Former Speaker Newt Gingrich will debate former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo at Cooper Union college tonight from 6:30-8:30 p.m. EST. You can watch the live video by going to the American Solutions website. Cuomo is a pure-as-Ivory-soap liberal and a good speaker. Gingrich is as good a conservative as Cuomo is a lib, and an even better speaker. This debate will reveal a lot about how both parties will fight for the big prize in 2008.
Update: The Draft Newt '08 team can't wait for the debate to begin. In an editorial today Matt Keller emphasizes its importance, writing:
Tonight Newt Gingrich will – along with Mario Cuomo – discuss the future paths of our nation. But what is the cause of a debate in such a historic place? America’s stability and existence today is endangered once more. The threat of collapse however, does not come from civil war but from dangers without. It is the forces that threaten us from foreign soil and the issues which are catalyst to such threats that are cause for a new debate of preservation.
Unlike the days of old however, the tone of the debate will differ. It is the evils of extremism that have replaced the evils of slavery. These evils however cannot be solely contained like that of slavery. Their spread must be stopped but they must also be stopped in whole. The means to this end have been enacted in part, by means of instilling a want for Democracy in a part of the world devoid of it. The other half lay in fighting extremism through means of force. It is through this the importance of domestic fortitude becomes apparent. The evils of war are just that; evils. Yet they are the dirty hands in which our generation faces. It is however in the knowing that the path to preservation of ourselves and others is the good and righteous thing, that I draw upon Abraham Lincoln’s closing statement from his address, upon which he shouted:
“LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.”
