MANCHESTER, N.H., April 25 — In his two months on the campaign trail, the central animating theme of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s presidential campaign has been that his performance as New York mayor on Sept. 11, 2001, makes him the best candidate to keep the United States safe from terrorists.
But when Mr. Giuliani broadened that message here on Tuesday night, saying that Democrats “do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us†and that if they were elected the United States would suffer “more losses,†the response from his Democratic rivals was swift and pointed.
Senator Barack Obama of Illinois accused Mr. Giuliani of “taking the politics of fear to a new low.†Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York used the remarks to link Mr. Giuliani to a failure by the Bush administration to quash Al Qaeda. John Edwards called the remarks “divisive and just plain wrong.â€
The skirmishing, some of the most intense between the parties in the young 2008 campaign, suggests that a line of attack that the administration used in 2004 would again be a central Republican theme.
In his speech before Republicans here on Tuesday night, Mr. Giulani called the fight against terrorism “the defining conflict of our time.†If a Democrat were elected president, he said, they would “wave the white flag†in Iraq, cut back on surveillance of terrorists, restrict the ability of law enforcement officials to gather intelligence and limit interrogation techniques, curtailing their effectiveness.
“Make no mistake about it, the Democrats want to put us back on defense,†he said.
In the end, he added, the United States would prevail regardless of who was in office, but if it was a Democrat, there would probably be greater loss of life before that victory was achieved. FULL ARTICLE HERE
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