This was one of the questions posed to the Republican presidential candidates Tuesday night:

We’ve lost 3,400 troops; civilian casualties are even higher, and the Iraqi government does not appear ready to provide for the security of its own country. Knowing everything you know right now, was it a mistake for us to invade Iraq?

(That’s not a loaded question is it?)

ROMNEY:

Well, I answered the question by saying it’s a — it’s a non sequitur, it’s a null set kind of question, because you can go back and say, if we knew then what we know now, by virtue of inspectors having been let in and giving us that information, by virtue of if Saddam Hussein had followed the U.N. resolutions, we wouldn’t be having this — this discussion. So it’s a hypothetical that I think is an unreasonable hypothetical. And the answer is, we did what we did; we did the right thing based on what we knew at that time. I think we made mistakes following the conduct — or the collapse of Saddam’s government.

GIULIANI:

Absolutely the right thing to do. It’s unthinkable that you would leave Saddam Hussein in charge of Iraq and be able to fight the war on terror. And the problem is that we see Iraq in a vacuum. Iraq should not be seen in a vacuum. Iraq is part of the overall terrorist war against the United States.

The problem the Democrats make is they’re in denial. That’s why you hear things like you heard in the debate the other night, that, you know, Iran really isn’t dangerous; it’s 10 years away from nuclear weapons. Iran is not 10 years away from nuclear weapons, and the danger to us is not just missiles, the danger to us is a state like Iran handing nuclear weapons over to terrorists, so it has to be seen in that light, and we have to be successful in Iraq.

Just for fun…let’s look at what FRED! said about that question when Hannity interviewed him post-debate. His question was slightly different (whether we did the right thing invading Iraq).
THOMPSON:

Yes. Sean, what people don’t think enough about is what — if we had not gone into Iraq. You know, after defying the United Nations 17 times, after corrupting the oil-for-food program and the United Nations itself, Saddam would have been there — and defying the United States, of course — Saddam would have been there, the new king of the hill in that part of the world, with his murderous sons still putting people in human shredders, still a threat to his neighbors, still developing his plans for a nuclear capability.I mean, he had those plans. He had the technical expertise. Whether he had them on one particular day or not is almost irrelevant. Especially today, looking at what Iran is doing, he certainly would have had his hands or been working assiduously toward getting the capability of nuclear weapons. And that’s what we would have been faced with had we not done that. Going in there and deposing him was a good thing.

In some ways, it’s unfair to compare CEO Mitt to “America’s Mayor” or to Fred Thompson. They all know the right answer to the question, and all three have demonstrated that they get the war on terror. But in this one answer at least, Rudy and Fred get to the point faster. Romney may have all the right answers and he may be dynamite with a PowerPoint presentation, but that’s only a small part of what we are looking for in a nominee. Both Rudy and McCain personally connected with the audience Tuesday, and that’s the element Romney seems to be missing. As others have said, Romney was off his game in this third debate. Rudy won this third debate because he showed command of all the topics he was asked about, and in every debate performance, he keeps looking stronger and stronger (as long as the questions are not focused on those troublesome social issues)

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From the New Yorker:

Newt Gingrich is one of those who fear that Republicans have been branded with the label of incompetence. He says that the Bush Administration has become a Republican version of the Jimmy Carter Presidency, when nothing seemed to go right. “It’s just gotten steadily worse,” he said. “There was some point during the Iranian hostage crisis, the gasoline rationing, the malaise speech, the sweater, the rabbit”—Gingrich was referring to Carter’s suggestion that Americans wear sweaters rather than turn up their thermostats, and to the “attack” on Carter by what cartoonists quickly portrayed as a “killer rabbit” during a fishing trip—“that there was a morning where the average American went, ‘You know, this really worries me.’ ” He added, “You hire Presidents, at a minimum, to run the country well enough that you don’t have to think about it, and, at a maximum, to draw the country together to meet great challenges you can’t avoid thinking about.” Gingrich continued, “When you have the collapse of the Republican Party, you have an immediate turn toward the Democrats, not because the Democrats are offering anything better, but on a ‘not them’ basis. And if you end up in a 2008 campaign between ‘them’ and ‘not them,’ ‘not them’ is going to win.”

I think Newt’s right about this. Republicans have been tagged with that label, and it’s going to be hard to recover from that perception. Congressional Republicans did not handle their responsibilities well when they had the majority, and voters recognized that last November when they handed over power to the “not them” Democrats. President Bush should share some of the blame for what happened in the November mid-term elections as well.  The President of the United States is supposed to be the head of our party, but instead he has abdicated that role to conservative talk radio and blogs.  It’s up to the grassroots activists to fight for a re-direction in Congressional priorities and the needed reforms to solve the problems we face as a nation, since no one in Washington D.C. has the desire to do that.

The question becomes whether Newt is the “not them” candidate for the Republicans in 2008. He certainly hasn’t been shy about criticizing Congress and the Bush administration. He has some fascinating ideas, and I would love to see a debate between Newt and Hillary, if only for the sheer entertainment value of such a confrontation. Maybe he’s been out of Congress long enough to be considered an outsider, but it will be hard for him to shake his controversial history while Speaker of the House.  I’m having a hard time believing that Newt Gingrich is electable, but it’s probably a mistake to underestimate his chances, especially this early in the presidential race.

