In the final showdown before ‘Super-Tuesday’, the CNN / Politico/ LATimes 90-minute ‘debate’ only served to minimize actual debate from opposing points of view and further dismiss Ron Paul as he received only one-third of the questions given to Romney and McCain.
Paul, who has earned 2nd place in two primaries - Nevada and Louisiana - and raised millions of dollars from individual donors, was not given any time to detail his credentials as a conservative as the others had. “I would like to take one minute, since I didn’t get a chance to answer this discussion on conservative versus liberal,” he said. But the moderator, Anderson Cooper promised he would have that opportunity later. Said Cooper, “We’re going to have — I promise you we’re going to have — you’re going to have another opportunity to do that. I promise you, coming up in like two minutes or two questions.” But Paul’s opportunity never came.
Anderson Cooper, the CIA trainee turned journalist, directed only five questions to Congressman Paul and two partial-questions, but Paul’s answers were interrupted on at least two occasions by Cooper. Paul received just over 7 minutes to respond to questions out of roughly 1 hour and 22 minutes of ‘debate’, despite obviously representing the view of most Americans and the repeated applause from the audience.
Mitt Romney received 17 questions and John McCain 15, not including the ’silly’ time the two spent bickering with each other about semantics and war-mongering.
Here’s the breakdown of Paul’s participation time courtesy of the Lew Rockwell blog.
Question 1 on the economy: 1:19 minutes
Question 4 on the environment: 0:41 minutes, because Anderson cut him short and assured him “2 minutes, in 2 minutes we have a question for you. I promise”
Question 5 on income tax rebates and “make work” schemes: 0:49 minutes
Question 11 on Sandra Day O’Conner: 0:09 minutes, I kid you not. Cut short by Anderson
Question 15* on McCain’s “100 years in Iraq” statement: 1:39 minutes (only question directly asked to Dr. Paul)
Question 18* on how X would handle the military as commander in chief: 1:50 minutes
Question 19* on a Reagan endorsement: 0:46 minutes
Dr. Paul stated, “You can keep borrowing from China and printing the money to stimulate the economy.”
McCain agreed with Ron Paul about borrowing money from China but did not say how he would continue to fight the wars abroad.
“When I listen to this argument, I mean, I find it rather silly,” he said, “because they’re arguing technicalities of a policy they both agree with. They agreed with going in; they agreed for staying, agreed for staying how many years? And these are technicalities.”
YouTube videos:
Post Debate Interview with Paul
Transcript of Ron Paul’s questions and answers:
COOPER: Congressman Paul, 61 percent of Americans think there is a recession already — 61 percent of Americans say there’s already a recession.
Are we better off than we were eight years ago?
TEXAS REP. RON PAUL: No, no, we’re not better off. We’re worse off, but it’s partially this administration’s fault and it’s the Congress. But it also involves an economic system that we’ve had for a long time and a monetary system that we’ve had and a foreign policy that’s coming to an end and we have to admit this.
The Republicans were elected in 1994 to change direction of the country, because people sensed there was something wrong, we were going the wrong direction, but we didn’t do anything.
In the year 2000, we did, also. We were elected in the year 2000 to have a humble foreign policy and not police the world, and yet what are we doing now? We’re bogged down in another war. We’re bankrupting our country and we have an empire that we’re trying to defend which costs us $1 trillion a year.
And the standard of living is going down today. It’s going down and the middle class is hurting because of the monetary policy.
PAUL: When you destroy a currency, the middle class gets wiped out. Poor countries don’t even have middle classes. We used to have one, and they’re on the ropes right now.
But it has to do with a fiscal policy, monetary policy, and foreign policy of way too much spending, but it took a lot of years for us to get here. The people in this country have been begging for a change in direction, and they haven’t had it. It’s time we gave it to them.
COOPER: Congressman Paul, do you agree with Governor Schwarzenegger on this one?
PAUL: Yes, I think California should do what they want, and we all recognize that. But one thing that hasn’t been emphasized here that should be emphasized when we’re dealing with the environment and gas house — you know, greenhouse gases is property rights.
We neglected during the industrial revolution property rights, and governments and big corporations got together and colluded. And that’s what has to be reversed. You have to emphasize the property rights.
