Posted on 05/15/2007 8:49:20 PM PDT by West Coast Conservative
On defense for much of the evening, Giuliani switched to the attack nearly an hour into the debate, challenging Rep. Ron Paul's suggestion that the U.S. bombing of Iraq had contributed to the terrorist attacks of 2001.
As someone who lived through 9/11, the man who was New York mayor at the time, Giuliani said sternly, "I don't think I've ever heard that before, and I have heard some pretty absurd explanations."
His rebuke to Paul drew some of the loudest applause of the night from the partisan audience at the University of South Carolina campus.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
Guiliani destroyed Ron Paul tonight, and I am not pleased to say it.
Dont you feel like you are debating a six year old kid with autism? Why bother? This guy know how dumb he sounds.
BTTT
We haven't had a constitution-loving President in so many years that most people can't recognize one.
I don't think they're nice people, I just realize that it's not our fight. The reason OBL and his followers despise and attacked the U.S. is because we prop up the Middle Eastern kings and dictators he wants to overthrow. You imagine OBL and his followers somehow managing to overthrow these governments and then try to take over the globe. It's comic book fantasy.
How many hundreds of billions of dollars are we going to borrow from China to try and dictate the governments of the Middle East? You know they're laughing the way our bankers did as the European colonial powers borrowed themselves into decline and ruin sparring with one another in a Quixotic bid to run the globe.
when the Republican party rediscovers the conservative values espoused by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson they'll end their political slide. That you think Rosie O'Donnell is a conservative shows how confused you are. It's also salient that you avoid discussing any of the facts or history relevant to Ron Paul's statement.
Quite frankly, there were too many abortion questions.
But there were Republican lines that captured my notice (approximate):
Takes more money to do it over than to do it right . . .
Let’s set benchmarks in Washington . . .
Spending money like John Edwards in a beauty shop . . .
China is cheating in trade . . .
I’m beginning to hear a lot of conversions here . . . It’s truly beginning to sound like more conversions than at a Baptist convention . . .
My fear is that McCain-Kennedy would do to immigration what McCain-Feingold has done to campaign finance . . .
It’s a national security issue to move away from petroleum products (dependence) from countries that want to kill us . . .
(The scenario - ) . . . prevent . . . elect a President who will prevent the need to ever go there (torture) . . . the real question is how you prevent the bomb from going off . . .
(The scenario - ) . . . What are you measuring here? U.S. lives or your standing in the world? . . . protection of U.S. lives, that is the responsibility of the President . . .
(The scenario - ) . . . it will never, ever, be business as usual when you attack Americans on our own soil . . .
(The scenario - ) . . . when we go under, Western Civilization goes under . . . you better respond in a way that makes them fearful of you . . .
Now, even though I don’t think I made mention of a remark Giuliani made in the second debate, it seems Giuliani may benefit from this second debate. Romney did the best in the first debate as far as making an impression. In the second debate, Giuliani’s personality came out and probably benefited the most (e.g. vocal interruption to Ron Paul, “I’ve heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th – and I would ask the congressman to withdraw . . .”).
You must be joking, right?
Thomas Jefferson led America into its first overseas war against, well, the Mohammedans of all people.
How can you possibly be ***this*** ignorant? You act as if Lincoln offered the Confederacy diplomacy and negotiation, or as if McKinley let the slaughter ensue in Cuba without doing anything about it.
I’m sorry, you must live a confused life if you have the time to spout off on the internet about the last 9 decades of Middle Eastern meddling without having any ability to rationally argue the point as to HOW Ron Paul was incorrect tonight.
Republicans and Democrats, the career intelligence and military men and women who stand guard to protect our freedoms, all types and persuasions of analysts of Middle East and South Asian affairs have a generally accepted outline of the history of the region.
Because your cultural memory of Middle Eastern affairs doesn’t extend back through 100+ years, doesn’t mean that the other players, the peoples who live there, don’t have a long memory and a culture that is unremarkable in it’s intergenerational animosities. And relatively, Western powers went to the Middle East after the American Revolution, and most of the problems occurred within the last 90 years.
If you believe Ron Paul and Buchanan are equated, you have even less grasp on the arguments internal to American Conservatism and small “L” libertarianism than you dare expose to FR as of yet. Let me state that more bluntly, you sound like a damn fool for bringing up the Buchanan canard in a thread of this nature and topical subject.
