Florida exit polls aren't looking good for Rudy Giuliani.
AP is stating that it looks like Florida will either go to Mitt Romney or John McCain. Meanwhile, word has it Giuliani was betting the farm on Florida to make his fortunes rise.
MSNBC says that Giuliani's campaign privately admits Florida will be make-or-break for the former New York mayor. And it's looking like a break.
Last summer and fall, it was looking like Giuliani was unstoppable, that his Republican nomination was almost a foregone conclusion. This pro-abortion, pro-homosexual liberal Republican even had many leading evangelicals seriously working on a third-party alternative in the event Giuliani pulled it off.
What a difference a few months makes! Instead of the RINO juggernaut, the Giuliani campaign has turned out more like a mouse. He's at the bottom of the delegate ranking with only two delegates, according to You Decide 2008.
Giuliani has had poor showings at all six primaries, so far. He was 6th and second-to-last in Iowa, didn't place at all in Wyoming, 4th in Nevada, last in Michigan, last in Nevada, and last in South Carolina.
Since Giuliani was the most liberal of the GOP field, one might be tempted to believe that rank-and-file Republicans have rejected liberalism in favor of conservatism. However, the facts don't bear that out.
The most conservative in the GOP field have all dropped out over the course of the past four months: Sam Brownback, Tom Tancredo, Duncan Hunter and Fred Thompson. While Ron Paul is conservative in most areas, he is so far Left in his position on Iraq and the war on terrorism that I find it hard to consider him seriously. Since he is doing only slightly better than Giuliani, I don't think I'm alone in that analysis.
Why were these conservative candidates rejected by GOP voters? Did Republican voters reject conservatism? Or did they simply believe what they were told by the "mainstream" media about "electability?" Or do GOP voters just want a little liberalism from their candidates in "moderate" doses?
The remaining campaign season will be interesting, though I doubt in a good way; more like the way a train wreck is interesting. The GOP candidates left are all liberals and RINOs, or at the very least have recently repudiated their liberal records with such recent "conversions" to conservative positions that their sincerity is questionable.
Who will Florida coronate tonight: a newly pro-life Mormon governor who gave Massachusetts homosexual "marriage," or a RINO senator who sold out the First Amendment in favor of an incumbent protection, er, campaign finance reform?
Technorati tags: Giuliani, election, Florida
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Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Will Giuliani Bow Out After Florida?
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18 comments:
Why is it that so many people don't like Ron Paul because he's against the war? Does nobody care that people are dying from this war and the USA is dumping all it's money into the war?
Yeah, good point, lets stay in Iraq, so far it's looking like it will do us a lot of good...
"The most conservative in the GOP field have all dropped out over the course of the past four months: Sam Brownback, Tom Tancredo, Duncan Hunter and Fred Thompson. While Ron Paul is conservative in most areas, he is so far Left in his position on Iraq and the war on terrorism that I find it hard to consider him seriously."
I fault Ron Paul for being against the Iraq war because there were several good reasons for the invasion, and it was not founded on lies, as Paul claims.
Further, if we don't finish what we started there and leave Iraq in strong shape, things will quickly devolve into another Afghanistan-type situation the way it was before we invaded there. We'll have traded a genocidal WMD-hungry dictator for a terrorist training camp.
Ron Paul is actually extremely right on foreign policy. What you are saying is that he's not a neo-con on foreign policy. He follows the founders advice and follows Mr. Republican Robert Tafts same policies. Ron Paul wants to defend America as opposed to building empire. The left/neo-con right has a "global" agenda for controlling foreign affairs.
Whatever the hated "neo-con" agenda is, the American agenda ought to be protecting this nation against attack.
The Founders were wise in cautioning to avoid foreign entanglements and such. You'll be hard-pressed to find someone who reveres the Founders more than I.
But the Founders didn't live in a world of bombers that could rain death on our cities within hours. The Founders didn't live in a world where ICBMs could wipe out millions of Americans in less than 30 minutes. The Founders didn't live in a world where foreigners came into their country wearing civilian clothes and flew huge airplanes into skyscrapers, turning them into weapons of mass destruction.
Besides, one of the Founders, Thomas Jefferson, initiated a foreign war with much less danger to our home shores: the Barbary Wars. Jefferson did so because American credibility was on the line, and when a nation's will and military credibility are in doubt, that's an engraved invitation for the bloodthirsty to attack (which is exactly what we got after Clinton's years of head-in-the-sand national security policy).
There's a difference in meddling in every problem in the world, and playing meals-on-wheels with our military...and making sure the bad guys don't get a chance to wipe out thousands or millions of Americans in one day.
