Ron Paul Wins Debate but Republicans Won't Gamble on Him

casinogamblingweb.com ^ | Sept 6, 2007 | casinogamblingweb.com

[freedomdefender]

Ron Paul clearly won the Republican presidential debate last night held in New Hampshire. Viewers were asked to text in their thoughts on who won the debate, Ron Paul received 34%, Giuliani 17%, all others lower. Fred Thompson who did not appear at the debate was clearly the largest loser as his pro-war stance and republican hard line talking points seem to be not what the people are looking for.

Sean Hannity, Fox News pundit, was clearly upset with the results and deliberately ridiculed Congressman Ron Paul. Although outpacing all other candidates by a 2-1 margin, it was clear that Chris Wallace and Brit Hume had tones of sarcasm when talking of Ron Paul. Giving absolutely no credence to Cong. Paul's responses, they even cut off his answer in a heated exchange between Paul and Huckabee, then declaring that Huckabee won the debate on that point.

Ron Paul demonstrated last night that he is the only Republican candidate that gives any thought to issues and his answers, all others gave stock replies and mostly followed the party line.

[higgmeister]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Justified anger.

Yes there is, when he sounds like Amos McCoy shouting at Pepino!

That should zoom those thirty-somethings.

I should have included you because I was responding to his response to you.

[Nephi]

There is no way this wackjob who lost control of his own emotions during a televised debate would garner 34% of the text polling for a Presidential debate. Common sense is all anyone needs to see this fact.

Just goes to prove that there is a conspiracy theory for everyone.

[OKIEDOC]

I understand from some of the kids out at the college that they purposefully voted for Paul just to help skew the poll numbers.

[takenoprisoner]

Would you have better preferred a fetid jungle in Africa, or shall we just sit home and wait to greet them at our own front doors?

I know this wasn't mine so pardon my intrusion. This is a theory wrought with fear. When the muslims come as your fear suggests, and yes, I believe that is their intention, you need to worry. The govt won't save you, but the caretakers of freedom and the caretakers of the Constitution will be there with guns in hand just so long as julieannie does'nt get elected to seize them and us.

[roamer_1]

This is a theory wrought with fear

No, this theory is wrought with fact- The Muslim Horde is quite predictable, historically and psychologically. If we let it rear it's ugly head, it will take more blood and treasure than naysayers can possibly imagine. Sadly, as always, those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.

[higgmeister]

You left out the most major point of contention.

Would you immediately bring every military member back within the borders of the US and bring every one of our vessels around the world back to American anchorages?

That is what Ron Paul advocates. That would be the beacon of doom for our nation.

In spite of whatever actions may have occurred up to this moment as a possible provocation for all of Radical Islam’s hatred of America and Western Civilization in general, tucking tail and bringing every military person around the world home would signal that we are cowards guilty of every perceived grievance against us, and finally ripe for slaughter. No American would be safe to travel anywhere in he world.

We would be isolated allowing our enemies to gain strength while we stagnate in our self assumed ignominy. You and Ron Paul can have that noble perdition. That future isn't for me.

[johnthebaptistmoore]

Most people think that John McCain won the last debate. I thought that Mike Huckabee won it just for Mike’s winning confrontation with Ron Paul.

[takenoprisoner]

If we let it rear it's ugly head, it will take more blood and treasure than naysayers can possibly imagine.

You are preaching to the choir. So when do we get to the culprits of 911? Or are you one of those who coddles them and holds their hand inviting them to your backyard barbecue? Or are you with Americans who have had enough of this BS? I'm thinking you are a coddler of terrorists. My challenge to you is to prove me wrong.

[George W. Bush]

It is about time that FOX’s “fairly unbalanced” approach was exposed on this forum. If any candidate, not just Dr. Paul, were treated the way he was and his excellent results suppressed, I would be just as indignant.

Honestly, it was an awful debate for all the candidates. Hume and Wallace, completely out of control, playing gotcha, poking the candidate cage with their stick. Michael Vick would have admired it. Wendell Gohler remains a non-entity, occasionally handed an attack line. All so they generate a few pathetic news clips to replay for the next day or so. Even the MSNBC debate wasn't quite so awful and that was hosted by Chrissy Matthews. If I were the candidates, I think I'd be begging to debate the snowman on YouTube before any repeat of last night's truly dreary and annoying event.

