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In this debate Ron Paul said he would legalize heroin and all drugs. He got huge applause from that. The article also says that former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson is a Libertarian. About the closest he got to being any where near Libertarian was when he said he would legalize marijuana, but not other drugs.
And of course Ron Paul was against the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, along with being against ALL foreign aid. Lesser-known GOP presidential hopefuls debate in South Carolina By Paul West, Los Angeles Times May 5, 2011, 9:50 p.m. Reporting from Greenville, S.C.— The 2012 presidential campaign lurched to an unconventional start Thursday night, as the Republican Party put several lesser-known candidates on display in the first debate of the season. A handful of second-tier contenders was given 90 minutes of precious national TV time after better-known GOP contenders declined to participate. The event might have played to the advantage of Tim Pawlenty, the most heralded of those on the South Carolina debate stage. But it didn't exactly work out that way. Instead, tough questioning from the debate panel repeatedly put the former Minnesota governor on the defensive. At a moment he hoped to use to introduce himself to voters who, he acknowledged, know very little about him, he was forced to explain why he balanced his state's budget by borrowing $6 billion from local school districts, leaving the state billions of dollars in the red. Then came a discussion of Pawlenty's past support for an energy cap-and-trade system, a climate-change initiative that Republicans almost universally condemn. Chris Wallace of Fox News, which cosponsored the event and carried it live, prefaced his question to Pawlenty by saying that he would play for viewers an ad in which the then-governor delivered a pitch that, Wallace said, suggested Pawlenty was "far more committed to cap and trade" than he was now letting on. "Do we have to?" asked Pawlenty, somewhat ruefully. The ad featured a Pawlenty plea to "cap greenhouse gas pollution now." Pawlenty said that all executives are going to have some "clunkers" in their backgrounds. "I made a mistake," he said. "Nobody's perfect." On the same day that President Obama visited the former World Trade Center site in New York to honor victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack after the death of Osama bin Laden, several of the GOP candidates departed from their party's tough-on-defense reputation. Their answers would have seemed more at home in a Democratic forum, but drew applause in one of the nation's most conservative Republican states. The two libertarians in the GOP field, Ron Paul and Gary Johnson, delivered vigorous dissents from the military policy of both the Obama and Bush administrations. Johnson, a former New Mexico governor, said he opposed both the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and Obama's intervention in Libya. He criticized America's expensive nation-building endeavor in Afghanistan "and borrowing 43 cents out of every dollar to do that," saying, "To me that is crazy." Paul, a Texas congressman making his second GOP presidential run, said the fighting in Afghanistan bore little relationship to the search for Bin Laden, and that while the United States was bombing neighboring Pakistan, it was at the same time providing that nation with billions in aid. "Boy, it's a wonderful time for this country now to reassess it and get the troops out of Afghanistan," said Paul, to loud applause from the audience at the Peace Center for the Performing Arts in Greenville. Herman Cain, a former pizza company executive and radio talk-show host, said "the bigger problem" was that the goals of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan were no longer clear to the American people. Rick Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, joined Pawlenty and Cain in expressing support for a resumption of waterboarding, an interrogation technique that some regard as torture. Santorum, whose ardent conservatism may come closest to the religious and social conservatism that prevails among this state's Republicans, took a rare shot at a fellow GOP contender. In response to a question, he said he disagreed with Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a potential candidate, that Republicans needed a "truce" on social issues to broaden the party's appeal. "Anybody that would suggest that," Santorum said, "doesn't understand what America is all about." The decisions by the party's better-known contenders to skip the debate angered and embarrassed the state Republican Party, which cosponsored it with the Fox News Channel. Front-runner Mitt Romney called it too early to start debating, but his absence raised questions about whether he'll downgrade his effort in a socially conservative Southern state where his Mormon religion cuts against him. Republican National Chairman Reince Priebus inadvertently captured the awkwardness of the event when he attempted to defend the missing candidates. "Quite frankly, I think Americans are sick and tired of two-year, knock-out, drag-out contests with a zillion debates and forums," he said. paul.west@latimes.com
Bin Laden's death upends agenda for first Republican presidential debate By Michael A. Memoli May 5, 2011, 6:57 p.m. Reporting from Washington— Polls show that Americans' top concern is the economy, but the killing of Osama bin Laden put foreign policy at the top of the agenda in the first Republican candidates debate of the 2012 presidential campaign. In the forum, broadcast by Fox News from Greenville, S.C., a quintet of lesser-known candidates offered their views on the operation that killed the Al Qaeda leader and how it might affect America's mission in Afghanistan. Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor, praised President Obama for "being decisive" in launching the raid on Bin Laden's compound, but attacked his broader foreign policy outlook. "He's made a number of other decisions relating to our security here and around the world that I don't agree with," he said. "If it turns out that many of the techniques that he criticized during the campaign led to Osama bin Laden's being identified and killed, he should be asked to explain whether he does or does not support those techniques." Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who just announced the formation of an exploratory committee a day earlier, downplayed what he said was simply a "tactical decision" by Obama. "If you look at what President Obama has done right in foreign policy, it has always been a continuation of the Bush policies," he said. "The issues that have come up while he is president, he's gotten it wrong strategically every single time." Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, a libertarian-minded Republican long opposed to the war in Afghanistan, said Bin Laden's death showed the folly of keeping the war going. "Boy, it is a wonderful time for this country now to reassess it and get the troops out of Afghanistan, and end that war that hasn't helped us and hasn't helped anyone in the Middle East," he said. That view was echoed by former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, who called for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces. "We're building roads, schools, bridges and highways in Iraq and Afghanistan and we're borrowing 43 cents on every dollar to do that. In my opinion, this is crazy," he said. A fifth candidate, Herm Cain, criticized a lack of clarity in the mission, but admitted to not being well-briefed enough on these issues to offer his own strategy going forward. "I'm not privy to a lot of confidential information. One of the things that I've always prided myself on is making an informed decision knowing all the facts," he said. The initial exchange in this first debate shows just how the operation against Bin Laden has temporarily upended the 2012 campaign. Obama is enjoying a bump in his poll numbers, though voters still give him low marks for handling the economy. That issue did not come up for at least 15 minutes in the debate. Pawlenty used a question on jobs to attack the National Labor Relations Board for blocking an effort by Boeing to build a South Carolina plant, to the delight of the audience. But when the subject turned to healthcare, he resisted an opportunity to criticize Mitt Romney for the universal health plan he signed into law in Massachusetts. "Gov. Romney's not here to defend himself, so I'm not going to pick on him," he said. The debate became the first of the primary season after NBC News and Politico rescheduled one that would have taken place Tuesday at the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley. Using data from a new Quinnipiac University poll, the five candidates' support combined would be just 11%, good for fifth place among national Republican voters surveyed. CNN is hosting a June 7 debate in New Hampshire, which may draw more participants. michael.memoli@latimes.com |