More on Rudy's Speech

As I said last night, Rudy's speech was undoubtedly one of the best convention speeches in recent history (The transcript is here). Clearly, one of the goals of the speech was to attract the Jewish vote.

Terrorism did not start on September 11, 2001. It started a long time ago. And it had been festering for many years.

And the world had created a response to it that allowed it to succeed. The attack on the Israeli team at the Munich Olympics was in 1972. That's a long time ago.
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In 1985, terrorists attacked the Achille Lauro. And they murdered an American citizen who was in a wheelchair, Leon Klinghoffer. They marked him for murder solely because he was Jewish.
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Terrorist acts became like a ticket to the international bargaining table. How else to explain Yasser Arafat winning the Nobel Peace Prize while he was supporting a plague of terrorism in the Middle East and undermining any chance of peace?

Powerline points out that one element that Rudy left out was the fact that the leader of the Achille Lauro hijacking was captured in Baghdad, drawing a direct line from terrorism to Iraq. I think another missed opportunity was to highlight the way that Israel dealt with those terrorists released by Germany; hunting down and killing them, one by one if necessary and with no time constraints, is how Bush has advocated dealing with terrorists from the beginning. This part of the speech was also an indictment of the European response to the terrorist threat, and a reminder of Kerry's deference to the Europeans in the War on Terror.

Remember, just a few months ago, John Kerry kind of leaked out that claim that certain foreign leaders who opposed our removal of Saddam Hussein prefer him.

Well, to me, that raises the risk that he might well accommodate his position to their viewpoint.

It would not be the first time that John Kerry changed his mind about matters of war and peace.

Giuliani's discussion of 9/11, was an amazing reminder of what that day and the following week felt like. Anyone who watched this would surely have been transported back, and felt once again the horror, sorrow, and anger.

Rudy then went into a very effective criticism of Kerry's lack of vision in this conflict, juxtaposing this with the vision of Churchill, Reagan and now Bush in their respective World Wars.

There are many qualities that make a great leader. But having strong beliefs, being able to stick with them through popular and unpopular times, is the most important characteristic of a great leader.

One of my heroes, Winston Churchill, saw the dangers of Hitler while his opponents characterized him as a war-mongering gadfly.

Another one of my heroes, Ronald Reagan, saw and described the Soviet Union as "the evil empire," while world opinion accepted it as inevitable and even belittled Ronald Reagan's intelligence.

President Bush sees world terrorism for the evil that it is.

John Kerry has no such clear, precise and consistent vision.

His criticism of Kerry's flip-flops was not done maliciously, but with humor, thereby making it that much more effective. It was not the hatred that Democrats express towards Bush, it was a mocking that showed that Kerry's "convictions" are laughable. And then he took away John Edwards's ability to ever again use his "Two America's" stump speech with this joke

Maybe this explains John Edwards' need for two Americas.

One is where John Kerry can vote for something and another where he can vote against exactly the same thing.

His anecdote about Bush's visit with the construction workers at Ground Zero was absolutely riveting and hilarious. Overall, an incredible speech.

John Podhoretz calls the speech a Stemwinder.