Some in MSM Cling to Hope GOP Won't Support Rudy

They want us to think they don't want him, so we will want him, because he is really who they want:')

BINGO! I believe they have sensed that they've pushed Rudy just a little too hard & they need to back off a bit because the hard core conservatives just aren't jumping on the Rudy bandwagon. My feeling all along has been that they are pushing Rudy on us in order to split the Republican party & help Hillery to win. I don't think it's working quite that way for them.

Agreed. I'm not a McCain supporter, but the last thing I would do is criticize him over his conduct as a POW.

Thanks! I just had to get it out. I saw that posted on FR today (someone calling him Hanoi John) and it makes me sick.

Former mayor, Rudy Giuliani, is the only politician who has already proven himself able to stand up to terrorist...and to lead in any situation. Even as an extreme social conservative, I cannot think of anyone else to vote for.

I keep thinking about the Gerald Ford/Jimmy Carter race.
Didn't former President Carter "seem" like the only reasonable choice for social conservatives? What a MONUMENTAL mistake it was for Americans to allow former President Carter anywhere near the White House! He's the classic wolf in sheep's clothing! I don't know if anyone saw him coming!

No matter what...I'm voting a straight Republican ticket!

Another former NY Mayor, although not a fellow Republican, certainly sees this situation for what it is. Check out what he has to say. "...We are not at war with Iran, but Iran seems to be at war with us."

Koch Commentary
February 22, 2006
Over the last few years I have written of my fears that we Americans, as a people, have lost our will to fight for our freedom.

We have come to expect that wars can be fought without casualties, even the relatively modest casualties we have suffered in Iraq. During World War Two, more Americans were killed or wounded on Iwo Jima in one month than have fallen in Iraq in almost four years. Of course, every military death and severe injury is a tragedy. Nevertheless, former Secretary of State Colin Powell has said that our army in Iraq is “about broken,” which appalled and frightened me. Added to those two disturbing dangers to our national security is a new and third factor: denial of a military threat to our armed forces. Such a denial allows us to avoid addressing the threat with an appropriate military response.

We are not at war with Iran, but Iran seems to be at war with us. In the last year we have suffered at least 170 American military deaths in Iraq and 640 American soldiers have been injured as a result of Iranian manufactured and supplied explosives supplied to Iraqi insurgents and terrorists. These explosives are planted at the side of the road and are activated when U.S. military vehicles pass by. They are especially dangerous because their high technology design allows them to penetrate armored vehicles and kill and maim the occupants.

All American leaders, including the President, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and Chairman of the Joint chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, agree that these weapons are manufactured in Iran. They are provided to Iraqi insurgents and terrorists by an Iranian military unit known as the Quds Force. What we are not able to state with certainty is whether, according to The New York Times, “senior leaders of Iran’s government are directly involved in the attacks.”

The Times states, “Based on evidence gathered inside Iraq, American intelligence analysts have concluded that a branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps known as the Quds Force is supplying Shiite groups with Iranian-designed weapons, called explosively formed penetrators.”

The Times reported, “Because the Quds Force, which operates outside Iran, has historically fallen under the command of Iran’s senior religious leaders, intelligence agencies have concluded that top leaders in Tehran are directing the attacks.”

General Peter Pace is quoted in The Times as saying “that American forces had confirmed that some bomb materials found inside Iraq were made in Iran, but ‘that does not translate that the Iranian government per se, for sure, is directly involved in doing this.’”

The Times points out the [Iranian revolutionary] “Guard has also been accused of supporting terrorist attacks outside Iran, notably the 1996 truck bomb attack on the Khobar Towers complex in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 American service members. In December, a federal judge ruled that the government of Iran bore responsibility for the Khobar Towers attack and ordered Tehran to pay survivors of those killed more than $253 million.”

So what do we know with certainty? There are those in Iran, on a significant scale, supplying Iraqi insurgents and terrorists with deadly bombs responsible for killing and injuring 820 American soldiers in the last year. Is it reasonable to believe that is possible without the approval of sectors of the Iranian government? I refer to the civil government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the theocratic and supreme government of the religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the dominant government official.

