I've already said who I'm endorsing for the Republican nomination for president: Ron Paul, the congressman from Texas who seems to be the sole GOP contender who has actually read the Constitution. Now let me tell you who I'm not supporting: Rudy Giuliani. At that debate in South Carolina the other night, Giuliani revealed an ignorance so vast that he should consider dropping out of politics and perhaps becoming a Fox News commentator.
The incident occurred after Paul, a physician who is known as Dr. No because of his penchant for voting against bills he considers unconstitutional, was asked a question about the Iraq war: "Are you out of step with your party?"
Paul proceeded to give the audience -- and his fellow candidates -- a brief history of the policy of noninterventionism that was standard GOP fare until the party made the mistake of electing presidents named Bush:
"Sen. Robert Taft didn't even want to be in NATO ... Republicans were elected to end the Korean War. The Republicans were elected to end the Vietnam War. There's a strong tradition of being anti-war in the Republican Party. It is the constitutional position. It is the advice of the founders to follow a noninterventionist foreign policy, stay out of entangling alliances ..."
This is common knowledge to those of us who read books. Yet the questioner, Wendell Goler of Fox News, seemed so amazed by it that he granted Paul more time to expound on it. "Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us?" said Paul. "They attack us because we've been over there; we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East -- I think Reagan was right. We don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics."
Again, Paul was stating the ob vious. And again, Goler seemed so amazed that he resorted to a favorite tack of the Fox News crowd, the stupid question: "Are you suggesting that we invited the 9/11 attack, sir?" Goler asked.
"I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it," Paul re plied. "And they are delighted that we're over there because Osama bin Laden has said, 'I am glad you're over on our sand because we can target you so much easier.'"At this point, Giuliani jumped in. "That's an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of Sept. 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I've heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explana tions for Sept. 11."
Has any candidate ever expressed so much ignorance in so few words? If so, he must be a Democrat. First of all, Paul didn't say the U.S. "invited" the attack; it was Goler who used that term. But as to Paul's assertion that there was a connection between our bombing of Iraq and bin Laden's decision to attack the United States: Of course there was. Giuli ani is simply too clueless to be president if at this late date he is unaware that immediately after the 9/11 attacks bin Laden released a videotape citing our bombing of Iraq as a reason for his actions.
Actually I doubt whether Giuli ani made that remark out of stupidity. It was pure demagoguery. He realized he could get a cheap round of applause from the red- state rubes by adopting his strongman pose.
Giuliani's unfortunate penchant for endorsing the naked exercise of state power has won him comparisons to Mussolini from the libertarians who back Paul. But that comparison is unfair -- to Mussolini. For all his flaws, Il Duce was at least a fervent nationalist. Giuliani is part of the open-borders crowd.
Giuliani was lucky that Goler cut him off before he got to make that point in his own words. In an apparent reference to some future terrorists, Giuliani said, "They are coming ..." before his mike went dead.
He was almost certainly going to launch into the most idiotic ar gument in modern political debate: "If we don't fight them over there, we'll have to fight them over here."
Well, we won't have to fight them over here if we don't let them in. When he was New York City mayor, Giuliani went all the way to the Supreme Court to defend his "sanctuary" plan for illegals. And like all the other leading GOP contenders, he supports that amnesty- that-dare-not-speak-its-name.
Paul is for closing the borders and enforcing immigration law. It's no wonder the party hacks are talking about excluding him from future debates. If he's going to keep spouting Republican ideas in a Republican primary election, that just isn't fair to candidates like Giuliani.
Poster Comment:
Well said.