It made our candidates look more unattractive. Their campaign managers had better lay down the law to Fox News about ever having something so awful again. It's just destructive. And I hope Fred refuses to participate in such circuses.

[BJungNan]

The poll only showed that those that know how or like to text message voted for Paul. My mother called furious for instructions on how to text from her phone. Her vote, by the way, was for Guilliani (sp)

[roamer_1]

So when do we get to the culprits of 911?

To whom do you refer? Osama and Zawahiri, or some others as the remainder of your post implies?

I'm thinking you are a coddler of terrorists. My challenge to you is to prove me wrong.

Okay... While impossible to prove a negative, I am willing to play a round or two. Define your scurrilous charge, sir.

[takenoprisoner]

Her vote, by the way, was for Guilliani (sp)

Proud to say that my mother at 79 is voting for RP. She told me before I even discussed it with her. Shoulda figured she was paying attention. Go figure. I never could have imagined. Gotta love her decsion as much as I love her though. Just caught completely off guard. Still totally amazed at her righteous call. I guess it's in the genes.

***Eyes roll head shakes.***

Oh, before anyone second guesses her opinion, she served in the Israeli Army as a volunteeer. If you can touch that, bring it on.

[roamer_1]

You and Ron Paul can have that noble perdition. That future isn't for me.

bump.

[takenoprisoner]

“Okay... While impossible to prove a negative, “

The problem is that you can’t prove a positve or a negative. Your best hope is that I will go away. Problem is that I am here to stay. So in the interim, as long as I am around, you will be forced to conduct yourself honestly.

Is that a problem for you?

[roamer_1]

Your best hope is that I will go away.

LOL!

So in the interim, as long as I am around, you will be forced to conduct yourself honestly. Is that a problem for you?

You imply that I am dishonest and must be forced into a position of honesty after accusing me of coddling terrorists. Not a good way of influencing people. My patience is wearing thin.

As I said before, define your scurrilous charge or shut the hell up.

[takenoprisoner]

“As I said before, define your scurrilous charge or shut the hell up.”

You are a coddler. I defined coddler earlier. But for your sake I will define it again. Folks like you coddle terrorists and invite them to your barbecues. That’s a coddler of terrorism. If you are not one of them, then tell us how you are not.

Is this too difficult for you? I understand. I would not want to be in your position either to have to explain myself as a coddler of terrorists. If you desire to explain your position, folks will listen. I simply can’t guarantee that any will support your coddlism of terrorism.

Best of luck,
TNP

[roamer_1]

Folks like you coddle terrorists and invite them to your barbecues.

LOL! Well since that is the basis of your charge, I can easily refute it- I don't own a barbecue, hence your charge is false.

Are you referring to your post upthread regarding the House of Saud invited to Crawford Texas? Is it your supposition that I support it?

[George W. Bush]

No need to condescend, professor ... I’ve been a member for almost a year LONGER than you have. Perhaps you assume too much. I recently acquired a new handle (Hemorrhage), but have been a member since September 1998 under a different handle (ThePatriot1776).

Aha. Well, I do wish JimRob would allow an occasional change of screenname, maybe once every couple of years with previous handles noted on the user's home page.

I listen all the time - she’s a kook, no doubt..

You made me tune in to it tonight. I got the definite whiff of Leftism off her. And that news reader was radioactive. They had some blips of George Schultz on and were trying to get him to say something damaging about GWB's Mideast policies, especially to dissent on Iraq. He was making points like "Merely because there is a great deal of oil in the region and in Iraq, that doesn't mean that President Bush's decision to invade Iraq was about acquiring oil". Just my paraphrase. You know, it was good to see George Schultz again. A good man, essential to Reagan. Anyway, then they had some Lefty guy, Ehrlich, who wrote some enviroblather, probably some hortisodomy treatise, looked like a pervert. Anyway, then the Redder-than-Mao newsreader came on and I couldn't take any more of it. The many mentions of Stanford made me wonder if most of her regular guests are Stanford academics, obviously, Lefties.