Tags: Newt Gingrich, ’08 election

It’s fashionable in Republican circles to bash Ron Paul for his non-interventionist views of foreign policy, and unfortunately for Dr. Paul, that argument doesn’t seem realistic based on the actions of Iran, North Korea, and others wanting to join the nuclear club. It also sounded too much like what the Democrats would have said if they were given the same question. That’s why Giuliani was able to score significant political points by condemning Paul’s remarks on 9/11.

Less worthy of discussion were Paul’s remarks on cutting the size of government. Every Republican running for President talks about reducing spending and the size of government, but when asked what they would cut, only Ron Paul had actually thought much about the subject. Wendell Goler asked him this question, and here’s what he said.

REP. PAUL: I’d start with the departments — the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, Department of Homeland Security. We’ve started with — we’ve just — the Republicans put in the Department of Homeland — it’s a monstrous type of bureaucracy. It was supposed to be streamlining our security and it’s unmanageable. I mean, just think of the efficiency of FEMA in its efforts to take care of the floods and the hurricanes.

So yes, there’s a lot of things that we can cut, but we can’t cut anything until we change our philosophy about what government should do. If you think that we can continue to police the world and spend hundreds of billions of dollars overseas, and spend hundreds of billions of dollars running a welfare state, an entitlement system that has accumulated $60 trillion worth of obligations, and think that we can run the economy this way; we spend so much money now that we have to borrow nearly $3 billion a day from foreigners to take care of our consumption, and we can’t afford that.

We can’t afford it in the government, we can’t afford it as a nation.

So tax reform should come, but spending cuts have to come by changing our attitude what government ought to be doing for us.

You can disagree with him about foreign policy, but on spending and bureaucracy he’s exactly right. I’m not convinced that congressional Republicans still subscribe to Paul’s skepticism of the effectiveness of bureaucracy and the necessity of reducing spending (if in fact they EVER did). As we have seen, they excel at paying lip service to what they think we want to hear, and then proceed to feed the beast, feigning surprise that this government behemoth continues to grow. And somehow it’s all someone else’s fault.

Ron Paul says that we need to change our philosophy about what government should do. Hard to argue with that statement. We have given the responsibility to government to fix everything that ails our great nation, and that has been a huge mistake. Both Republicans and Democrats now believe in an activist government, and even some conservatives are buying into the myth.

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What a pleasant change from the first Republican debate this one was. Yes, it was hosted by the EEEVIL Fox News Channel, but no objective person could accuse the moderators of throwing softballs at any of the candidates. The questions were pitched high and hard and some of ’em landed a significant blow on their targets. I would really like to see the Democrats face the same kind of abuse, but thanks to John Edwards’ tough stand against Fox News, it won’t happen. Speaking of John Edwards, he got a little smack from Mike Huckabee (with much applause): “Congress is spending money like John Edwards at a beauty shop”. HAHA. That will get him a few YouTube clips. Mike Huckabee looked just as strong in this debate as the last one, and I would like to hear more from him, including more on the Fair Tax.

My overall impression of the top three hasn’t changed, but I would rank them differently than last time based on their performance last night. Romney moves down to third. Solid but not spectacular showing. He also had one sound-bite type line where he says that McCain-Kennedy (the immigration bill) would be just as bad as McCain-Feingold. (I’m paraphrasing, but that’s the general idea.) He got the predictable “how conservative are you…REALLY”? His answer was a strong one, at least in my opinion. I think it’s a fair position to support 2nd amendment rights and also to support an assault weapons ban. I have no problem with people owning guns, and there’s a good argument to be made for that right. But I don’t see any solid reason why the average citizen should own any kind of assault weapon. That’s a reasonable restriction to have on the 2nd amendment. It also should be ok to oppose discrimination against gays and lesbians while still believing that marriage should be only between a man and woman. Neither of these issues should be an either/or proposition. He handled this question better in this debate than the last one. I liked what he had to say about Iraq, and he seemed to understand the broad scope of the GWOT. I’m still not sold on that “personally pro-life” line, but it sounds better to me than how Giuliani explains why he’s pro-choice.

McCain did well, even though I thought that his “drunken sailor” joke fell flat, especially when compared to Huckabee’s John Edwards crack. He didn’t have any memorable moments except for his attempted slap at Romney, after Romney criticized both McCain-Kennedy and McCain-Feingold.  In any case, I would put McCain in 2nd place.

Rudy gets the top spot, just because of his awesome smackdown of Ron Paul. The other candidates would have wanted to get this KO on Paul, who blamed the US for 9/11. Rudy got the fat fastball, and did not miss the pitch. He asked Ron Paul to withdraw that statement. Paul was given the opportunity to back off, and he did not. Video here. Even though I have strong reservations about Giuliani as a social conservative, he continues to impress in other areas, and that’s why social conservatives will continue to consider Giuliani as a potential nominee.

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