Alan Keyes comes out in support of President Bush, denounces Democrats, "our survival is at stake!"

SEAN HANNITY: John Kerry came up a big winner last night, he won five out of seven state contests, but can Edwards or Clark start gaining on him? Joining us now from Washington, former presidential candidate in his own right, our good friend Alan Keyes. Ambassador, how are you?

HANNITY: Well, we're always glad to have you back. It's been a while. Good to see you, my friend.

I think, at the end of the day, beyond getting into "he's a Massachusetts liberal" and his extensive Ted Kennedy-like liberal voting record, I think there are two questions here that John Kerry's going to have to answer: will you continue to seek out terrorists where they are, and track them down, and go after states that harbor them--and how many months a year should Americans pay taxes? How much should we give them, four months of our income, five months?

KEYES: Well, I think that the first one is going to be the most critical. I find it hard to believe that the American people will easily trust a Democrat with our national security, in the midst of a war on terror that, after all, was partly the result of the vulnerabilities that we were left with after the Clinton years. I think that they have a president who has shown himself to have the fortitude, the resolve, to make head against our enemies--and I'm not sure they're going to turn the reigns over to a party that has, to be quite frank about it, a record that is pretty well anti-security. They're uncomfortable with these issues, and they're especially uncomfortable with the necessity of fighting back against an insidious enemy like this.

HANNITY: Well, what is going to be the best strategy? Democrats are on attack now, and some Republicans call me and they're nervous 'cause they think--the Republicans, I think, have not yet begun to fight, and I think they will. Will it be more effective to tie his record to Kennedy? Will it be more effective to point out his voting record, his years of proposal to cut the intelligence community? Will it be his desire to cancel 27 weapons systems, including the MX, the Trident, the Patriot Missile, the F15, the F16, the M1-tank, the Pershing II Missile--will that be the big issue?

KEYES: I would have to say I think that the most effective thing that can be done is not much to focus on the question of whether this man's going to be president of the United States. I, frankly, believe at this time that someone like this is not qualified--not just because of his liberalism, but because he comes from a party, from background, with a record that does not have the kind of mindset that will pursue our national security aggressively during this time when our very survival is at stake.

And I think that his liberalism, of course, on economic and fiscal issues will certainly help to consolidate the core Republicans in support of the effort against him.

But overriding everything, I think, is going to be the concern not to change horses in the middle of the stream when we're in the midst of a war.

HANNITY: In a few minutes, we're going to be joined by Hillary Rodham Clinton's former campaign manager/spokesman and Howard Wilson's going to join us, and we're going to talk about this AWOL issue that is, quote, the "big issue" of the Dems. I think John Kerry's war record is admirable. I think he deserves credit--but it's where he's been the last twenty years. He's been on the wrong side of history in the Cold War, on building up defense, building up intelligence. But as I look at his record, it gets complicated inasmuch as it's not a short, snappy sound bite that you can give to the American people. How does . . . .

KEYES: Well, see, I think it is, though. He dares to suggest that as an individual G. W. Bush was AWOL, when we are dealing with a record and a party that have been AWOL on the issues of American national security (for, what, two decades now?), helped to gut our national intelligence, helped to put us in a situation where we didn't even have the interpreters needed to deal with the situation in the Islamic world? You've got to be kidding that they would come forward now and suggest that they should replace G. W. Bush.

COLMES: Alan, you know, it's really an outrageous lie to accuse a whole party of all the things you've just said. We know the problems with the CIA are systemic. I can tell by the hysteria now, the way people are going after Kerry, how truly concerned they are about him.

And, by the way, answer this: how is it, then, that we're still basically a 50/50 nation, and polls now are showing Kerry ahead of Bush, if the American public really doesn't at all trust Democrats, and one can't get elected?

KEYES: Two things. First of all, I am not lying about this. I was present during the Reagan years, when we followed after Carter and his disastrous destruction of America's national intelligence capabilities. I watched as Clinton followed in the same path, preparing the terrible disaster that we faced then on 9/11.

It's not to say that there's not blame to be spread around, but, excuse me, the Democrats do not have a record that, on this subject, would lead one to trust them to the kind of consistency and aggressiveness that's needed to defend our very lives in the midst of a war. And I think that part of the reason right now things haven't consolidated [is that] people always pay half attention right now. There's only a contest on the Democrats' side. It gets most of the attention. I think that the Republicans haven't yet begun to fight this election. Once the Democrat nominee is clear, we will, and then I think it's really not going to be a contest.

