Marco Rubio hails White House move on Syria

A week ago, the Florida freshman took his first major foray into foreign policy, pressing the White House to toughen its stance against Syria.

Today, the White House announced it will expand sanctions against the Syrian government and Rubio and fellow Republican Sens. John McCain, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham expressed support for the move:

"We applaud President Obama for imposing sanctions on Bashar al Assad and other top Syrian officials," they said in a joint statement. "The President's strong and principled action today should send an unmistakable message that the United States stands in solidarity with the brave protesters in Syria and that the Assad regime has lost legitimacy in our eyes. We urge our European allies and other partners around the world to work now with the United States in targeting Bashar al Assad with similar measures. We also hope the President will use the opportunity of his speech tomorrow to talk in detail about the situation in Syria, and make clear that it is time for Assad to go."

Comments

[Rob]

That's all fine and dandy but if Rubio claims this as some sort of victory or foreign policy coup, it would be disingenuous. The new sanctions are almost wholly symbolic and will have little real impact in Syria.
The issue is now framed as the above Republicans pushing the President to be tougher, implying that he wasn't. The Obama administration complies. The current administration loves to hand their opponents meaningless political "victories."