04/27/2007

By MIKE BAKER  / Associated Press

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani continued his offensive against Democrats on Friday, saying his party is best qualified to deal with wars against poverty at home and terrorism abroad.

Drawing from the first Democratic presidential debate the day before, Giuliani blasted his rivals for ignoring private sector solutions to health care and education.

"I'll be darned if I'm going to concede that Democrats care more about poor people than we do," Giuliani told an audience of the North Carolina Conservative Leadership Conference during a brief base-building trip to the home state of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards.

Giuliani said Democratic calls for mandatory universal health care would only exacerbate the cost of care by putting the system in the hands of bureaucrats.

Democratic candidates renewed their calls for universal health care during a debate in South Carolina on Thursday, saying that a new system would help streamline costs and cover the nation's 45 million uninsured.

"They're moving toward socialized medicine so fast, it'll make your head spin," Giuliani said of the debate, adding that private competition and limits on malpractice lawsuits could help bring down the cost of care. "When we want to cover poor people, as we should, we give them vouchers."

Edwards shot back Friday, saying Giuliani should focus on "serious proposals, not political attacks."

"Rudy Giuliani needs to put an end to his campaign to divide America and concentrate on offering solutions to the big challenges we face," Edwards said in a written statement.

Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, has offered specifics about a health care plan that would require everyone to have health insurance. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois used Thursday's debate to describe a health care plan that would increase coverage by allowing the uninsured to buy into a plan similar to the one for federal employees.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has yet to offer a specific universal health care plan.

Giuliani also extended his critiques Friday to education, saying that Democrats are unwilling to reform the nation's education system with charter schools. The former New York City mayor said he struggled to reform the schools in that city.

"We weren't really able to fundamentally reform them," Giuliani said, saying he was young and naive to think he could. "They have to be (reformed) if they are going to be a ladder out of poverty."

The combative criticisms added a new chapter to Giuliani's offensive against Democrats. He drew the ire of several Democratic leaders earlier this week when he said the country needs a Republican leader to maintain safety from terrorism.

He stood by those remarks Friday and said Democratic presidential candidates, most of whom want to begin timed troop withdrawals from Iraq, are "retreating in the face of this terrorist threat."

"When, in the history of war, has a nation that decides to retreat, printed up a schedule of that retreat and handed it to its enemies?" Giuliani said at the event, hosted by the Civitas Institute, a Raleigh-based conservative think tank.

Giuliani, who served as New York City mayor during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, praised President Bush for his response to the event. Giuliani said the United States needs to continue to fight terrorism abroad and at home with "aggressive" use of military strength, the Patriot Act and electronic surveillance and interrogation.

"(Terrorists) do not respect weakness, they take advantage of weakness," Giuliani said. "They certainly respect strength."