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IPFS News Link • Politics: Republican Campaigns

Rand Paul's Eye-Roll Marked the End of the 9/11 Era

• The Nation

? Republicans didn't bother to hold their 2004 nominating convention in some far-flung purple state where every county was going to count that November. The Bush-Cheney campaign, which started running advertisements featuring a charred World Trade Center literally one day after the president announced his re-election bid, had a much more potent idea. The RNC happened only three miles from Ground Zero, at Madison Square Garden. Dick Cheney thundered from the stage that "if the killers of September 11 thought we had lost the will to defend our freedom, they did not know America and they did not know George W. Bush."

Fast forward twelve years to Thursday's Republican presidential debate, the first of the 2016 campaign. Chris Christie was eager to capitalize on his experience as a U.S. Attorney in New Jersey following the attacks, delivering a saccharine line about how "the hugs that I remember are the hugs that I gave to the families who lost their people on September 11th."

Senator Rand Paul, at that moment engaged with Christie on a debate about mass surveillance, then gave what we'll unilaterally dub as the most monumental eyeroll in presidential debate history:


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