COLMES: You've got a very energized populous now, as seen by the number of people. More than most years have turned out for these primaries. You also have places where the president is vulnerable. We see the Taliban is now regrouping in Afghanistan. We have seen warlords regrouping in Afghanistan. There is still great debate in this country about whether going to Iraq diverted attention away from where we should have been focused--Osama Bin Laden is still at large, and the idea that intelligence reports and David Kay's message is that, what we were told was the reason for going has not panned out. That's not sitting well thus far with the American people, Alan.

KEYES: Frankly, I think that it's not sitting well, and I think that we need to look into it--but that's a question of the competence and professionalism of our intelligence community and the national security apparatus, in terms of the information they gave to the president. It's not a question about the soundness of the judgment he made based on that intelligence.

It would have been irresponsible in him not to act against a threat that was outlined in the intelligence estimates that he had.

And that's part of the problem here. The Democrats talk as if they would have faced that situation and not made the same decision based on the intelligence he had. How can you trust them, then, when they won't do what is preemptively necessary to keep the terrorists from getting weapons of mass destruction?

COLMES: Well, there's no proof that preemptively going into Iraq had anything to do with making us safer. I don't think there was any dispute about going to Afghanistan. The country was united, the world was united. That is not the issue. The issue is about what the president did, and whether or not the reasons he gave to go to war actually panned out--and it hurts our credibility.

KEYES: After the fact, asking questions about whether the intelligence estimates were accurate is important to improve our intelligence capabilities. It does not, however, raise a question about the soundness of the president's judgment based on that intelligence.

HANNITY: All right. Alan, hang on one second. Gotta take a break. We'll continue more with Alan Keyes right after the break.

COLMES: We continue with Alan Keyes. Ambassador Keyes, as a fiscal conservative, as a true conservative yourself, do you have some problems with the spending of this administration?

KEYES: Oh, I sure do--and I wouldn't want to give the impression that I don't have other problems with this administration on some areas where I think that the president has fallen short of the kinds of things that I really think are needed in some areas.

But I also wouldn't want to give the impression that I think that anything can be more decisive for the American people right now than the question of our national survival in the face of the most insidious threat this nation has ever faced.

In the face of that, I think a lot of us are going to be putting our other issues behind those issues that have to do with the survival of this nation in wartime.

COLMES: Are you saying there's only one issue in this campaign, that other issues don't matter? Because, if you look at what the American people are saying, a lot of issues do matter, and to many conservatives, the president's not measuring up on those issues.

KEYES: Well, see, I think that the one problem--and the media, I think, is looking at all these other things because they've got to have stories. When people get into that voting booth and confront the reality of our situation, as we have had to confront it now since the terrible events in 2001, I think a lot of people are going to find that they are reminded of who they are and how they felt at that moment when we confronted the abyss and knew that we had to measure up. That is still our situation, and when they finally get to the voting booth, I think that's going to be the one that decides their minds.

COLMES: Do we really feel safer now than we were four years ago? We've had orange alert, we now have a ricin issue, we've been on alert a number of times, American interests have been attacked all over the world. Many Americans are--I think that's a fair question, if we're really safer now.

KEYES: You know, we can't control whether people who are inimical to us, out of the kind of fanatical hatred we encounter in these terrorists, are going to attack us. We can control whether we're going to be prepared for those attacks, whether we're going to act to eliminate the cadre of people who are aiming those attacks against us, whether we're going to preempt states and groups that are aiming to kill Americans with weapons of mass destruction. I think we have a responsibility to deal with this issue first, because we're not going to be around to deal with the others if we mess with this one.

HANNITY: Ambassador, I couldn't agree with you more. You know what I find amazing--and I guess this is all part of this political process--is the very same liberals who lead the charge to cut defense, who attacked the intelligence community, render it impotent in the 1990's the way they did, the ones that gave us the worst deal imaginable under Clinton in North Korea, didn't finish the job with Saddam, oh, and passed on Osama, are now lecturing the administration on how to deal with defense issues. It's somewhat humorous, if it weren't so scary.