The problem is, on foreign affairs and national securituy, your buddy Ron Paul sounds JUST like her (as do virtually all of his supporters). Leaving the Arabian peninsula (including Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Saudi, Kuwait, etc.) at the demand of a terrorist organization (as Paul advocated last night) is tantamount to surrender. Such a blundering decision will have long-lasting detrimental effects when every two-bit dictator and terrorist organization around the world concludes that we don’t have the stomach to withstand a drawn-out war against our enemies, even after we lose 3,000 people in an attack on our home soil.

But in fact, we have shown little interest in apprehending Bin Laden. He will be on TV again in a few days, celebrating that he killed 3,000 of us and promising even more. With our borders wide open, I don't know why anyone thinks we're especially safe. One of the major problems with "we'll fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here" (a loony mantra) is that we already have a lot of them over here and no control over our borders or more than a basic grasp of who is or is not a budding terrorist, either self-radicalized or acting on Osama's orders.

Failing to make capture/trial/execution of Osama and his top henchmen a priority (or even a serious goal) has been an irrational policy for a war on terror. When you go after drug cartels, you don't just ignore the largest and most dangerous one. If you defeat Hitler's armies, you don't leave him alive. Or let the Japanese warlords who attacked Pearl die of old age. And you don't let Osama and his top lieutentants kill 3,000 people and show up regularly on TV bragging about it and promising to kill more of us.

Our very presence on the Arabian peninsula does, in fact, help Osama to recruit followers. These are holy lands to them. So our policy must priortize that there should be no Osama and no top al-Qaeda leadership left. And their financial network finally fully traced and those who fund them prosecuted or killed.

BTW, you included Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran in your list of countries on the Arabian peninsula. That's inaccurate. While small portions of Iraq and Jordan are geographically a part of the Arabian peninsula, they are not considered a part of the Arabian peninsula (aka Arab Gulf states) in foreign policy circles. You need to look at a map because in no way can Iran or Afghanistan ever be considered on the Arabian peninsula. This is how CFR documents, CIA reports, etc. routinely refer to them. The context of Ron Paul's comments on withdrawal from the Arabian peninsula were in regard to our rush to get our troops out of Saudi as quickly as possible. We transferred 4500 to Qatar, leaving behind some 500, deeding portions of that base to the Saudis. Wolfowitz and others at the time were talking about how our presence in the Saudi kingdom did actually recruit terrorists for Osama. The actual countries of the Arabian peninsula are

• Bahrain, geographically an island off the east coast of the peninsula.
• Kuwait
• Oman
• Qatar
• Saudi Arabia
• United Arab Emirates
• Yemen

So I think you may have misunderstood that portion of the debate. As for Ron Paul advocating closing most bases around the world and bringing troops home as a better foreign policy and a necessary measure to overcome the ever-growing government and to help pay for the Boomer retirement and escalating medical costs, infrastructure needs, yes, he does certainly advocate it. Absolutely. If you don't like the choice offered, that of America as a global policeman and welfare agency vs. being good neighbors and trading partners, then don't vote for Ron Paul. What puzzles me is when people demand no choices or options in foreign policy and especially its relation to domestic policy, let alone such hosility that they are offered any choice. These domestic issues I mentioned are choices directly related to the purely military and geostrategic goals we presently pursue in the region.

---

But American forces in the Middle East are not just unnecessary, they are demonstrably harmful. In late February 2003, before the start of the war, Wolfowitz admitted that the price paid to keep forces in the region had been "far more than money." Anger at American pressure on Iraq, and resentment over the stationing of U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia, Wolfowitz conceded, had "been Osama bin Laden's principal recruiting device." Looking ahead to the post-Hussein period, Wolfowitz implied that the removal of Hussein would enable the United States to withdraw troops from the region. "I can't imagine anyone here wanting to . . . be there for another 12 years to continue helping recruit terrorists."

