Posted on 04/27/2007 12:50:05 PM PDT by areafiftyone
(Raleigh, NC - AP, April 27, 2007) - Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani continued his offensive against Democrats on Friday, saying his party is best qualified to deal with wars against poverty at home and terrorism abroad.
"I'll be darned if I'm going to concede that Democrats care more about poor people than we do," Giuliani said during his brief base-building trip to the home state of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards.
Giuliani said Democratic calls for mandatory universal health care would only exacerbate the cost of care by putting the system in the hands of bureaucrats.
Democratic candidates renewed their calls for universal health care during a debate in South Carolina on Thursday, saying that a new system would help streamline costs and cover the nation's 45 million uninsured.
"They're moving toward socialized medicine so fast, it'll make your head spin," Giuliani said of the debate, adding that private competition and limits on malpractice lawsuits could help bring down the cost of care. "When we want to cover poor people, as we should, we give them vouchers."
He also echoed that call in discussing education, saying that Democrats are unwilling to reform the nation's education system with charter schools. The former New York City mayor said he struggled to reform the schools in that city.
"We weren't really able to fundamentally reform them," Giuliani said, saying he was young and naive to think he could. "They have to be (reformed) if they are going to be a ladder out of poverty."
The combative criticisms added a new chapter to Giuliani's offensive against Democrats. He drew the ire of several Democratic leaders earlier this week when he said the country needs a Republican leader to maintain safety from terrorism.
He stood by those remarks Friday, telling a conference of North Carolina conservatives that Democratic presidential candidates, most of whom want to begin timed troop withdrawals from Iraq, are "retreating in the face of this terrorist threat."
"When, in the history of war, has a nation that decides to retreat, printed up a schedule of that retreat and handed it to its enemies?" Giuliani said.
Giuliani, who served as New York City mayor during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, praised President Bush for his response to the event. Giuliani said the United States needs to continue to fight terrorism abroad and at home with "aggressive" use of military strength, the Patriot Act and electronic surveillance and interrogation.
"(Terrorists) do not respect weakness, they take advantage of weakness," Giuliani said. "They certainly respect strength."
I tell ya what... explain to me the lesson that my very conservative Congressman, John Culberson, of Distric 7 in Houston, TX is suppose to learn when you spoiled little brats have tied and bound his hands by giving him a Democratic Congress? Not a damn thing!
You screwed him! Own up to it! Now we have the “Surrender Bill” passing both houses of Congress! Good going bozo! The Seante right now is preparing another bill to grant al-Qaeda and all terrorists and all illegals full US Constitutional rights while being detained.
Good show assclown! What “lesson” are we suppose to learn? Pfffffffffffftttt!
I really wish you were right about 2006. Unfortunately here in Ohio our incumbent Senator DeWine (who had drifted moderate) lost to Leftist former hippie Sherrod Brown by 10 points and Ohio SecState Ken Blackwell (a wonderfully solid social, economic, and national security conservative) lost by over 20 points to worthless ‘rat Ted Strickland. It wasn’t one wing or the other wing that lost — the entire freaking bird was plucked cleaned by the stinking ‘rats.
I am very worried that we will not have Ohio in the red column in 2006 - regardless of who the Republican candidate is. That bothers me a lot, because without Ohio the past two elections would both have been lost.
Wow! Such intellect!
The one who gets the most electoral votes wins!
RG can challenge (and win) more “swing” and Dem states than anyone else against H. Thompson may be wonderful but (a) he is not going to run (b) if he won the nomination, he would not pose the threat to H that RG does.
Lieberman came as close to endorsing a Republican President as one can just now on Hannity. They discussed RG lead in swing states over H. Conn is a given for Dem’s but not if Joe bolts and RG (remember that is NY media covered and they love RG)
The media hated Reagan and couldn't destroy him. If we have a very conservative candidate that is also a better candidate than the 'rat one, we'll win.
I've said months ago that our best candidate was and is Jeb Bush. Unfortunately, he has the wrong last name this time.
Good for him! GOP, take notes.