KEYES: If it weren't so serious, it might be funny--but it is very serious. And I think that when you look back on that record, when you look back, to be quite frank about it, there has been a record of hostility, not to say contempt, for the requirements of our national security, for the military and what's involved in sustaining it--especially, by the way, for our national intelligence apparatus, where they seem to be more afraid of rogue American actions than they were of the rogues who are trying to kill and destroy us.

And I think that this is all going to come out in the wash during the election campaign.

HANNITY: I'm confident, as well--and I love the fact that we're having two very distinct visions, which is what I said initially to you, that this will come down to two questions: one, will you, John Kerry, continue the War on Terror, track down terrorists where they are, or not? Do you think the American people are overtaxed or undertaxed? Should we extend the deadline for taxes?

But one of the things--I take heart in the fact that they're out there saying the president's AWOL, that he started a war for political benefit, that we're not better off with[out] Saddam. Doesn't it show they're desperate?

KEYES: Well, I think that it shows that they don't have much of a grasp of the real situation if they think this election's going to be decided on the basis of base personal attacks, and that sort of thing. They have got to get out there and begin to articulate concerns that will strike at the heart of the real issues and dangers the country faces. They are not doing it right now, and that's why I think they'll fail.

I can only hold three Congress members to task...my House representative and my two Senators.

I think you can do more. Put the pressure on Tom DeLay, the single most important conservative in the House. He's willing to chart his own course. When he's called 'The Hammer', it's not a cozy nickname.

And join with the Liberty Committee in supporting the The Liberty Caucus, a coalition of 21 of Congress' most conservative and constitutional legislators. We've got Paul, Tancredo, Hostettler and many more strong conservatives. We start every fight with enough congressmen to get a bill on the agenda. And we can win. Sign up for our email updates so you will know when it's time to put the pressure on your congresscritter. No money begging and they don't sell your name or email address. We've won many times before and we can win again.

So far, Bush's non-discretionary spending is an 8.2% increase. I don't like it. And only his dad and Nixon were close. Nixon was even worse creating entire cabinet level departments.

Actually, it's a 24% increase for the 2002-2004 budget years over which he has presided. But Bush's proposed budgets are irrelevant anyway. Only Congress has the federal checkbook. You can blame Bush for not vetoing but not much else.

Congress spends that money, not Bush.

So unless we are ready to start killing each other again, we'll have to work more slowly over time to educate enough to our point of view to gain more political offices.

This seems escapist and defeatist to me. They will never change to our views. The old excuse was we didn't have power to control spending and expansion of government because we lacked the House/Senate/WH. We gave them all those things. Now you tell me that we must be more patient yet.

This notion that we will finally get the constructionist judges we were promised and a substantial shrinking of the federal government is a ruse for the gullible. In theory, it all depends on the control of the Seante with a sixty vote majority. This would actually require about 70 Republicans because some of the GOP senators would defect to the Dims (like Jeffords) or vote with them. The idea that we will ever hold the WH and the House and the Senate with 70 GOP senators is just a trip into LaLaLand.

The real truth is they have no intent to do anything other than try to buy liberal votes with federal dollars and pandering to minorities. Because they wish to dump the fiscal conservatives and the religious Right, something that many of them express openly.

Now, having obviously failed to enact the Rockefellerian program to eliminate the conservative wing of the party and having failed to recruit those voters to whom they have pandered as shamelessly as any Dim ever did, they turn back to us. Because they can't hold those offices without us in '04 and they know it.

I would say there is a considerable difference between being tolerant of a few excesses in the party and completely abandoning our principles over an 'R' or a 'D'. And we have all been tolerant to a fault.

Brand-names simply aren't all they're cracked up to be.

I would assert that the complacency of so many party faithful contributes directly to the liberalism of the party. It is a license to spend. The conservative wing is far less forgiving, knowing that the mainstream of the GOP actually has no discernable principles. In this election year, conservatives are a swing voting bloc. This has not been true in since the elections of the Eighties but it is true now.

Sabertooth (125): Well, they wouldn't be so damaging if you would think more like they do, or, failing that, shut up and vote.

FairOpinion (127): I see -- you think that those who criticize Presient Bush should be allowed to shout from the rooftops, but those who support him should shut up?

