February 4, 2004

SEAN HANNITY: John Kerry came up a big winner last night, he won five out of seven state contests, but can Edwards or Clark start gaining on him? Joining us now from Washington, former presidential candidate in his own right, our good friend Alan Keyes. Ambassador, how are you?

ALAN KEYES: I'm doing fine. How are you?

HANNITY: Well, we're always glad to have you back. It's been a while. Good to see you, my friend.

I think, at the end of the day, beyond getting into "he's a Massachusetts liberal" and his extensive Ted Kennedy-like liberal voting record, I think there are two questions here that John Kerry's going to have to answer: will you continue to seek out terrorists where they are, and track them down, and go after states that harbor them--and how many months a year should Americans pay taxes? How much should we give them, four months of our income, five months?

Don't you think those are the two issues this campaign?

KEYES: Well, I think that the first one is going to be the most critical. I find it hard to believe that the American people will easily trust a Democrat with our national security, in the midst of a war on terror that, after all, was partly the result of the vulnerabilities that we were left with after the Clinton years. I think that they have a president who has shown himself to have the fortitude, the resolve, to make head[way] against our enemies--and I'm not sure they're going to turn the reins over to a party that has, to be quite frank about it, a record that is pretty well anti-security. They're uncomfortable with these issues, and they're especially uncomfortable with the necessity of fighting back against an insidious enemy like this.

HANNITY: Well, what is going to be the best strategy? Democrats are on attack now, and some Republicans call me and they're nervous 'cause they think--the Republicans, I think, have not yet begun to fight, and I think they will. Will it be more effective to tie his record to Kennedy? Will it be more effective to point out his voting record, his years of proposal to cut the intelligence community? Will it be his desire to cancel 27 weapons systems, including the MX, the Trident, the Patriot Missile, the F15, the F16, the M1-tank, the Pershing II Missile--will that be the big issue?

KEYES: I would have to say I think that the most effective thing that can be done is not much to focus on the question of whether this man's going to be president of the United States. I, frankly, believe at this time that someone like this is not qualified--not just because of his liberalism, but because he comes from a party, from background, with a record that does not have the kind of mindset that will pursue our national security aggressively during this time when our very survival is at stake.

And I think that his liberalism, of course, on economic and fiscal issues will certainly help to consolidate the core Republicans in support of the effort against him.

But overriding everything, I think, is going to be the concern not to change horses in the middle of the stream when we're in the midst of a war.

HANNITY: In a few minutes, we're going to be joined by Hillary Rodham Clinton's former campaign manager/spokesman and Howard Wilson's going to join us, and we're going to talk about this AWOL issue that is, quote, the "big issue" of the Dems. I think John Kerry's war record is admirable. I think he deserves credit--but it's where he's been the last twenty years. He's been on the wrong side of history in the Cold War, on building up defense, building up intelligence. But as I look at his record, it gets complicated inasmuch as it's not a short, snappy sound bite that you can give to the American people. How does . . . .

KEYES: Well, see, I think it is, though. He dares to suggest that as an individual G. W. Bush was AWOL, when we are dealing with a record and a party that have been AWOL on the issues of American national security (for, what, two decades now?), helped to gut our national intelligence, helped to put us in a situation where we didn't even have the interpreters needed to deal with the situation in the Islamic world? You've got to be kidding that they would come forward now and suggest that they should replace G. W. Bush.

COLMES: Alan, you know, it's really an outrageous lie to accuse a whole party of all the things you've just said. We know the problems with the CIA are systemic. I can tell by the hysteria now, the way people are going after Kerry, how truly concerned they are about him.

And, by the way, answer this: how is it, then, that we're still basically a 50/50 nation, and polls now are showing Kerry ahead of Bush, if the American public really doesn't at all trust Democrats, and one can't get elected?

KEYES: Two things. First of all, I am not lying about this. I was present during the Reagan years, when we followed after Carter and his disastrous destruction of America's national intelligence capabilities. I watched as Clinton followed in the same path, preparing the terrible disaster that we faced then on 9/11.

It's not to say that there's not blame to be spread around, but, excuse me, the Democrats do not have a record that, on this subject, would lead one to trust them to the kind of consistency and aggressiveness that's needed to defend our very lives in the midst of a war. And I think that part of the reason right now things haven't consolidated [is that] people always pay half attention right now. There's only a contest on the Democrats' side. It gets most of the attention. I think that the Republicans haven't yet begun to fight this election. Once the Democrat nominee is clear, we will, and then I think it's really not going to be a contest.

COLMES: You've got a very energized populace now, as seen by the number of people. More than most years have turned out for these primaries. You also have places where the president is vulnerable. We see the Taliban is now regrouping in Afghanistan. We have seen warlords regrouping in Afghanistan. There is still great debate in this country about whether going to Iraq diverted attention away from where we should have been focused--Osama Bin Laden is still at large, and the idea that intelligence reports and David Kay's message is that, what we were told was the reason for going has not panned out. That's not sitting well thus far with the American people, Alan.