I’m still skeptical that Rudy can beat Hillary. Maybe he can, maybe he can’t. She probably will beat him in New York, which could be disastrous.
I still think we should be offering voters a much starker choice than the liberal Hillary vs. the liberalish (on many things) Rudy. You don’t win elections by pandering to the middle. You stake out your ground, you articulate your beliefs, and then you convince the voters that your beliefs are the way to go. That’s how Ronald Reagan did it. Can anybody out of the current crop do it, including Fred Thompson if he runs? Maybe.
}:-)4
There’s a certain irony in your statement.
Does it not boggle the mind that the hated choice among rock-ribbed conservatives is the ONLY one with the guts to actually take on Democrats.
And by their estimation, he’s only MARGINALLY a conservative.
He’s not my favorite choice of Republican presidential candidates, but if by November is still clearly the only one with a full set of testicals, he’ll have my vote.
It’s not a good idea for an avacado to get too hot. Avacodos are best chilled a bit.
Attacking each other won’t help us win and doesn’t help the troops either. Remember that today our troops are reading and hearing about our Senate lining up behind Harry Reid and agreeing that the war is lost.
We need all of our ammo to defeat the ‘rats and elect a Commander-in-Chief worthy of leading our troops and our nation. Take a page from Rudy’s speech today and spend more time attacking ‘rats, not our own, ok?
Oh, I agree, there’s serious irony there. My current theory (and it’s being borne out on this thread) is that social conservatives who would otherwise be repelled by Rudy’s liberal social stands (pro-abortion, pro-gun-control, pro-civil-unions, etc.) will fall into line behind him simply because somebody, finally, is taking it to the Rats hard.
How many times a day do you see here on FR people yelling at the President and the Republicans to fight back, to quit letting Reid and Pelosi and Dean and the drive-by media and all the rest of the liberals and Democrats spew their lies unchallenged? Much of the Republican and conservative bases (note that they aren’t always the same thing) are very frustrated right now because we never seem to be on offense.
Well, here comes Rudy, and nobody’s ever accused Rudy of backing down from a fight. So it’s natural to get fired up and say “Yeah! Get ‘em!” even if you don’t agree with the guy on the issues. The more conservative candidates in the field, guys like Hunter, Thompson (if he runs), and so on, need to take serious note of this. If they don’t stand up and start laying the lumber to the Rats, and hard, they won’t be able to pull the votes back from Rudy that they’d need to win the nomination.
I’m no political scientist, I’m just a quality assurance tester that’s bored at work. :) But that’s my theory anyway—right now, conservatives are so frustrated by the way the past couple of years have gone, that they’ll even latch onto somebody with diametrically-opposed social beliefs as long as they’ll actually show some spine and some balls.
}:-)4
I don’t care what Rudy has to say about the “war on terror”......he’s still an un-American, gun-grabbin’, abortionist, open borders, liberal scumbag.
Point well taken! Thank you for the sanity check!
This reminds me of a QB who takes a knee because there's no receiver available downfield. I hope that kind of thinking gives way as we near the general election, to an attitude of MOVING THE BALL THE RIGHT WAY. Even if for but a couple yards.
Nobody's gonna teach the party nuthin' by sitting out or writing in "I Miss Reagan".
Do you know who one of the few well-known Republicans was who campaigned for Ken in Ohio? Rudy Giuliani.
I fully understand those who oppose Rudy for many of his positions. The Republican Party was founded on an issue of moral conscience, and anyone who does not respect people’s strongly-held moral convictions is a fool. If for example abortion was my #1 issue in this campaign then I wouldn’t want Rudy to be the nominee either (unless he could convince me that he actually would appoint Scalias and Thomases to the Court).
Likewise I hope you can at least understand that for me at least what I am most concerned about is strength in the WOT and electing someone who will fight the ‘rats and their policy of surrender.
Nothing would please me more than to see someone else in the race besides Rudy catch fire and get to his current level of popularity - such as Fred Thompson. Whoever that is needs to fight as hard as Rudy, and not take any crap from those ‘rats.
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