The American Spectator

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br> -- Stuart Reed br> Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan /p> p> By championing Hillary for the politically-sophisticated conservatives, Bruce Bartlett is displaying a darkened mind not far from the one Pat Buchanan displayed when he said on television that Hillary sounded the most Reaganesque in her response to Brian William's question during the South Carolina debate: br> /p>

Brian Williams: Okay, look, God forbid a million times we're sitting here tonight and we learn during the course of this press conference that two American cities have been obliterated, and we know beyond a shadow of a doubt it's Al-Qaeda.

Hillary: I think a president must move as swiftly as is prudent to retaliate. If we are attacked and we can determine who was behind that attack, and if there were nations that supported or gave material aid to those who attacked us, I believe we should quickly respond. Now, that doesn't mean we go looking for other fights. You know, I supported President Bush when he went after Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, and then when he decided to divert attention to Iraq, it was not a decision that I would have made had I been president because we still haven't found bin Laden.

br> The problem with Pat Buchanan's assessment of Hillary's answer is that she did not answer the question that was asked. Reagan would have answered the question that was asked and, since it was post- 9/11 given a much different answer than Hillary. p>Last November 10 Buchanan wrote: br> /p>

With the rout of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's initiatives, Democratic victories in New Jersey and Virginia, and President Bush's free fall in national polls on job performance, credibility and character, the Republican Party is in imminent peril of losing the country.

Indeed, since 9/11, the party has indulged in a willful self-delusion that it has become America's Party. The Bush triumph in 2004, talking heads brayed, settled the matter: Red State America has triumphed over Blue State America. The future belongs to us.

This was always hyperbole. Where Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan rolled up 49-state landslides in re-election runs, Bush won 31 states, losing every state north of the Potomac and east of Ohio, two of the three great industrial states of the Midwest, Michigan and Illinois, and he was skunked on the Pacific rim. Had Kerry hammered him on trade and lost jobs in Ohio, Bush would be a one-term president...

br> Pat Buchanan is full of hyperbole. I advise him to read the letters column of TAS

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