Posted on 06/05/2007 2:50:43 PM PDT by CounterCounterCulture
Republican Presidential Candidate Debate #3 - Manchester, New Hampshire 06/05/07 - Official Discussion Thread
WMUR-TV, CNN, and the New Hampshire Union Leader will host a Republican debate in Manchester, New Hampshire on the campus of Saint Anselm College. Moderated by Wolf Blitzer. Debate begins at 7 p.m. EDT (4 p.m. PDT) and will last two hours.
Better man than you. He disagrees with Arnold, the Prez, whomever, makes it crystal clear, but has the good sense not to be so ridiculous.
One of the main reasons I support him. Very conservative, straight shooter but common sensical and balanced.
It must annoy you that Tom Tancredo got off the better lines between the two of them. Telling Bush that he'd better not "darken the door" of a Tancredo White House was bold, and what was needed to be said, to tell this President that we will not accept his shamnesty.
Hunter had one last chance to make news, and all he got was an association with his name and the word, "slows". He didn't have to risk insulting the President directly to have called for a boycott on ChiCom goods, however. He missed his chance.
I was at the debate last night in Manchester NH. Ron Paul had the largest group of, and most vocal, supporters of all the other candidates. They didn’t even bother cheering after awhile, the other supporters were constantly drowned out by cheers for Dr. Paul, liberty and the Constitution. It was pretty interesting.
GWB is standing with the “Republican” U.S. Attorney Sutton of El Paso. He knowws most Americans don’t know about the Ramos-Compean cases.
I was disappointed in one of Dr. Paul’s responses when he spoke of the “need” to spend on education and health care. I think he meant local government on education, but even that is a failure.
This is what I was referring to:
“REP. HUNTER: Well, Wolf, you know, I read that NIE report, and I held the briefings before we made the vote to go in. I’d invited everybody, Democrat and Republican, to get the classified information.
And this depends — the turnover of the security apparatus depends on one thing — reliable Iraqi forces. You got 129 Iraq battalions; we’ve trained them up. We’ve got a lot of them in the fight. Over the next three to four months, we need to get them all in the fight, get them that combat capability. When they’re combat- hardened, we rotate them in, we displace American heavy combat forces off that battlefield, and Americans come home.
And, Wolf —
MR. BLITZER: Thank you.
REP. HUNTER: — I can tell you, as the chairman of the Armed Services Committee for the last four years, I have the credentials to leave Iraq the right way. “
My Bush epiphany
Posted: September 20, 2000
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Lawrence Auster
A few weeks before he was nominated as the Republican candidate for president of the United States, I happened to see Bob Dole being interviewed on TV. As I watched, everything I knew about Dole came to mind -- the love for big government that he had unembarrassedly revealed in his Senate retirement speech a few days earlier, the constant hints and sardonic asides by which he distanced himself from conservatives and accommodated himself to liberals, even the way his eyes kept shifting from side to side as he spoke. Suddenly the thought flashed into my mind: "He's not on our side; he's on their side."
It gives me no pleasure to say it, but George W. Bush, at least on some key issues, has given conservatives reason to have similar concerns about him. Of course, many conservatives were already put off by W.'s "compassionate" conservatism, his inclusion-soaked nominating convention, and his failure to say anything serious about the Clinton-Gore corrup-tion of our national life. If W. would not take even a minimal stand against the epic illegalities and abuses of power that we have been living under, then how could his election be seen as a repudiation of those abuses, and how could it cleanse the country of the stain that Clinton has left?
By the same token, given the fact that W. panders to Hispanics and is so conspicuously fond of diversity, how can he be counted on to defend America's national identity and sovereignty from the organized Hispanic interest groups and globalist elites who are hostile to both? A case in point was his refusal during the primaries to criticize a Texas town where Spanish had been declared the official language.
Thus W. had already shown a troubling degree of softness on the important issues of public morality and national identity. But in a two-day period in late August, he went much further (or much further backward) on both fronts than he ever had before.