Sorry to have to disagree with you Bob Ellis. The invasion was founded on a pre-conceived neo-con agenda, and intelligence was ignored, cherry-picked and "spun" to support the agenda. Paul is mostly unpopular with Republicans who tow the line while wearing blinders custom-fitted by Faux News. Most of those cheerleader-class Republicans don't even know why they don't want to support Dr. Paul. They are a truly dangerous element of modern society - the many, the proud, the brainwashed.
No the Founders didn't live in our modern world, I agree. However, suggesting that we face the danger of long-range missles and bombers from Iraqis is, well, just plain crazy talk. The security of the United States of America is the top priority of the Federal government, and we have all our military AND our National Guard over there, while telling our border guards to "stand down" in confrontations with Mexican military escorting drug-runners?
Who are we kidding here?
The 9/11 attacks were an example of a breakdown in the security bureaucracy. Our intelligence services got plenty of warnings, but failed to see them. The solution presented by the administration was another layer of bureaucracy.
I don't disagree with you, Userlevel6, that the Homeland Security "level of bureaucracy" as you put it, was the best way to handle things after 911. Still, we haven't been attacked since then; more than can be said during the multiple attacks during Clinton's head-in-the-sand administration.
I didn't say Iraq would have attacked us with bombers and missiles...today. But if we took Paul's approach of not getting involved in anything going on overseas, there would have been no one else to stop Saddam from building those weapons and going after us tomorrow.
And frankly, your first paragraph about the invasion being founded on some kind of neo-con agenda of lies and cherry-picked data, well that's the same kind of mindless drivel that leads me to dismiss Paul as a GOP MoveOn.org ad.
The Clinton administration didn't doubt Saddam's sincerity in pursuing WMDs, the British didn't, and pretty much no intelligence agency in the world did. If Saddam didn't have anything to hide, why did he refuse to allow weapons inspectors the access he promised after the Persian Gulf War? Why risk his throne if there was nothing to hide? Why risk his hide if there was nothing to hide?
And beyond the question of whether there were WMDs or not (I still believe they smuggled them or the materials being used to work on them out, and John Loftus backs that up: http://www.dakotavoice.com/2007/11/loftus-evidence-points-to-iraq-wmds.html), Saddam had defied more than a dozen UN resolutions...and while I don't give a rip about the UN, it was US credibility that was backing those up, and US credibility that was suffering when he repeatedly thumbed his nose at them.
Saddam had also fired on US and British warplanes over 200 times in the previous year; each of those was an act of war.
Besides, we could never deal with Iran, the biggest funder of terrorism in the world, without taking care of the problem in Iraq first.
Running around with our head in the sand is a good way to get our butt shot off.
Hey Bob,
re: While Ron Paul is conservative in most areas, he is so far Left in his position on Iraq and the war on terrorism that I find it hard to consider him seriously.
Think of it as being so far Right that he's coming up on the Left. Do you really fear terrorists and/or their Koranic mandate of religious dominance? So much so that you energetically accept a loss of personal and financial freedoms?
Any justified reasons to keep bases in Asia and Europe have lost the nobilty of their original purpose and has turned us into an empire. Our founders warned us of becoming one.
I am not willing to kill or be killed for oil in land not my (national) own. They will sell it to us or not. It is a good incentive to pursue alternative energies here at home. We need to protect our borders not the DMZ.
Terrorists would have a much harder time killing any Americans much less our soldiers/Marines if President Bush (Romney/McCain/Rudy/Clinton/Obama/Huckleberry) would stop extending the mission. All stated objectives for the war have been met. No WMD's, no more Saddam government, satisfaction of all UN mandates...victory. Come home.
-A-
Anonymous, thanks for the comment, but you, too, sound like a MoveOn.org ad with your "oil for blood" talk.
Oil is an important enough reason to go to war (though that wasn't the reason in Iraq), but there were plenty of reasons for the invasion (read my previous notes).
Our nation's national security--not to mention our economy, which pays for our military--depends on access to energy. If you hadn't been listening to too many liberal sound bites, you'd realize this.
If you think so little of oil, are you riding a bicycle to work? To do your grocery shopping? If it's not important, then that's what you're asking for.
We will pull the troops home when Iraq is stable enough to keep order and fight terrorism on its own. It's not there yet, but close.
Pulling out before they're ready to stand on their own (kinda like letting go of your toddler when they're trying to walk, but not ready yet) would be a disaster. And it wouldn't just mean a skinned knee, but thousands or millions of dead Americans. You willing to volunteer your family for that?