In dictatorships where dissidents seek to engage in activities prohibited by the state, those so engaged usually end up on the gallows. They are enemies of the state. It is beyond the realm of common sense to believe the Iranian government is aware of the supply activity as it is, the U.S. having made it public on several occasions, and is neither actively or passively, and knowledgably engaged in that activity. In fascist, Nazi, communist, theocratic and totalitarian states that extensively control the lives and political conduct of their citizens, there is very little crime, and practically zero crime against the state.

The Times reports why the Iranian government is engaging in this kind of behavior, writing, “Still American intelligence agencies have concluded that over the past year the Iranian government had adopted a new policy of directly confronting the United States inside Iraq. The policy officials assess is aimed partly at raising the cost of American involvement in the Middle East, teaching the Bush administration a lesson about the cost of regime change and putting pressure on American forces to leave.

“But another reason, they say, is to dissuade the Bush administration from taking a more confrontational policy toward Tehran by sending a message that Iran can ratchet up the attacks on American forces in Iraq.”

It appears that Iran has succeeded in staring us down and preventing us from taking appropriate military action to protect our troops and punish those seeking to harm them. Iran will not be required to pay a price because our army is “about broken” and is not capable of responding. How awful and unnerving for the U.S., the sole remaining superpower in the world.

Democrats and some Republicans in Congress are seeking to humble, embarrass and, if they can, destroy the President and the prestige of his position as the Commander-in-Chief who is responsible for the safety of our military forces and the nation’s defenses. By doing so, they are adding to the dangers that face our nation. And so I ask again them again: do you think that leaving a power vacuum in Iraq will make us safer? If, as a result of the power vacuum, the terrorists are emboldened and God forbid we sustain here in the U.S. civilian casualties comparable to those caused in Iraq by car bombs, will you publicly accept responsibility?

Ed Koch Commentary
February 29, 2007
A few days ago, The New York Times published a truly frightening article on insurgent battlefield tactics in Iraq. The article reported that “Insurgents are likely to continue combining car bombs with chlorine gas and other chemicals to launch attacks similar to three in recent weeks that spewed chlorine and sickened scores of Iraqi, the military warned Thursday.”

Chlorine gas was first used as a weapon by Germany in World War One. France and Britain responded with poison gas of their own. Their lungs destroyed, tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides choked to death. Thousands more were wounded. Gas attacks were so horrible that neither side used poison gas in World War Two.

But between 1980 and 1988, Saddam Hussein used poison gas against Iraqi Kurds and against the Iranian army. Iraqi insurgents and al-Qaeda terrorists have not hesitated to employ the worst tactics of terror, using car bombs in marketplaces killing and injuring thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, as well as torturing and beheading civilians, American and Iraqi, in their efforts to drive the U.S. out of Iraq. Now they are using chlorine gas. Are they practicing tactics to use against us here at home?

When the U.S. leaves Iraq, as the Democrats promise they will force President Bush to do, will we face the prospect of emboldened Jihadists, with the cry of “God is Great” on their lips, blowing Americans up here in the States? If terrorists explode radioactive bombs and tank trucks of chlorine gas in American cities, or worse still, full-fledged nuclear weapons, what will our reaction be? Will we be like the English and Spanish who, when their commuter trains were blown up in London and Madrid, rolled over and surrendered to terrorist demands?

In response to terror attacks on its soil, Spain withdrew its troops from Iraq and changed its government. Britain’s Labor Party repudiated its leader, Prime Minister Tony Blair, ordering him to resign by next September, as well as beginning the reduction of its military forces in Iraq. Those forces, once totaling 40,000, are now less than 8,000 and scheduled to largely be withdrawn between now and 2008. Both President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice referred to these announced British withdrawals as planned, acceptable to the U.S. and a victory over the insurgents and terrorists. That statement, had it been uttered by Pinocchio, would have lengthened his nose.

Will the next President, Democrat or Republican, respond by withdrawing our troops in abject fear and sue for peace? What will peace cost? Perhaps conversion to Islam. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the leaders of al-Qaeda, bin Laden and al-Zawahiri, have publicly stated all our sins will be forgiven if we convert and urged President Bush to lead the way with his personal conversion.