The men your taxes pay the salary for have been stating what Ron Paul restated tonight, for the last decade. There is no one higher, no one with more experience, no one with more clout, influence or worldly knowledge out there in the mist waiting to declare to the world that the Islamist terrorists and their financiers decided to attack Western interests for any reason you have stated, or any reason that Rudy has stated.
It’s quite obvious Rudy Guiliani was hamming it up for the cameras, it is easily verifiable that Guliani HAS stated in the past his belief that the attacsk were a result of US foreign policy in the region, look back to Guiliani’s statements regarding his refusal to accept the $10 million dollar charity donation from the Saudi princeling Alwaleed. Matter of factly, Guiliani got that reasoning wrong in and of itself, BUT he did acknowledge that the US must reconsider it’s policies vis a vis the Palestinian situation.
Not only was Guiliani putting on a vaudeville show of the “aghast patriot” tonight, not only was he gambling that the vast majority of the audience wouldn’t know enough to call his schlocky response, he also was lieing about his own knowledge about causation and background of the 9/11 plot and Islamist terrorism networks.
yep.
put a fork in Ron Paul. will go down as his howard dean moment.
“That you think Rosie O’Donnell is a conservative shows how confused you are. “
1. That you dont get the sarcasm of the statement shows how confuse you are
2. That you actually mistake the “Blame America” nonsense (similar to Rosie’s)you are spouting off with with conservatism shows how clueless you are.
I dont think Washington blamed the Boston Minutemen for the Boston Massacre and other British abuses that triggered the American Revolution. Anyway that is my be nice to “useful idiots” post for the month.
I’d say “bizarre” is a fairly apt description of him from tonight’s debate. He’s done.
the root cause is and always has been islamic terrorism
our blowback war on terror is and always has been reactionary, not precipatory
ron paul’s kookery is more dangerous to us than that of anybody else on that stage tonight
Again, you people have yet to explain how the thousands dead in places in Thailand, or the millions dead in Sudan, or the massacred schoolkids in Russia, or the bombed shopping malls in the Philippines— are the result of big bad America and not the result of Islamic fundies who want to bring back the Caliphate.
The multiculturalism crowd sure shows a poor understanding of other cultures.
The one man’s freedom fighter equals another man’s terrorist won’t fly here either. To be a freedom fighter like George Washington you have to fight for FREEDOM, as opposed to sharia law or a commie dictatorship.
I would ask Ron Paul, who is very intelligent - have the Islamic Fascists been attacking Hindus in India for so long, so very long - because America is in the Middle East?
Not everyone thinks so. Ron Paul won two polls tonight on "who won the debate", the vote.com poll and the Fox News poll.
Like Israel, huh?
Not no, but hell no. Hunter, you betcha
Your problem is thinking that the Soviets could win.
And that included keeping Communism out of Chile,
Overthrowing foreign governments with CIA backed coups is why we're so despised overseas. If the Chileans are stupid enough to elect Allende, that's their problem. Just as when Americans elect their own hard core socialists like FDR. Do you really think it's the job of the U.S. Federal government to topple foreign governments just to make their countries safer for American investments? I'd just as soon the Chileans elect nutjobs and the global capital get directed toward American businesses where it won't be confiscated (well, much beyond taxes...)
kicking the Commies out of Grenada, and fighting them in Indochina and Korea. The 2,000,000+ dead in Cambodia clearly indicates the consequences of appeasement —
Losing 58,000 Americans in Vietnam didn't stop the 2+ million dead in Cambodia. We didn't intervene in China's civil war and consequent madness. We certainly steered clear of trying to run Russia's madness after a half hearted attempt to prop up the Whites after WW1. But Grenada - whew, you got me there. Too bad kingmaking in the Middle East isn't like Grenada (i.e. full of locals who welcome us in removing an invading force - in fact, we are the invading force, and that's why Bin Laden started attacking us and has support from people in the Middle East).
fortunately we had Reagan to put the pressure back on the USSR in the 80s.
You have more faith in the efficacy of communism than me, I must admit. Did you notice that Reagan's idea of pressure wasn't to invade the Eastern bloc and start trying to occupy them and force a system of government down their throat? He chose a different route, the counter example - the shining city on a hill.
I buy that.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.