I don't see where you get that from what I've posted here, or anywhere else. I think everyone should be able to make their case on this or that issue, to the better understanding of all. The efforts I do see to stifle debate come more frequently, by far, from the "never criticize the President crowd," than do any similar efforts from any other quarter.
That certainly doesn't mean that all supporters of President Bush (and I include in that anyone who intends to vote for him, and I am in that number) want to stifle debate.
Case in point:

rintense (182):I can only go by what Saber has posted, but he has both praised and criticized the President- most of the time shouting from rooftops (me too, and lots of other Bush supporters too).

What many fail to understand is that you CAN disagree with the President on various issues, sometimes quite passionately, but you can also still support him, especially when you realize the soul of our country is at stake.

Exactly right.
Given the amount of lurking done on FR by folks like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, and a slew of others, including politicians, our forum is only made more relevant when we are willing to confront difficult truths about our party, our candidates, and our President.
Additionally, FR is a hothouse indicator of the mood of the most politically interested party rank and file. Negative feedback is good, because it gives an opportunity for correction.
If we can agree that it would be ill-advised for the President to be surrounded by yes-men, then isn't it also ill-advised for the most important conservative internet news discussion site to become a yes-forum?

It's not amnesty. It's a worker program and a strengthening of our borders.

The Bush plan is an Amnesty in every significant way that the Reagan Amnesty was an Amnesty. We can't split hairs on the one without splitting hairs on the other, and if we try to do that, we'll be in the realm of "defition of is" and "definition of sex."
The major differences between the Bush Amnesty and the Reagan Amnesty are the job requirements, and that the Reagan Amnesties inital temporary period lasted 18 months, vs. 36 months for the Bush Amnesty. While a higher proportion of Illegals were eligible during the Reagan Amnesty, a higher gross number of Illegals would qualify under the Bush Amnesty.
It's true that the Bush Amnesty probably wouldn't be as bad as any of the Democrat Amnesties, but it is worse than the three Clinton Section 245(i) Amnesties combined, which legalized just over a million Illegals.
I say "probably wouldn't be as bad," because there are indications that the President might combine elements of the McCain and Cornyn Amnesties (S. 1461 and S. 1387). Cornyn's Amnesty would be not only be available to Illegals who haven't arrived yet, but also for Illegals who arrive within the first year of its enactment. Talk about an open invitation for more Illegals.
It's also difficult to see how any Amnesty would make our borders more secure without diligent enforcement of our immigration laws. Yet nothing's stopping the President from doing that now, yet he doesn't.
One glaring example is that when an Illegal loses his deportation hearing, he isn't taken into custody pending deportation. He's given a time and place to show up for his deportation, and released.
Not surprsingly, we have over 400,000 thousand Illegal Alien absconders running around the country, including 80,000 hardened criminals and 3,800 people from countries with significant Al Qaeda presences. Well over 100,000 of those absconders lost their deportation hearings since 9/11, and the number of absconders under President Bush will reach about 200,000 in his first term.
Under President Bush's Treasury Department, US banks have been given guidelines for the acceptance of Mexican matricula consular ID cards. The only purpose of this is so that Illegals may take the money they've gotten from Illegal employment and more easiily transfer it across borders.
Rather than make life more difficult for Illegals, President Bush generally attempts to make it easier for them. This is been true since at least 1994, when he spoke against California's Proposition #187.
It's hard to imagine that he would diligently enforce immigration laws after Amnesty, if he's not interested in doing it beforehand.
An interesting bit of legislation in Congress right now is Charlie Norwood's HR 2671, the CLEAR act. Here's a press release from Norwood:

