RUSH: All right, Rudy Giuliani. Let’s go to the audio sound bites here. Rudy is turning up the heat, getting into some partisanship here, which is good, because there’s a huge difference between Republicans and Democrats on the war. So say it! And Rudy did. He said, ‘We have to stay on offense. The Democrats want to put us back on defense.’ Yesterday in Manchester, New Hampshire, at the Rockingham County Republican Party’s annual Lincoln Day Dinner, a portion of Rudy’s remarks.
GIULIANI: This war ends when they stop planning to come here and kill us, but until then, if I have anything to say about it, the lesson that I learned coming out of September 11, 2001, is: never, ever again will this country be on defense waiting for them to attack us. (applause) The United States of America will be on offense (applause) and make no mistake about it, the Democrats want to put us back on defense.
RUSH: Amen! It’s about time! It is about time. You know, Rich Galen had it right in his Mullings blog. You’ve got Harry Reid proclaiming defeat. The war is lost! If the Republican apparatus were up and running, they’d be demanding of every elected Democrat, ‘Do you stand with Harry Reid? Do you agree with Harry Reid,’ and then people would be calling for Reid’s resignation. None of that is happening. Here’s another portion of what Rudy had to say.
GIULIANI: The Democrats — and I could make a lot of other points about this — do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorists’ war against us. But I listened a little bit to the Democratic debates and I think I could be slightly wrong about this, but I think this is almost correct. If one of them gets elected it’s almost like we’re going on defense, where we’ve got a timetable for withdrawal of Iraq. We’re going to wave the white flag there. We’re going to try to cut back on the Patriot Act. We’re going to cut back on electronic surveillance. We’re going to cut back on interrogation. We’re going to cut back, cut back, cut back — and we’ll be back in our pre-September 11 mentality of being on defense.
RUSH: Yes. He basically said — you know, I’ve said this — the Democrats want to try to go back and pretend that we can live in a 9/10 world, and that’s essentially what he is saying here — and they are flipped out! They are mad as they can be about this, and the Drive-Bys. See, when Rudy does things like this, or when Cheney responds to Dingy Harry, the Drive-Bys say, ‘This is just beyond the pale! Now it’s getting personal.’ (laughing) Now it’s getting personal. When Republicans respond, ‘Now it’s getting personal.’ Dingy Harry can call Bush an idiot. He can call Bush Hitler! The Democrats can say whatever they want, that’s not ‘personal.’ It’s good liberalism. That’s just ‘good politics.’ But the Republicans respond? ‘Now it’s getting personal.’ Rudy’s on a roll here. Two more to go. Here’s the next one.
GIULIANI: The question is going to be, ‘How long does it take, and how many losses do we have along the way?’ And I truly believe if we go back on defense for a period of time, we can ultimately have more losses and it’s going to go on much longer. The power of our ideas is so great we’ll eventually prevail. The real question is, ‘How do we get there?’ Do we get there in a way in which it is as expeditious as possible and with as little loss of life as possible, or do we get there in some circuitous fashion.
RUSH: Truer words never spoken. If we’re on defense with a Democrat president, we will have more losses and it will go on longer. The Democrats do not understand the full nature and the scope of the terrorist war against us. Truer words were never spoken. In fact, it’s a little bit more dangerous than the fact that they’re just ignorant and don’t understand. They think they do. They think that all they have to do is meet with these people and with the power of their personality, the aura of goodness that these liberals exude, they are convinced that the bin Ladens and the Zarqawis and the Zawahiris, et al, will no longer hate us. They, and they alone, can rebuild America’s tattered reputation in the world. This is where they’re naïve, and this has been played out over the years. They’ve thought this about the Soviets. They’ve thought it about every enemy we’ve got. They’re just nothing but giant appeasers, and they think the only reason that we’re at war is because we have a nutcase in the White House. They think the only reason we’re at war, the only reason Islamists hate us is because of George W. Bush going into Iraq, and they can change all that! They can stop the hate. They can make sure that we are loved and respected again just by the force of their personalities being in leadership positions. Finally, here’s a clear articulation of what this war is about from Rudy.
GIULIANI: They hate us, not because of anything bad we’ve done. This has nothing to do with any aggression on the part of the United States of America. It has nothing to do with anything America is taking from anyone. It has nothing to do with Israel and Palestine. They hate us for the freedoms that we have and the freedoms that we want to share with the world, because the freedoms that we have and the freedoms that we want to share with the world are in conflict with their perverted interpretation of their religion, their maniacal, violent, and perverted interpretation of their religion in which they train their young people to be suicide bombers, and they train them to hate you and despise you, and they train them to hate your religion, and to not allow you to have religion of your own, or anyone else. They hate us for the reasons that are the best about us, because we have freedom of religion, because we have freedom for women, because women are allowed to participate in society, because we have elections, because we have a free economy. Well, we’re not giving that up, and you’re not going to come and take it from us.
RUSH: Rudy Giuliani, setting himself apart from the field, at least with that appearance. Again, that was in Manchester, New Hampshire, at the Rockingham County Republican Party’s annual Lincoln Day Dinner.