Posted by
Bert Chapman on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 8:57:17 AM
The University of South Carolina in Columbia was the scene of last night's GOP Presidential debate with all ten candidates seeking to make their case. Ron Paul showed he is the GOP's Dennis Kucinich with his idiotic comment that the 9/11 attacks were the result of U.S. policies in the Mideast. Paul was rightly rebuked for this by Rudy Giuliani and Paul 's blame America first stance now means that he must be classified as the extremely rare species known as the Noam Chomsky Republican. John McCain gets the "award" for the second most idiotic statement of the night for saying he would not torture terrorists who knew of additional terrorist attacks in the U.S. even after such attacks occurred. Senator McCain needs to be reminded that we are not engaged in obtuse philsophical discourse with Islamist terrorists but in a titanic existential struggle for survival. Thank goodness Mitt Romney had the cojones to praise Guantanamo and argue for its expansion. I also wish more candidates had the cojones to say they favor torturing terrorists or doing "whatever it takes" to extract information from them.
Mike Huckabee's line about Congress spending money like John Edwards at a beauty salon was the best quip of the night. I would have liked to seen more mention of specific programs candidates would have eliminated. Tommy Thomson mentioned an "agent" program at the Centers for Disease Control which he favored eliminating but he didn't describe this program in detail. There are plenty of programs that could be eliminated from the federal government such as the Agriculture Dept's Rural Utilities Service (is there any farm in America that's not electrified seven decades after the New Deal?) Is the Tennessee Valley Authority still necessary? How about regional power administrations such as the Bonneville Power Administration? Some of NASA's facilities?
Guliani was strong about fighting terrorism but weak on social issues. Romney gave the most cogent and succinct answer about the dangerous consequences for our national interests about withdrawing from Iraq.
I am leaning toward Romney. Although I strongly disagree with his Mormon theology, I think his overall policies will be Christian friendly. I think he's an excellent and succinct communicator and that he'll continue pursuing an aggressive stance against Islamist terrorists. While he has changed his positions on abortion and gay rights, he's changed them in the right direction. The next GOP presidential candidate must be someone who's willing to tell Americans that we are engaged in a protracted generations long struggle against Islamist terror and that we should quit whining about the complex and bloody nature of this struggle and wage it until we are victorious!