This week in Washington
Congressman Charlie Norwood, 9^th District, Georgia

January 9, 2004

Addressing Criminal Aliens First Step to Fixing Illegal Immigration Problem

By Congressman Charlie Norwood

If it were a secret, it might have made it to a David Letterman list of the Top 10 Worst Kept Secrets in the State of Georgia… if such a thing existed.
The fact is, I’m a fan of President Bush. But that cat, as they say, has been out of the bag for quite a while. As Commander in Chief, I believe President Bush has truly been the right man at the right time for our nation over these past three challenging years.
Does that mean I agree with him on everything? Heck no. I’ve said plenty of times before that my wife and I are in complete agreement only about 90% of the time! So there were bound to be and continue to be areas where I take issue with the President.
When President Bush recently announced his proposal to grant legal status to millions of individuals living and working in America illegally, one of those areas came to light.
Folks, the President is right about one thing: our immigration system is an absolute mess.
Depending on who you believe, there are somewhere between 8 to 12 million illegal aliens living in America today. It’s a staggering number that has steadily risen over the last two decades and costs each of us through its impact on our education system, hospitals, and prisons among other areas of our society.
Georgia has been far from immune to the problem. According to figures released early last year by the then-Immigration and Naturalization Service, the number of illegal aliens living in our state grew by roughly 600%, up to 228,000, between the years of 1996 and 2000.
So, what do we do?
Well first, I believe the only way we can get a handle on our immigration problem is to correct the one piece of the puzzle that poses the greatest threat and risk to all of us - the criminal alien crisis.
As I’ve written to you before, there are 80,000 criminal aliens (murderers, rapists, and pedophiles among them) who have served jail time and should have been deported after paying their debt to society. Instead, these 80,000 individuals have been released back onto our streets by law enforcement because the system our federal government has provided to do the job is inefficient, unaccountable, and just plain out-manned.
Last summer, along with fellow Georgia Congressman Nathan Deal and U.S. Representatives Allen Boyd of Florida and Melissa Hart of Pennsylvania, I introduced a bipartisan bill that would change all of this. The bill, called simply the CLEAR Act (or Clear Law Enforcement for criminal Alien Removal Act of 2003), would clarify that local and state law enforcement officials have the authority to enforce immigration laws during the course of their everyday duties. Furthermore, the bill gives them the training, access to data, and resources they need to get the job done. And if the federal government doesn’t live up to its end of the bargain by picking up and deporting criminal aliens after they’ve served their time, the CLEAR Act allows the local municipalities to hold the federal government accountable.
Getting back to the President’s proposal, the tried and true medical adage, “First, do no harm,” comes to mind. Sadly, harm is exactly what granting ‘guest worker’ legal status to people living and working here illegally would deliver. And with all due respect to the President, while the Administration has gone to great lengths to point out this proposal isn’t technically amnesty… the fact is, if it isn’t amnesty - it’s amnesty’s first cousin.
In one fell swoop, a proposal such as this would send the absolute wrong message to the millions of immigrants who have gone to extraordinary lengths to become naturalized citizens of America legally, encourage more aliens to enter our nation illegally by creating an ultimate reward, further threaten our nation’s homeland security, and potentially exacerbate the growing class of illegal and uneducated workers who will never fully realize the American dream.
History tells us this is the wrong remedy.
In 1986, the federal government granted amnesty to almost 3 million illegal aliens in hopes the problem would be resolved. But the real problem, the inability to enforce our nation’s immigration laws already on the books, was never addressed.
Eighteen years and 8 to 12 million illegal aliens later, we now know the decision in 1986 was a wrong turn and only made a bad situation worse. Doing the same in 2004 would be sort of like throwing a match on a powder keg - not a particularly good idea.
As Congress prepares to get back to work this month, there’s no roadmap for what direction this debate will take. But this much I do know - before any discussion can take place on Capitol Hill regarding proposals like the President’s, this country absolutely has to address the criminal alien crisis.
Passing the CLEAR Act and finally giving local and state law enforcement the support it deserves and getting the 80,000 criminal aliens off our streets… now that’s a good idea and one I’ll be working hard on over the coming months.

-30-

CONGRESSMAN CHARLIE NORWOOD 2452 RAYBURN BUILDING WASHINGTON,DC 20515 www.house.gov/norwood

Even Congressman Norwood, who has to be diplomaitic, says "with all due respect to the President, while the Administration has gone to great lengths to point out this proposal isn’t technically amnesty… the fact is, if it isn’t amnesty - it’s amnesty’s first cousin."
So far, to my knowledge, President Bush hasn't taken a position on the CLEAR Act, yet we can't possibly be serious about enforcing our immigration laws without it.
Shouldn't we get about the common sense steps necessary to combat Illegals now, before rewarding them with legalization? Shouldn't we see if actually enforcing our immigration laws doesn't go a long way to solving the problem, before throwing in the towel and trying a poltically toxic policy disaster like another Amnesty?

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Alan Keyes on Hannity and Colmes Show - Feb 4, 2004