Of course, many of those in and out of Congress who have led the struggle to bring our troops home will laugh at the thought that conversion of the governmental leaders of the U.S. or the payment of tribute by the U.S. will ever come to pass. There were many who believed they could tame Hitler who laid his plans out in detail in Mein Kampf before the beginning of the projected 1,000 year reign of the Third Reich -- a Third Reich brought to an end, through the combined efforts of the U.S., Great Britain and the U.S.S.R. But the cost was horrendous. More than 400,000 American service men and women died, along with 382,000 British soldiers and ten million Russian soldiers. Millions of civilians were killed around the world.

And yet, despite all the horror and carnage of the past, we don’t appear to be learning from history. We don't seem to remember that appeasement never works. It didn’t work at Munich in 1938 with Chamberlain’s infamous statement that we had achieved “peace in our time” with Hitler. It won’t work now. Promises that it will leave Iraq have not bought peace for Britain. British authorities now say the danger of terror attacks inside Britain is greater than ever, with thousands of home-grown Jihadists ready to attack.

Why won’t we take those who threaten us at their word? Why do we continue to make excuses for their threatening behavior until finally we will be forced to act because they have exploded the dirty bomb or the real nuclear bomb in our homeland?

There will come a time when it may be too late to simply respond to an attack. As a result of such an attack on our homeland, we may be so physically injured and suffered so many casualties as to cause us to consider surrender. We may by then have lost our national will as to make it too difficult for us to muster the moral and physical strength needed to defend ourselves. Remember the refrain, primarily in Europe during the Cold War, “better Red than dead?”

Am I painting a too grim a picture? I don’t think so. Wake up, America! This war is not only taking place in Iraq. The struggle is for the future of the world. Our enemies intend to conquer us, and they say so openly. The time to resist is now.

It's not the MSM that the Giuliani people need to worry about, it's the conservative wing of the GOP. They don't want him either.

But if it's Rudy vs. Hillary?

Rudy is so yesterday. Fred Thompson is at the root of the rumors today. LOL

My husband & I were laughing about this today. I think the media is sensing that Rudy isn't going to get the nomination - so they're going to try to get Thompson out there to add a bit of hollyweird glamour. It's so obvious & transparent - it's really funny.

t WHERE will you drift to?

Giuliani vs Hillary -- what's the difference? Who cares if Guiliani is better on national defense, or the economy, or whatever. If we lose the fundamental "cultural identity" battles -- abortion, homosexuality, gun control, illegal aliens, etc -- then I don't really care to see this country preserved. And on these issues, Giuliani and Hillary are of one mind.

But if it's Rudy vs. Hillary?

It's not going to be.

Rudy has said he will support strict constructionist judges, the kind who would tend to overturn Roe v. Wade, and I believe him.

I will tell you flat out I dont want Rudy, I dont want Mccain and I dont like Romney.

I will probably vote for whichever of them is chosen,because Hillary ,Edwards ,and Obama suck even worse than these three.

Why would I want to support a liberal candidate when I can support a conservative one?

I understand. That was Matthews' point.

Thanks for posting that video link. I think the following video is very telling for Rudy, in his own words on the issues. The more this gets out, the more people see who the real Rudy is, and the more they ask for a more conservative candidate like Duncan Hunter.

Rudy Giuliani video on YouTube: "I would like to run on the Democratic line "
YouTube ^

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVBtPIrEleM

Posted on 03/01/2007 2:53:19 PM PST by Kevmo

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1793570/posts

I respect your support for Duncan Hunter, but if six months from now he withdraws and Rudy is the candidate, what will you do: sit home and let Hillary become president, or support Rudy?

I like Fred Thompson, but what did he accomplish with 12 years in the Senate?

MSMers fear Rudy? Call Duncan Hunter. I 'm sure he will light yer fires!

I can assure you, I won't vote for Rudy.

If the politco has dnc operative Jim Vanhei then that website is a Soros DNC operation. Jimmie was the cry baby that complained that Fox new was playing on Air Force One.
He is a hard Left clintonite !

So on election day, if it's Rudy vs. Hillary, you will sit home and let Hillary become the next Commander in Chief? Why?