But I would like to take one minute, since I didn’t get a chance to answer this discussion on conservative versus liberal.
COOPER: We’re going to have — I promise you we’re going to have — you’re going to have another opportunity to do that. I promise you, coming up in like two minutes or two questions.
COOPER: Congressman Paul?
PAUL: Well, you know, the governor says that you have to borrow for a handout of a check from the Chinese. Where are you going to get the money to build the highway?
Same old thing. We have a foreign policy where we blow up bridges overseas and then we tax the people to go over and rebuild the bridges overseas and our bridges are falling down and our infrastructure is falling down.
So, yes, this money should be spent back here at home. We have a $1 trillion foreign operation to operate our empire. That’s where the money is. You can’t keep borrowing from China. You can’t keep printing the money.
We have to cut some spending. That’s what nobody here talks about. Where do you cut spending if you want to spend some money? We need lower taxes, less regulations, and we need to free up the market.
We can’t expect the government to do everything. We have to faith and confidence that the market works, but you can’t do any of that unless you look at the monetary system.
McCain (agreeing with Paul): …And we’ve got to stop spending. We’ve got to stop — one place where Ron Paul and I are in total agreement, spending is out of control. And I’m tired of borrowing money from China.
COOPER: Yes or no, Congressman Paul, was Sandra Day O’Connor the right choice?
PAUL: I wouldn’t have appointed her, because I would have looked for somebody that I would have seen as a much stricter constitutionalist.
COOPER: Senator McCain?
MCCAIN: I’m proud of Sandra Day O’Connor as a fellow Arizonan. And my heart goes out to her family in that situation that they have today. And I’m proud of her.
The judges I would appoint are along the lines of Justices Roberts and Alito, who have a proven record of strict interpretation of the Constitution of the United States of America. I’m not going to second-guess President Reagan.
COOPER: I want to go to Jim VandeHei with a question for, I believe, Congressman Paul.
VANDEHEI: Congressman Paul, this comes from Jay Majumdar (ph) from Roswell, Georgia. And he wants to know if you agree with Senator McCain’s statement that the United States might need to have U.S. troops in Iraq for as long as even 100 years?
PAUL: I don’t even think they should have gone, so keeping them for 100 years, where’s the money going to come from?
(APPLAUSE)
You know, the country is in bankruptcy. And when I listen to this argument, I mean, I find it rather silly, because they’re arguing technicalities of a policy they both agree with.
They agreed with going in; they agreed for staying, agreed for staying how many years? And these are technicalities. We should be debating foreign policy, whether we should have interventionism or non-interventionism, whether we should be defending this country or whether we should be the policemen of the world, whether we should be running our empire or not, and how are going to have guns and butter?
You know, the ’70s were horrible because we paid for the guns and butters of the ’60s. Now we’re doing the same thing. And nobody even seems to care. The dollar is crashing, and you’re talking about these technicalities about who said what when?
I mean, in 1952, we Republicans were elected to stop the war in Korea. In 1968, we were elected to stop the war in Vietnam. And, tragically, we didn’t stop it very fast: 30,000 more men died.
So when I talk about these long-term stays, I think, “How many men are you willing to let die for this, for something that has nothing to do with our national security?”
There were no al Qaeda there. It had nothing do with 9/11. And there was no threat to our national security. They never committed aggression. It’s unconstitutional. It’s an undeclared war.
And we have these silly arguments going on about who said what when. I think it’s time to debate foreign policy and why we don’t follow the Constitution and only go to war with a declaration of war.
(APPLAUSE)
Huckabee (in response to Paul):
And with all due respect, Congressman Paul — and I do think you’re right, we don’t want to be there for 100 years — but however long it takes to get out of there with victory and with honor, we owe it to those who have gone to make sure that they did not go in vain.
And we need to make sure that future sons and daughters of America don’t have to go back and do it over.
COOPER: Also, for accuracy’s sake, I just want to point out Senator McCain was talking about 100-year involvement in the same way as the U.S. being involved in South Korea, not at the current situation that it is now.
COOPER: Congressman Paul, what makes you capable of being a leader both on the economy and the military?
PAUL: OK. The Constitution is very clear that the president is commander in chief of the military, but the president is not the commander in chief of the economy or of the people. And when we get reflection of conventional wisdom, but of a lot of lack of understanding of how the economy works.
