Republicans Carson, Pataki push “outsider” political messages

DES MOINES - Retired neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson and former New York Gov. George Pataki trumpeted their Washington 'outsider” credentials Sunday while touting their separate 2016 Republican presidential bids to onlookers crammed into the Iowa State Fair's grand concourse.

Carson, 63, told fairgoers he would be in a position to bring new and unifying ideas to Washington D.C. to revive the economy, rejuvenate the nation's spirit and tackle the massive debt that threatens to plunge the nation into a crisis worse than the Depression era.

'I've got to tell you it's been both Democrats and Republicans who have been blowing up the budget and destroying the future for our young people,” Carson said during his 'soapbox” speech. That is why it is important in 2016 that Americans do not allow 'the professional class” to pick the next president.

He noted that the politicians competing in Iowa's first-in-the-nation precinct caucuses next Feb. 1 'want to get re-elected; I want to save our nation.”

The Detroit Republican making his first bid for elective public office said he would attack the nation's 'immoral” debt problem if elected president by balancing the federal budget, lowering corporate tax rates, and offering a six-month 'tax holiday” to repatriate overseas investment without penalty.

He later said he favored setting term limits for elected officials and federal judges - including the U.S. Supreme Court - with future presidents serving one six-year term and members of Congress also limited in years of service to prevent them from constantly focusing on their next election rather than solving the nation's problems.

Pataki, 70, appealed to rural Iowans attending the fair by referring his humble farm beginnings in touting a resume that included serving 12 years as governor of New York - including being that state's chief executive during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City's World Trade Center.

When listening to politicians making promises, he cautioned Iowans to judge them by what they've accomplished not by what they say they will do in speeches. He pointed to his record of cutting taxes, creating jobs and reducing welfare roles as backing for his claims that he will change Washington, cut the government workforce by 15 percent and restore power to the people currently influenced by special interests.

'I know that I can do it because I did it in New York,” he said.

In discussing the 9/11 attacks, Pataki said, 'I felt the flames and could taste the air and I vowed then that this country, so long as I had anything to say about it, was never going to bow down to radical Islam again, we were never going to forget the lesson of Sept. 11” - a lesson that he said is as clear now with attacks by ISIS and its worldwide efforts to recruit new members.

'We paid a horrible cost, a horrible penalty for not realizing the threat they posed to us in America,” he said. 'Today, ISIS poses as a large a threat if not greater to America, not just cities like New York, but communities across America and we have got to stand up and defeat radical Islam over there before they can attack us here.”

Pataki advocated destroying terrorist training hubs by supporting aid directly to those fighting ISIS and ramping up bombing missions to destroying the planning hubs before they have a chance to attack Americans, as well as shutting down Internet recruitment efforts.

'You're going to hear a lot of candidates. They're all going to talk about I'll do this and I'll do that. Ask them how are they going to do it? Have they done it? And what is their mission as to how they're going to protect America in the 21st century?”