Mr. Ellis,
If you step back and look at the last century, you will notice that the party has traditionally been the party of peace. Look up Robert Taft and Barry Goldwater. Even Reagan advocated "Peace through strength. That's what is was when I joined:
-Republicans opposed WWI
-Republicans opposed WWII until Pearl Harbor
-Republicans opposed Korea
-Republicans opposed Vietnam
-Republicans opposed Yugoslavia
-Many Republicans opposed joining UN and Nato.
The Democrats started all these wars! We were pro-peace until Bush I and Bush II moved us toward being the party of war, of pre-emptive strike. They have caused us to abadon the ancient Christian doctrine of "Just War."
I am a career Naval officer and a hardcore Goldwater Republican, and I'm supporting Paul because he wants to take us back to our roots--across the board. And as someone who actually IS a custodian of WMD's (on my submarine) I'll be the first to tell you that Saddam didn't have any--and that Ron Paul gets the most cash from the military (fact). The sailors love him.
Respectfully,
JP
Thanks for your comment, JP. And as a 10-year military veteran myself, thank you for your service to our country.
However, I have to disagree with you here.
While there might have been justification to oppose our involvement in WWI, by the end of WWII and the advent of jets and missiles, we no longer had the luxury of two wide oceans to act as buffer zones.
I won't bother to reiterate much of what I might say in response to your comment; I've already said most of it in previous comments.
I would be interested, though--as much as I respect your service aboard a U.S. sub--in knowing how you were privy to the fact that Saddam didn't have WMDs when our intelligence agencies and those of most every other country around the world believed he did.
You make a bold assumption that millions may die in a war in the US against an enemy you won't name.
What nation can attack us that you fear we should attack next? Do you actually support taxing Americans to support Muslim dictators in Pakistan, Arabia, and Egypt?
I get 50 mph on my HD when it's warm enough to ride other than that I am in my Titan LE thank you very much. Or in my wifes 12 yr old Accord.
They will sell it. What will they do, drink it? Oil is not worth an offensive war.
I'll walk if another soldier doesn't have to die in the wrong war of Iraq. Japan 1945 we forced them to kill their god the Emperior. Unconditional surrender in a declared war ment we changed their philosophy and ideology. They accepted it. They had no choice. We dropped 2 nukes there. Today they are looked upon as welcome neighbors. We trade with Viet Nam now.
We are doing exactly the opposite with Islam and the ideology of the terrorists is shared by the general population because it is scripture for them. Islam is both political and religious. Iraq will never be the Lebanon you dream of. Turkey is a less volitile Pakistan. But all that declare themselves an Islamic state share the philosophy of the jihadist terrorists. It is not a matter of interpretation.
Since we are not willing to name the enemy and do more to strengthen it by weakening ourselves of blood and treasure I suggest we save both and strengthen our home for when we will be forced to.
I am a 6 yr AF vet with a family history of military history going back to the early 1800's. I have 3 nephews serving in both war theaters now and another is in the Naval Acadamy flight school in Florida. Our income tax does not pay for the military and it shouldn't.
leaving Iraq would not be a disater. It allready is. The south is already lost to Iranian influenced Shiite since the UK pulled out. The local war lords are in control. Less killing now. We are now re-arming the Sunni and paying them our borrowed tax money from China not to fight us. The Kurds in the north are irritating Turkey.
Would you expect China to help Mexico retake the Southwest US without us fighting back?
Let them figure it out. Don't be afraid. There are better ways to fight the real enemy.
-A-
Bob, re:Saddam and weapons.
60 minutes interviewed the CIA (or was it FBI?) agent who was entrusted with getting as much information out of Saddam as possible, after we captured him. This agent, a man of Lebanese descent, was totally in charge of Saddam's life, as far as Saddam knew. His psy-op work with Saddam exposed this revelation from Hussein himself, and that he feared he would lose his grip on power if the world learned that he did not have the WMD's they used to. They were destroyed, some by U.N. inspectors, some by Saddam's government itself.
Anonymous, I don't dispute the challenges of creating a stable government in the Middle East, though Turkey is an example that in relative terms, it can happen.
But what's the alternative? Let it all go to Hell in a handbasket--along with our friends Israel and along with a huge chunk of the world's oil supply?
And while you apparently like little rice-burning cars, even those aren't going to run on air.
Neither will our buses, trains, semi's or airplaines. Will our fighters, bombers, cargo planes, ships, tanks, Humvees, Bradley's etc. run on air and good feelings?
The reality is we need oil, whether you like it or not.
