Special: Marco Rubio’s Foreign Policy, GOP's Evolving Iraq War Stance and #FreeJason

ANNOUNCER: This is the Washington Week Webcast Extra .

MS. IFILL: Hello, and welcome. I’m Gwen Ifill. We had so much to talk about on the regular broadcast that we just had to stick around a little longer. Joining me, Peter Baker of The New York Times , Fawn Johnson of National Journal , Manu Raju of Politico , and Ed O’Keefe of The Washington Post .

The foreign policy debate on the campaign trail was not limited to Jeb Bush and Iraq. It also included a foreign policy speech from Marco Rubio, delivered at the Council on Foreign Relations. What, you didn’t hear about that one? Well, that’s why we’re here. How did Bush’s Iraq meanderings compare to Rubio’s kind of more traditional pronouncement this week?

MR. O’KEEFE: Yeah, I mean, he delivered a very neoconservative address, which will make – which will warm the hearts of a lot of Republican voters. But there were some notable changes in position by the senator. He did – in the wake of Governor Bush’s comments on Iraq, made clear that he agreed that perhaps he wouldn’t have done what President Bush did regarding the war in Iraq –

MS. IFILL: And he has said something different before?

MR. O’KEEFE: – which was a slight – different statement than what he said back in March, when he said no, the war was a good thing because it toppled Saddam Hussein. So while his mentor was out screwing things up on Iraq, the protégé also did. And only now a few days later are many people beginning to take notice of that. But overall very muscular discussion of not only foreign affairs, but sort of foreign economic affairs as well, and relatively well-received, at least in conservative circles.

MS. IFILL: At this stage in the campaign, is everyone just laying the groundwork for what’s to come? Are they testing out themes, trying to figure out what they’re going to say when they’re asked these questions on debate stages?

MR. O’KEEFE: I mean, generally everyone’s speaking in general terms. I think Bush to some extent has gotten a little more specific, especially on things like NATO and the situation in Ukraine. But you know, contrast Rubio and his general statements with Rand Paul, who talked to this guy this week and suggested –

MS. IFILL: To Manu. (Laughs.)

MR. O’KEEFE: – and suggested that, you know, he would have done things entirely differently, that he’s still so concerned about things like the Patriot Act that he might filibuster them next week.

MS. IFILL: Were you surprised about that?

MR. O’KEEFE: That is a total contrast.

MR. RAJU: You know, I was not surprised that he said that he would filibuster the Patriot Act. What that means, though, does he actually go to the floor and talk for 13 hours and delay Congress from going on – what they all want to do is go on recess for the Memorial Day break. That’s going to be the big question for the next week, how he handles it. But it’s a central issue of his campaign. He wants to repeal the Patriot Act.

MS. IFILL: Well, that’s a great segue. Tell us about – the Patriot Act is coming up for reauthorization. It’s been central to lots of peripheral debates lately. But tell us about where – how that landscape is looking?

MR. RAJU: It’s a real mess right now. They have to extend three key authorities in the Patriot Act by June 1 ^st . And as I mentioned, Congress is going on recess the end of next week, which gives them one week to figure out how to do that. And Republicans in particular are very divided on where to go. The Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, in the Senate wants to extend existing law. That includes continuing the bulk data collection.

MS. IFILL: Section 215.

MR. RAJU: Section 215, what Edward Snowden revealed and what a federal Appeals Court last week said was illegal, Congress did not authorize. But people like Rand Paul want to repeal that outright. And then there are folks that are pushing a middle-ground approach that passed the House this week called the USA Freedom Act. And that bill would also end the data collection program, but it would make some other reforms and extend some authorities.

MS. IFILL: The White House is supporting – and the White House supported that, yeah.

MR. RAJU: The White House does want that, but Mitch McConnell does not and Republicans don’t, so – a lot of Republicans don’t. So the Republicans are very deeply divided in several different levels here, and the Senate does not have much time to deal with that. And by the way, they want to get – finish the trade bill next week, too. So I’m not quite sure how they deal with this, given all the different divisions, particularly on the Republicans on the Patriot Act.

MS. IFILL: While we’re talking about legislation which is about to run up against deadlines of getting out of town, Fawn, I want to ask you about the defense authorization bill, which you’ve been writing about.

MS. JOHNSON: Yeah. I mean, this is a place that’s actually going along relatively smoothly. This is the annual bill that Congress passes to allow there to be continued funding of the military. It’s kind of a tradition; it doesn’t ever not pass. So the House passed it just earlier today with a 269-151 vote. Only 41 Democrats voted yes. Most of the Democrats voted no. They were protesting an extra $38 billion that are coming from the war slush fund or the Overseas Contingency Fund, however – the fund that does not count against the budget caps, essentially.

MR. BAKER: That’s a lot of money, right?

MS. JOHNSON: Thirty-eight billion (dollars), yeah.

MS. IFILL: That’s actually money. (Laughter.)

