johnson, Stein, and Castle – have publicly ruled out any on-the-ground deployment.

Thus has the conventional wisdom – i.e., that the American people are exhausted with war in Central/Western Asia – taken hold of our candidates across the entire political spectrum. Indeed, Jim Newell (author of the aforelinked Slate column), put the CW best with this sentence: “But a mass deployment would appear to be politically out of the equation barring some major shock to the status quo” (emphasis in original).

There’s only one problem with the powers that be acting on this message from the American people: the American people are sending a different message.

Buried deep within the Morning Consult/Politico poll on the candidates’ debate performance and on the “horse race” was this question: “Do you support or oppose the U.S. sending ground troops to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria?”

55% of respondents answered that they supported it.

In other words, our leading candidates for the highest office in the land are “receiving” a message that the American people aren’t sending…

…and Washington wonders why it’s so unpopular these days.