News / Politics
Ron Paul Nearly Doubles Donations Since Butting Heads with Rudy Giuliani
The general feeling after the Republican Presidential debate held in South Carolina on May 15 was that Rudy Giuliani got the better of Texas Republican Ron Paul but according to Paul backers the congressman has seen his donations nearly double since challenging Giuliani on the U.S. involvement in Iraq.
During the debate Paul was asked whether a Republican could stay true to their party and support a measure to bring American troops home at the same time. In response Paul remarked “I think the party has lost its way, because the conservative wing of the Republican Party always advocated a non-interventionist foreign policy. Senator Robert Taft didn’t even want to be in NATO. George Bush won the election in the year 2000 campaigning on a humble foreign policy - no nation-building, no policing of the world.”
Paul went on to say “Republicans were elected to end the Korean War. The Republicans were elected to end the Vietnam War. There’s a strong tradition of being anti-war in the Republican Party. It is the constitutional position. It is the advice of the Founders to follow a non -interventionist foreign policy, stay out of entangling alliances, be friends with countries, negotiate and talk with them and trade with them.”
It appeared as if Paul was getting himself into trouble when he was asked if he thought the U.S. invited the 9/11 attacks. After Paul responded “They don’t come here to attack us because we’re rich and we’re free. They come and they attack us because we’re over there” Giuliani pounced on the Texan saying “That’s really an extraordinary statement. That’s an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don’t think I’ve heard that before, and I’ve heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th.”
Giuliani then said “I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn’t really mean that.” That didn’t happen. Instead, since the debate, Paul has urged Giuliani to read books about America’s foreign policy and encouraged him to read the 9/11 Report from which his information used in the debate was pulled from.
While Giuliani appeared to get the instant response during the debate, Paul’s campaign has benefited tremendously from the argument. Not only has Paul’s campaign contributions nearly doubled but he has set himself up as the only true Republican on the ticket and earned widespread media coverage as well.
The general feeling in the Ron Paul camp is that if in fact he lost the debate with Giuliani then they hope he losses more often because its brining in the contributions and keeping his name at the forefront of the 2008 presidential race.