And as for naming an enemy who may kill millions of Americans (which is easily done with a nuke), it could have been Iraq...and still might be if we don't get the job done right. Or Iran. Or North Korea. Or any of the bloodthirsty nations around the world.
userlevel6: I'm aware of the interview to which you refer. Maybe it's true; maybe it isn't. Seems pretty thin to me that Saddam would risk POSSIBLY being attacked/overthrown when the alternative was being taken out by the United States--a DEFINITE.
Consider what intelligence expert John Loftus says about what we've found in some of the Iraqi papers we captured after the invasion:
The gist of the new evidence is this: roughly one quarter of Saddam's WMD was destroyed under UN pressure during the early to mid 1990's. Saddam sold approximately another quarter of his weapons stockpile to his Arab neighbors during the mid to late 1990's. The Russians insisted on removing another quarter in the last few months before the war. The last remaining WMD, the contents of Saddam's nuclear weapons labs, were still inside Iraq on the day when the coalition forces arrived in 2003. His nuclear weapons equipment was hidden in enormous underwater warehouses beneath the Euphrates River. Saddam’s entire nuclear inventory was later stolen from these warehouses right out from under the Americans’ noses.
But if you're intent on burying your head in the sand and hating the big evil neo-con George Bush, I'm sure you won't let something like that get in your way.
Sure we need oil, but we don't necessarily have to kill all the islamics in the middle east to do it!
As was pointed out previously, they have to sell their oil to someone. From the perspective that we may have to compete for that oil with China & India's booming industrial revolution, maybe we do have to fight for it.
I just question the cost in blood and treasure. Somehow, I doubt in the long run it will be worth it.
Think about it; would you rather trade with enemies or friends? We cannot continue to spend the hard-earned respect our country earned over the years on this conflict. It is draining us. I have predicted that when the globalists - which back every candidate, R or D, except Paul - have drained the value of our currency to close to the peso, that is when they will make their move. The next tools for them to subjegate America are already in place, with the signed Executive Orders allowing the Pres. to declare martial law unilaterally, the efforts to take our weapons using PTSD as an excuse, and the suspension of free speech by suppression of the internet - H.R. 1955 and 1959.
WAKE THE EFF UP. It's NOT just some loony theory, these things are happening NOW. All you have to do is dig a little, the truth is in plain sight, you just have to connect a few dots. Richard Haass, the current CFR Pres. has come right out and STATED FOR THE RECORD that WE Americans better get used to giving up ideas of soveriegnity because "it's either one-world government, or anarchy."
Look it up. Taipei Times reported it - naturally, OUR media would bury such a story, because it's so Un-American to think such things could be true, isn't it!
I, too, am concerned about loss of U.S. sovereignty, but don't let those concerns or concerns about various conspiracy theories blind you to the fact that U.S. credibility was on the line with Iraq, and Saddam was also funding terrorism, which made Iraq part of the war on terrorism.
Oil was pretty low on the list of reasons to invade Iraq, short term, at least...but very important, long term.
Well, it has to end somewhere, and I think this it. I've indulged enough Ron Paul-related off-topic discussion about this post which was primarily about the Florida primary and Giuliani. So unless I see an off-topic comment submission with extra special merit, it'll be rejected.
Thanks for a lively evening, all!
I'm not burying my head in the sand at all Bob. If I had seen or heard those stories prior to now, I might believe them. I don't WANT to believe our President has made decisions that have made me less safe and less free, but that's what I see. The more I learn, the less I trust those that want to lead us into this grand socialist/fascist one-world plan. These guys all seem like puppets to me, beholden to international business leaders, not to common Americans. These elitists don't give a damn about people except as fuel for their economic machine.
Everything I've presented to you is easy enough to find; thanks for the story, and I'll look for it further!
FYI Bob,
HD= USA made 2006 Harley Davidson RoadKing Classic with travel pack and growing chrome.
Titan LE = 2007 Full size leather interior 15 mph truck. My wife forced me to give up my 11 yr old Ford exploder. The dog likes it better too.
You asked: But what's the alternative? Let it all go to Hell in a handbasket--along with our friends Israel and along with a huge chunk of the world's oil supply?
Yes, let it go to hell. It won't though. Israel can defend herself, and $100 bbl oil sucks. We have oil in Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico. Oil shale in CO and coal in the eastern mountains. Nuclear... you know it. We should develope technology to exploit it safely and for a reasonable cost.
If you want to fight for oil lets attack Chavez in Venezualea for his oil. It would be cheaper and less people would die.
"this post which was primarily about the Florida primary and Giuliani."
Thank God Julieannie bowed out.
-Andy-
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