Terry and Thompson Debate

I call this blog Omaha Conservatives but I have yet to post something local. I will rectify this today. Lee Terry and Nacy Thompson debated for the second district congressional seat yesterday.

Lee Terry and Nancy Thompson sparred in a debate Tuesday over the wisdom of the Iraq war and each other's work records, signaling a new intensity in their congressional race.
Terry, a Republican who is seeking a fourth term from Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District, tried to paint Thompson as a free-spending lawmaker who has missed votes in the Nebraska Legislature.
Thompson, a Democratic state senator, sought to portray Terry as an ineffective representative who has passed only one bill in his six years in Congress.
The sole televised debate of the campaign, sponsored by Omaha television station KMTV-Channel 3, was moderated by political reporter Joe Jordan.
It came a day after Terry launched an attack advertisement in which he accused Thompson of missing 25 percent of her votes last year in the Legislature.
Thompson said Terry's campaign turned negative because the race was tightening. She noted that the ad referred only to the last legislative session, when she was running for Congress.
Overall, Thompson said, her voting record for the last seven years in the Legislature is about 95 percent.
She said the attack was an attempt by Terry to divert attention from his record in the House.
"Terry's passed one bill since he's been in Congress - to rename a post office," Thompson said.
Terry stood by his commercial, saying it was not an indication that Thompson was moving up in the polls. He said he has helped write numerous pieces of legislation in Congress, even though he is not named as the author of the bills.
Terry also said that Thompson's running for office was not an excuse for her attendance record. He said he has a voting record of about 98 percent in the House, even though he has to run for re-election every two years.
"It bothers me when someone misses votes," he said.
One of the biggest discussions, and disagreements, of the night involved the Iraq war.
Thompson repeatedly denounced Congress for failing to ask the "tough questions" before the war and for failing to plan for the postwar period.
Terry, who supports President Bush's Iraq policies, stood steadfastly behind his vote for the war, saying the country is a safer place without Saddam Hussein in power.
He asked Thompson repeatedly whether she would have voted for the war. Thompson finally acknowledged she would not have voted for the war resolution.
"It was a mistake to take out Saddam Hussein?" Terry asked.
Thompson responded: "It wasn't a mistake to take Saddam out of power. But, we should have done that with the community of nations, we should have done that with our alliances."
The two also traded verbal jabs over Terry's first television commercial, in which a narrator says, "Tonight, many Nebraska parents aren't thinking about their children's education or how they'll pay for college."
Jordan asked Terry: "Do you really believe that?"
Terry defended the ad, saying Congress was taking steps to help families pay for tuition, including cutting their taxes and approving an education savings account.
These type of government policies make it easier for parents to rest, Terry said.
Thompson responded that the commercial showed "how out of touch you are with people in this district," arguing that parents are concerned about rising tuition costs.
Finally, Terry said Thompson in one of her ads has unfairly accused him of cutting veterans benefits. Terry said he always has voted to increase veterans benefits, just not as much as veterans groups wanted. That is not a cut, he said.
Thompson disagreed, saying that when the needs of veterans were not being met, a vote against their suggested budget appropriation was effectively a cut.
To which Terry responded: "Frankly, Nancy, on every issue, if we're going to get into a contest of who will spend more money, you win."
IRAQ WAR
Democrat Nancy Thompson: "We didn't prepare for the aftermath. We didn't prepare for the long range." Republican Lee Terry: "We did the right thing in going in and eliminating Saddam Hussein's regime, eliminating that weapon of mass destruction itself."
TAX CUTS/BUDGET DEFICIT
Republican Lee Terry, who supported all of the tax cuts: "If we're going to talk about creating jobs and saving our economy, tax cuts are Economics 101." Democrat Nancy Thompson, who supports rolling back some of the tax cuts: "We have to have fiscal sanity restored."