THE DAILY BLADE: Fred Said Right?
Considering the astonishingly high rate of misstatements and factual errors tumbling from Fred Thompson’s lips since he declared his candidacy a scant month ago, all eyes were on him during yesterday's Republican debate sponsored by CNBC, MSNBC, The Wall Street Journal and the Michigan Republican Party, held at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.
Voters and pundits alike wondered whether Thompson could hold his own in a debate, when he has repeatedly stumbled in less pressurized situations. His eight opponents have the advantage of several head-to-head debates and know each others riffs and rhythms pretty well by now. In previous match-ups, Rudy and Mike Huckabee have proven very quick and nimble in seizing any and every opening.
So how did the slow moving, slow talking Thompson do? He started off inauspiciously, losing his place and freezing up on the very first question. In contrast to Mitt Romney and Rudy - in particular – who peppered their answers with facts, figures and statistics, Thompson did not came off as being as sharp and well prepared as he should have been.
On the other hand, perhaps because his head wasn’t crammed with too many stats Thompson did not make any disturbing gaffes – unlike Romney and Paul.
Chris Matthews asked Romney, "if you were president of the United States, would you need to go to Congress to get authorization to take military action against Iran's nuclear facilities?" The buck wouldn’t stop at Romney’s desk, because he thinks a president in such circumstances needs to "sit down with your attorneys and tell you what you have to do."
For his part, Paul responded to Duncan Hunter’s answer about not needing Congressional authority to wage war when the target is fleeting by making the preposterous claim that "we'd never had [an imminent attack on us] happen in 220 years," which naturally prompted Rudy to retort, "we've never had an imminent attack - I don't know where he was on September 11th." It was déjà vu all over again.
In contrast to the other candidates who gave each other props, Rudy and Romney mixed it up at several points throughout the evening. The Stiletto’s opinion Rudy came out on top in the skirmish with Romney over the line item veto:
Rudy: The line-item veto is unconstitutional. I took Bill Clinton to the Supreme Court and beat Bill Clinton. It's unconstitutional. What the heck can you do about that if you're a strict constructionist? … So I took President Clinton to court, and I beat him. And I don't think it's a bad idea to have a Republican presidential candidate who actually has beat President Clinton at something.
And they both reached past their debate opponents to take on Hillary:
Rudy: At the last Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton was asked by Tim Russert whether she agreed with my position on Iran. … [S]he was asked, would you take a strong position that Iran will not be allowed to become nuclear and that we would use a military option if we had to? And she didn't answer the question. Well, you've got to answer the question. The answer is, yes, we would. Iran is a greater danger than Iraq.
Romney: "[V]is-a-vis meeting with most likely Hillary Clinton, … I know how to get a health care plan not just talked about but actually implemented. I know how to make sure that we keep our taxes down and our spending down. I know how to help American companies do business around the world and stop those foreign companies from coming in here unfairly. That's what I've done throughout my career. I can't wait to debate with her, because I've done it; she's just talked about it.
Overall the proceedings were not as briskly paced as when Fox News hosts the debates. Instead of being the tortoise to everyone else’s hare, Thompson’s presence turned everyone into tortoises.
Even Huckabee was more subdued than he had been in other debates. The only flash of passion came from Tom Tancredo, in response to a question Matthews posed to all the candidates, "How do the Republicans win back confidence on the economy?" Bristling with indignation, Tancredo answered:
You want to raise wage rates in the United States. You want to reduce taxes in the United States. You want to encourage people to think about us as doing the right thing as Republicans do this - stop illegal immigration into this country. … We're fighting Democrats now tooth and nail on every single thing, SCHIP - great. You know what? Standing on principle is a good idea; too bad we didn't do it when we were in the majority.
Stop pandering. Stop pandering to all of these special interest groups. Do what's right regardless of whether or not people all agree with you when you take - you know, this kind of put your finger in the wind. Do what you believe in. Stop pandering, they'll believe in us.
The pace didn’t pick up noticeably during what was supposed to be a "lightning round," but by then the candidates had gotten loose enough to start cracking wise a bit. Romney got the biggest laugh of the night with his quip that the debates were a lot like "Law & Order": "It has a huge cast, the series seems to go on forever and Fred Thompson shows up at the end."
The big surprise of the evening was that Rudy managed to answer questions about taxes, fiscal policy and global economics without weaving 9/11 into each and every answer - if only to show the skeptics that he can when he wants to.
Ron Paul Explains Why He Sounds Just Like Dennis Kucinich
Have you ever noticed that presidential candidates Ron Paul (R-TX) and Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) sound like conjoined twins when it comes to the Iraq War (second item) and U.S. foreign policy? Here’s how Paul answered Chris Matthews’ question on whether we went to war in Iraq over oil in yesterday's debate :
It's neocolonialism that you have to maintain your supply routes and your natural resources.
But I think there's still a lot of those kind of people around, and they believe - you know, we were told it was about oil and jobs when it first started in 1990, and this is just a continuation of that war. Indeed, this war is a mistake; it was a mistake to go in. It's very costly, and it has a lot of economic ramifications. We're going broke. We have this huge deficit. We're spending nearly a trillion dollars with maintaining our empire overseas, and that's a cost. Right now we owe foreigners $2.7 trillion. No wonder they have money to come back in here and buy stuff up, and then we object; but that has to do with our monetary system, as well as our foreign policy.
His libertarian supporters insist that every breath Paul takes and every move he makes is within the scope and intent of the U.S. Constitution. For instance, Paul believes the Iraq war is illegitimate, because Congress did not authorize military intervention with a formal declaration of war – a point he again brought up in the debate.
An editorial in last Friday’s edition of the New Hampshire Union Leader accused him of "unrealistic and dangerous isolationism," because he "seems to think that the only national security threat America faces is from a direct military assault on our soil." In his response to that editorial, Paul’s explanation that "a non-interventionist foreign policy is not an isolationist foreign policy" clearly demonstrates just how unrealistic and dangerous his ideological purity is. The Stiletto gives this round to the Union Leader.
Are you kidding me? 'Paul’s explanation that "a non-interventionist foreign policy is not an isolationist foreign policy" clearly demonstrates just how unrealistic and dangerous his ideological purity is.'
Ron Paul tells the truth, and he tells it like it is. His philosophy and policy are only dangerous to the current fascist American regime, that wants to perpetuate war to expand its global empire. This country has been so blinded by the played-out song and dance routine performed by both the socialist welfare-state Democrats and the fascist warfare-state Republicans, that they can't see the real danger at hand: namely, the erosion of our civil liberties through the dismantling of our Constitution. They don't hate us because of our freedoms. They hate us because of our foreign policy. Ron Paul is right.
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"They" hate us because we are infidels. "They" want us to live under Sharia law or dhimmitude - in our own country. The real fascism here is Islamofascism. Pity you can't recognize the real enemy when it's staring you in the face.
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