KEYES: Frankly, I think that it's not sitting well, and I think that we need to look into it--but that's a question of the competence and professionalism of our intelligence community and the national security apparatus, in terms of the information they gave to the president. It's not a question about the soundness of the judgment he made based on that intelligence.

It would have been irresponsible in him not to act against a threat that was outlined in the intelligence estimates that he had.

And that's part of the problem here. The Democrats talk as if they would have faced that situation and not made the same decision based on the intelligence he had. How can you trust them, then, when they won't do what is preemptively necessary to keep the terrorists from getting weapons of mass destruction?

COLMES: Well, there's no proof that preemptively going into Iraq had anything to do with making us safer. I don't think there was any dispute about going to Afghanistan. The country was united, the world was united. That is not the issue. The issue is about what the president did, and whether or not the reasons he gave to go to war actually panned out--and it hurts our credibility.

KEYES: After the fact, asking questions about whether the intelligence estimates were accurate is important to improve our intelligence capabilities. It does not, however, raise a question about the soundness of the president's judgment based on that intelligence.

HANNITY: All right. Alan, hang on one second. Gotta take a break. We'll continue more with Alan Keyes right after the break.

[break]

COLMES: We continue with Alan Keyes. Ambassador Keyes, as a fiscal conservative, as a true conservative yourself, do you have some problems with the spending of this administration?

KEYES: Oh, I sure do--and I wouldn't want to give the impression that I don't have other problems with this administration on some areas where I think that the president has fallen short of the kinds of things that I really think are needed in some areas.

But I also wouldn't want to give the impression that I think that anything can be more decisive for the American people right now than the question of our national survival in the face of the most insidious threat this nation has ever faced.

In the face of that, I think a lot of us are going to be putting our other issues behind those issues that have to do with the survival of this nation in wartime.

COLMES: Are you saying there's only one issue in this campaign, that other issues don't matter? Because, if you look at what the American people are saying, a lot of issues do matter, and to many conservatives, the president's not measuring up on those issues.

KEYES: Well, see, I think that the one problem--and the media, I think, is looking at all these other things because they've got to have stories. When people get into that voting booth and confront the reality of our situation, as we have had to confront it now since the terrible events in 2001, I think a lot of people are going to find that they are reminded of who they are and how they felt at that moment when we confronted the abyss and knew that we had to measure up. That is still our situation, and when they finally get to the voting booth, I think that's going to be the one that decides their minds.

COLMES: Do we really feel safer now than we were four years ago? We've had orange alert, we now have a ricin [poison] issue, we've been on alert a number of times, American interests have been attacked all over the world. Many Americans are--I think that's a fair question, if we're really safer now.

KEYES: You know, we can't control whether people who are inimical to us, out of the kind of fanatical hatred we encounter in these terrorists, are going to attack us. We can control whether we're going to be prepared for those attacks, whether we're going to act to eliminate the cadre of people who are aiming those attacks against us, whether we're going to preempt states and groups that are aiming to kill Americans with weapons of mass destruction. I think we have a responsibility to deal with this issue first, because we're not going to be around to deal with the others if we mess with this one.

HANNITY: Ambassador, I couldn't agree with you more. You know what I find amazing--and I guess this is all part of this political process--is the very same liberals who lead the charge to cut defense, who attacked the intelligence community, render it impotent in the 1990's the way they did, the ones that gave us the worst deal imaginable under Clinton in North Korea, didn't finish the job with Saddam, oh, and passed on Osama, are now lecturing the administration on how to deal with defense issues. It's somewhat humorous, if it weren't so scary.

KEYES: If it weren't so serious, it might be funny--but it is very serious. And I think that when you look back on that record, when you look back, to be quite frank about it, there has been a record of hostility, not to say contempt, for the requirements of our national security, for the military and what's involved in sustaining it--especially, by the way, for our national intelligence apparatus, where they seem to be more afraid of rogue American actions than they were of the rogues who are trying to kill and destroy us.

And I think that this is all going to come out in the wash during the election campaign.

HANNITY: I'm confident, as well--and I love the fact that we're having two very distinct visions, which is what I said initially to you, that this will come down to two questions: one, will you, John Kerry, continue the War on Terror, track down terrorists where they are, or not? Do you think the American people are overtaxed or undertaxed? Should we extend the deadline for taxes?

But one of the things--I take heart in the fact that they're out there saying the president's AWOL, that he started a war for political benefit, that we're not better off with[out] Saddam. Doesn't it show they're desperate?

KEYES: Well, I think that it shows that they don't have much of a grasp of the real situation if they think this election's going to be decided on the basis of base personal attacks, and that sort of thing. They have got to get out there and begin to articulate concerns that will strike at the heart of the real issues and dangers the country faces. They are not doing it right now, and that's why I think they'll fail.

COLMES: Thanks, Alan. Thanks for being with us.