The president is not supposed to manage and run the economy. The people are supposed to do this. The government is supposed to give them sound money, low taxes, less regulation. The people are supposed to run it.
But here, we’re assuming that the president is supposed to run the economy. We’re not supposed to manage. We’re not supposed to manage the people’s…
COOPER: What role do you think the federal government should have — I mean, does the federal government in your opinion have a role in stimulating the economy?
PAUL: Yes, by lower taxes and less regulation. They could do a whole lot by having sound money, where we don’t print the money out of thin air. That causes the business cycle. That causes your bubbles.
We’re always dealing with the symptoms of the disease and never saying, “how did this come about?” You know, it comes about because we have a Federal Reserve that creates money and prints it out of thin air. There is a lot of malinvestment.
That’s the most important thing to understand about the inflation of the monetary system, is the malinvestment. Then, later on, people suffer. You wipe out the middle class. But the evil of it all is the vehicle for financing wars that we shouldn’t be in and a welfare state that we shouldn’t be doing.
So, yes, we have a role to play, but it’s a negative role. We want the people to be free. We don’t want to manage the people and tell them how to live. And we need a commander in chief.
But the most important thing as a commander in chief is not moving troops around, as much as it is having a wise foreign policy that doesn’t get us involved in so many things that we get trapped in and we linger year after year. We’ve been doing this for so long.
And I like President Bush’s argument that we have a humble foreign policy when he ran in 2000, and that we not be the policemen of the world.
(APPLAUSE)
COOPER: Congressman Paul?
(APPLAUSE)
PAUL: I supported Ronald Reagan in 1976, and there were only four members of Congress that did. And also in 1980. Ronald Reagan came and campaigned for me in 1978.
I’m not sure exactly what he would do right now, but I do know that he was very sympathetic to the gold standard, and he told me personally that no great nation that went off the gold standard ever remained great. And he was very, very serious about that.
So he had a sound understanding about monetary policy. And for that reason, I would say look to Ronald Reagan’s ideas on money because he, too, was concerned about runaway inflation and what it does to a country when you ruin the currency. And that’s what’s happening today. The dollar is going down and our country is going to be on the ropes if we don’t reverse that trend.
Below is an excerpt from Matthew Hawes - Policy Assistant, Daniel McCarthy - Internet Communications Coordinator, and Jonathan Bydlak - Fundraising Director, which was sent in an email to encourage supporters:
We’ve been here before. In 1776, despite a courageous effort at holding onto the city, George Washington ceded New York and quickly retreated to New Jersey.
1777 brought the British recapture of Fort Ticonderoga, as well as American defeats at Brandywine and Germantown.
And then, during the winter of 1777-1778, Washington and his army faced perhaps their most humiliating moment, forced to endure a harsh Pennsylvania winter with limited supplies at Valley Forge.
The American revolutionaries dealt with their defeats, focused on their goals, and emerged from Valley Forge as a force that would defeat the most powerful nation on earth.
Our momentum is building. Each one of us, from Dr. Paul himself down to the grassroots supporter who donates the last $5 he or she can give, is focused on the goal.
Early in the struggle for American independence, George Washington wrote: “Perseverance and spirit have done wonders in all ages.” Even then, Washington realized that a fierce struggle for self-government can only be won with a spirit of determination equal to the challenge.
Today, in the midst of our new revolution, let’s consider Washington’s words once again. The task before us is enormous. The foes of liberty are deeply entrenched, and they will not relinquish their power without a struggle.
But fighting in our favor is the unconquerable human spirit, the innate desire to be free. We must embrace this inner strength, dig in our heels, and persevere, just as Washington and his rag-tag colonials, the first American grassroots patriots, did before us. And if we must pass through a Valley Forge or two along the way to victory, let those times of testing temper the steel of our determination.
If Ron Paul is to continue his fight for liberty to the Republican Convention, we need your help in two critical ways:
1. Become a precinct leader today: It’s easy, but more importantly, it’s vital to Ron Paul’s success: https://voters.ronpaul2008.com
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Help us win this revolution and usher in a new era of freedom, peace, and prosperity. Donate today: https://www.ronpaul2008.com/donate.