MR. BAKER: I was checking. That sounds like a lot.

MS. JOHNSON: Well, keep in mind that the overall – so the amount that the Defense Department is going to get is a little over 600 billion (dollars). So yeah, I mean, it’s – I mean, compared to the 300 million (dollars) on Amtrak, that’s a lot.

But to my mind, the most interesting part of what happened on defense was not in the House, although that was an interesting debate to watch, but the Senate Armed Services Committee also finished their version of the bill. And so Senator McCain and some of the Democrats came up with a compromise on perhaps closing Guantanamo Bay, which – we don’t know if this is going to actually make it through the entire process, but what it would do is require the president to submit a plan to close Guantanamo Bay, to bring all the people who are there onto U.S. soil into a high – maximum-security prison. They would not have any change in their legal status, but they would be on U.S. soil. So they submit – so the president submits a plan and then Congress has the right to vote it up or down. And this sounds – it should sound familiar because it sounds a lot like the Iran deal. But this was something –

MS. IFILL: It does. It sounds a lot like the trade – the trade deal. It’s all the same.

MS. JOHNSON: Yeah. So I think the – so that, to me – struck me as kind of breaking a little bit of new ground on the – on the standoff on Guantanamo Bay. I don’t know how far it will go. The Senate still has – the full Senate has to vote on this particular bill, which is going to happen after the recess. But as things go, this one has gone relatively smoothly.

MR. O’KEEFE: Because McCain’s a big proponent of closing Gitmo, always has been.

MS. JOHNSON: He is, he is. And he also has some authority on these issues that are – is hard to argue with.

MS. IFILL: Let’s come full circle back to Iraq, because one of the things – we spent a lot of time talking about Jeb Bush, we spent some time talking about Hillary Clinton, but let’s walk through what other Republicans – not necessarily just candidates for president – have done on this issue and how it’s evolving because it’s an issue that never goes away, what we did in Iraq.

MR. BAKER: Yeah, no, that’s true. Here we are 12 years later still debating that. And it’s interesting, I think as Ed said earlier there has been an evolution in where the Republican center is on this. In 2008, when George W. Bush was still in office, Republicans were leery of saying outright they wouldn’t have done it, or disavowing it, or saying it was a mistake. They found ways of acknowledging things didn’t go well or things should have been done differently, but they didn’t take the position that all the Republican candidates more or less took this week, including as you said Kasich and Paul and Cruz and Rubio.

MS. IFILL: And Christie.

MR. BAKER: And Christie, exactly, and Rick Santorum. But I’ll tell you one Republican who doesn’t believe that yet is George W. Bush. And you know, Marco Rubio said in his speech, he says, well, I wouldn’t – or his comment – he says, I wouldn’t have done it and I don’t think President Bush would have either, had he known about the WMD. That’s not what President Bush has said. In his two books he’s written so far, he’s more or less defended the decision. He said, yes, it was a mistake, I was sickened by the fact that there wasn’t intelligence there, but the world is still better off that Saddam Hussein wasn’t there. Now, if you ask his people – people who were close to him, like Karl Rove, like Ari Fleischer – they actually give you a different opinion. They say they think actually he wouldn’t have invaded had he known that there wasn’t, for sure, weapons of mass destruction there. So this has changed a lot in the last few years. Mitt Romney, in 2008, didn’t say what Jeb Bush said this week, but by 2012 more or less did. So it’s changed over time.

MR. O’KEEFE: Just notable that when Rubio said that about President Bush it caused a lot of angry feelings in Bush camp, that he felt that he could speak on behalf of the former president.

MR. BAKER: His argument was – just to be fair, his argument was that President Bush has said he regretted the mistaken intelligence, and therefore, since that was the major predicate for the war, he must therefore regret the decision. That’s not the way – President Bush himself has not extrapolated that far.

MS. IFILL: I want to end with one little question for you, Ed, because you’re wearing a little lapel pin which may have caught the eye of the viewers. It says “Free Jason,” and it’s about a Washington Post reporter who has been held in Iran for some time, Jason Rezaian.

MR. O’KEEFE: That’s right. He was a – he is our Tehran Bureau chief, has been held – has become a real concern, obviously, for all of us. And they’ve been handing these out around the newsroom, saying wear them around town, wear them on the campaign trail, wear them on television and help raise awareness. His family, obviously, has been leading the charge. It’s been an issue that’s come up in the talks with Iran to some extent. It hasn’t happened yet. We certainly hope it does very soon.

MS. IFILL: We have interviewed his brother on the NewsHour , and the family must just – it must make them insane that they can’t get any movement on this.

MR. O’KEEFE: Well, it makes all of us insane, frankly.

MS. IFILL: Exactly. Well, and it should, actually. Free Jason.

Thank you, everybody. Stay online all week long for the latest developments on these and other stories from the best reporters in Washington, our panelists. That’s, of course, at PBS.org/WashingtonWeek. And we’ll see you next time on the Washington Week Webcast Extra .