The Conservative Political Action Conference has posted the text of speeches by two of the Republican presidential candidates who spoke at the conference last week in Washington D.C.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's speech repeatedly invokes the name of Ronald Reagan, and draws lessons from Reagan's determined, goal-focused leadership and his optimistic spirit. Giuliani's speech discussed his record of cutting taxes and reducing crime in New York, and also his views of how the U.S. ought to go about defeating Islamic terrorism.
Giuliani: The most important lesson that I learned from Ronald Reagan was the importance of optimistic leadership. I believe Ronald Reagan was able to achieve the things he was able to achieve because Ronald Reagan was a leader, which is a combination of being a visionary and a practical person who can achieve results.
CPAC also has posted the text of U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter's speech to the conference. Hunter, a California, also recalls Reagan:
I was here in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan stood up to the Russians in Western Europe as they started to ring France and Germany with those SS-20 missiles, and President Reagan started to send in ground-launch cruise missiles and Pershing IIs to stand up to the Russians. And you had liberal pundits saying, "There he goes, we're going to have World War III; he needs to appease the Russians."In fact, while I was campaigning in
Iowa, one person told me their newspaper actually had an editorial at that time against the president, saying - and it was entitled "Better Red Than Dead."
But, you know, because we had a policy of peace through strength, at some point the Russians picked up the phone, and they said, "Can we talk?" And when we talked, we didn't talk about a standoff or about a negotiated treaty. We talked about dissembling the Russian empire.
CPAC has also posted the speeches by Sen. James Inhofe and Vice President Dick Cheney. You can access all of them here.
Learn more about Hunter here:
Duncan Hunter
Posted by: Dave | March 7, 2007 10:24 AM | Permalink to Comment