Troops in Saudi Arabia Are Superfluous and Dangerous - Cato

---

Ron Paul and his supporters are no less dangerous than Hillary Clinton, Amy Goodman or the dirty hippies that support her. I’d rather a Democrat win than Republican Ron Paul, because if a President is going to send the country down the toilet, I’d rather he didn’t have an (R) beside his name.

Fine. Vote for Hitlery then. Maybe Maddy Allbright could fix what's wrong in the Mideast. Personally, I'd expect a real war to break out. So good luck with that.

I still maintain, your credentials aside, that much of the online support garnered by Paul is from Democrats and Communists. This is why he does so well in random online polls, but cannot break 2-3% in polls of likely Republican voters ... the vast majority of likely Republican voters think he’s a nutjob.

I think I've yet to hear of any communist supporting Ron Paul. They're pretty decimated and pathetic from what little I've seen. No doubt we do have some Democrats, my wild guess is 10% to 15%, not so terrible unless you thought Reagan should have rejected his Reagan Democrats to get a landslide. We have probably a majority of Republicans, the rest are a mix of Libertarians and a whole bunch of college kids and young people in their twenties who aren't very partisan or political about any party yet but who realize the welfare state is about to fall on their heads with the Boomer retirement. IMHO. You can learn a lot by looking at Facebook or MySpace or the MeetUps. Of course, we do have quite an assortment of single-issue voters. Like these online gambling people.

I don’t shoot them, yet ... but my aim is improving.

Well, then, we can at least agree on the virtues of the Second Amendment and the need for target practice.

[cva66snipe flagged, for when he gets back in a few days]

[George W. Bush]

The truth is, Bush pulled our troops out of Saudi Arabia after the terrorists hit us on 9-11.

See my previous post. It was in August, 2003. As soon as possible after we secured Iraq.

---

On February 27, it was announced that the US would be allowed to launch warplanes from its bases inside Saudi Arabia, to support the Iraq War - and would in turn begin a phased withdrawal from the country.[1]

On April 29, Donald Rumsfeld announced that he would be withdrawing US troops from the country stating that the Iraq War no longer required the support. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz had earlier said that the continuing US presence in the kingdom was putting American lives in danger. The announcement came one day after the Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) was shifted from Prince Sultan Air Base to Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.

The move was controversial, as some said that it was a needless contingent that only enraged Muslim populations, while others said that the United States were caving to the demands of Osama bin Laden, whose key demand throughout on-going al-Qaeda attacks was that the US must withdraw its forces from the region.

U.S. officials transferred control of portions of Prince Sultan Air Base to Saudi officials at a ceremony on 26 August 2003. The base had been home to about 60,000 US personnel over time.

Roughly 4,500 US troops were redeployed from Saudi Arabia to Qatar, leaving about 500 in Saudi Arabia, primarily at Eskan Village.

United States withdrawal from Saudi Arabia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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So technically, we didn't actually leave the Arabian peninsula entirely. We apparently still have those 500 in Saudi (likely training and liason and tech support troops for their military) and the 4500 at the Qatar base, a friendly westernized Gulf Oil state but not considered by Muslims to be a part of the Saudi holy lands. Qatar is simply not considered provocative because it is a rich decadent state that has no great part in Muslim history, certainly nothing remotely comparable to the cities of Mecca and Medina and the many other holy sites in Saudi Arabia.

[I'm flagging a few others to this and my previous post. I think many people listening to the debate did not really grasp what is meant by the term "Arabian peninsula".

[roamer_1]

Failing to make capture/trial/execution of Osama and his top henchmen a priority (or even a serious goal) has been an irrational policy for a war on terror.

Forgive me for the intrusion, but this statement is rather obtuse. What do you base this assumption on? Failing to capture them is not evidence of a low priority.

He is in high mountains, and if he is not moving, he is not making tracks. He is a religious leader protected by an inner ring of zealots- This is a hard nut to crack.

I am quite certain that I could walk out my back door with 2 days head start into these Rocky Mountains where I could easily defy any attempt to find me by anyone, including the full resources of the United States Government- and I am within the US borders.

Imagine how much harder it would be in the primitive surroundings of Afghanistan.