On the matter of public integrity, he announced his approval of Janet Reno's decision not to appoint a special counsel to investigate Al Gore's role in the 1996 campaign scandal. In doing this, W. was not just avoiding a "partisan attack" on Clinton-Gore corruption; he seemed to be going out of his way to help protect Clinton and Gore from accountability.
On the matter of national identity, W. delivered in Miami on Aug. 25 a major address on U.S.-Latin American relations, in which he unveiled a startling -- at least for a Republican -- view of America. We should pay close attention to his words:
We are now one of the largest Spanish-speaking nations in the world. We're a major source of Latin music, journalism and culture.
Just go to Miami, or San Antonio, Los Angeles, Chicago or West New York, New Jersey ... and close your eyes and listen. You could just as easily be in Santo Domingo or Santiago, or San Miguel de Allende.
For years our nation has debated this change -- some have praised it and others have resented it. By nominating me, my party has made a choice to welcome the new America.
Let us be clear that W. is not (as Republican politicians including Reagan have done for decades) celebrating immigrants from diverse backgrounds on the assumption that they are becoming part of our culture and way of life. On the contrary, he is applauding the expansion and the increasingly dominant role of the Hispanic culture and the Spanish language in this country. He is explicitly welcoming the very things that are making America less and less like its historical self and more and more like Latin America.
To repeat, this is not the usual establishment conservative line of "immigration with assimilation." This is multiculturalism, the view of America as a collection of unassimilated yet "equal" cultures in which our former national culture will be progressively downgraded and marginalized.
Also surprising is W.'s claim that Republicans have "made a choice to welcome the new America." Did Republicans realize that by nominating W. they were not only committing themselves to a pro-multicultural candidate, but shutting down all debate on the issue?
Complementing W.'s support for the Hispanicization of American culture was his view of Mexico-U.S. relations:
I have a vision for our two countries. The United States is destined to have a "special relationship" with Mexico, as clear and strong as we have had with Canada and Great Britain. Historically, we have had no closer friends and allies. ... Our ties of history and heritage with Mexico are just as deep.
In equating our intimate historic bonds to our mother country and to Canada with our ties to Mexico, W. shows a staggering ignorance of the civilizational facts of life. The reason we are so close to Britain and Canada is that we share with them a common historical culture, language, literature, and legal system, as well as similar standards of behavior, expectations of public officials, and so on.
We share none of those things with Mexico, which, along with the rest of Latin America, constitutes a cultural region quite distinct from that of the United States and Europe. Everyone, on both the left and the right, has always known this to be so. W., apparently, does not. As he sees it, our mere physical proximity to Mexico is tantamount to cultural commonality with Mexico.
W.'s delusions of cultural similarity don't stop there. "Differences are inevitable" between Mexico and the U.S.," W. continued. "But they will be differences among family, not between rivals."
Coming from the Republican candidate for president of the United States, the statement boggles the mind. It was bad enough when the Democrats in the 1980s started their socialist rant (soon echoed by the Republicans) that Americans are all "one family." But now George W., "The Man from Inclusion," has taken the "family" idea several steps further. For W., it is not just the United States, but the United States and Mexico, and ultimately the United States and the whole of the Americas, that constitutes one "family."
With this thoughtless cliché, W. is moving in symbolic terms toward the goal that Mexico's newly elected president Vicente Fox is calling for in concrete terms: the opening of the U.S.-Mexican border. After all, who would want to maintain national borders and high-tech barriers between members of the same family? Within a family there is unconditional support, mutual obligation, and the sense of a shared destiny -- not armed patrols and checkpoints.
Whether or not W. himself understands the logical implications of his "family" rhetoric, its political consequence if he becomes president will be the same -- the further delegitimization of our borders and our national sovereignty.
All of which leads up to the question: Why is he doing this? Most conservatives had accepted, if without enthusiasm, the pragmatic need for W. and other Republicans to project a warm and "inclusive" image, conspicuously embracing minorities and so on. But by no reasonable calculation did that require W. to embrace multiculturalism, any more than the need to avoid "negative attacks" on his Democratic opponent required him to praise Reno's cover-up of Gore.
Since his adoption of a multicultural vision of America makes no sense in political terms (indeed, it would tend to alienate his own base), the only explanation is that W. really believes in it. Watching his speech in Miami, you couldn't help but feel that W. is genuinely moved by this "We're all one family" sentiment. It is as central to his heart (about which he is always telling us) as the love of big government is to Bob Dole's.
Just as Dole at the 1996 Convention showed his liberal colors when he declared that the Republican party is rife with unspecified "haters" for whom "the exits are clearly marked," W. has unambiguously demonstrated his allegiance to the liberal policies of open borders and multiculturalism, characterizing everyone who dissents from those policies as driven by "resentment" and implying that they have no place in the Republican party. He has left no wiggle room for honest conservatives to tell themselves, "Well he's really on our side, the side of a unified American nation. He just has to say all these things about welcoming other cultures in order to get elected."
Of course, many principled conservatives feel they have strong reasons (I will leave it up to the reader to decide whether they are compelling reasons) to vote for W. They believe that with W. in the White House, there will be at least a chance of forestalling a further leftward lurch by the Supreme Court and such nightmarish statist projects (endorsed by Gore) as universal childcare. They also feel that our country cannot endure the continued debauching of our national institutions and character that has occurred under Clinton and Gore. But, if conservatives do mark their ballot for W. on Nov. 7, they should do it without illusions -- and they should be prepared to fight President Bush every inch of the way to preserve what remains of our national identity and sovereignty.
Lawrence Auster lives in New York City.
Deja Vu!
I remember having such hope in 2000. I was going to be able to vote for a conservative named George.
I was dissapointed the first day of session when BUSH submitted “no child left behind” in the House for vote.
I’m not making the same mistake twice by having the media ram another so called flip flopping, big spending, slick haired front runner down my throat.
I was called by a GOP pollster yesterday and they only gave me 3 choices. You can guess who there were. This is un-American
I wish I had seen this. It was on in the wee hours in my neck of the woods.
Was it more funny or frightening? ;-)
Did the cultists start foaming at the mouth?
Inquiring minds want to know!
Quit calling me a spammer. Every time the polls don’t go the way people expect. They call it spam.
What?!!?!?! You don’t think MSNBS, ABC, FOXNEWS knows how to install a spam block?
I don’t recall naming you. I suppose we’ll see how reflective those polls are of reality come January.
You bet.
I remember how I and many others tried warning the Bushbots and that was their response, he's just saying those things to get elected. After election he'll move to the right. I remember asking if they really thought he was lieing? Time has shown that so many of us were right then, and we're right now, but many of those same Bushbots are still in denial as they polish his shoes and admire their reflections.
It sure was.
And Duncan is the only true conservative running.
Well, if they are anything like most Ron Paul supporters on FR, they were probably just name-calling the whole night.
When Ron Paul said that a pre-emptive strike on Iran would be morally wrong, he proved once and for all that he is unfit to lead a boy scout troop.
McQueeg is toast. He allies himself with the Rats on issue after issue, he doesn’t care what the base thinks, and he’s supporting an indefensible immigration bill that could wreck our country.
You can disagree with his message, but the whole quote sums up Ron Paul’s supporters:
“I was at the debate in NH last night. Ron Paul had the largest, and most vocal, group of supporters of all the candidates. A lot of them didn’t even bother with chants because they were drowned out by constant cheers for Ron Paul, liberty, and the Constitution. It was really cool to see.”
Republican Presidential Candidate Debate #4 – Des Moines, Iowa 08/05/07
ABC News will be conducting a debate to be aired on This Week. The nine announced GOP presidential candidates meet in a campaign debate at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. George Stephanopoulos is the moderator; Des Moines Register political writer David Yepsen poses additional questions. Debate starts at 8 am CT (9 am ET/ 6 am PT) * check local stations for broadcast time in your area *
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