World leaders on GOP speaking tour

(2006-09-21) — The Republican National Committee (RNC) today offered to fund a coast-to-coast U.S. speaking tour featuring Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, in the weeks leading up to November’s Congressional elections.

The offer comes in the wake of two days of public remarks by the two foreign leaders before the United Nations, the Council on Foreign Relations and U.S. news media. Their diplomatic pronouncements included…

· denying the Holocaust
· calling the U.S. president “the devil“
· praying at the U.N. for the return of Islam’s fabled 12th Imam
· praising Cuban dictator Fidel Castro
· insisting any nation has the right to develop nuclear technology
· portraying the United States as the locus of evil in the modern world
· plugging Noam Chomsky’s book “Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance.”

“President Bush can talk about his national security plan and foreign policy all day long,” said an unnamed RNC spokesman, “But no one makes a more compelling case than the duo of Mahmoud and Hugo. We want to make sure every American has an opportunity to hear these important world leaders.”

The Republican source said sponsoring the pre-election Ahmadinejad-Chavez speaking tour was also a way of “reaching across the aisle to help our colleagues in the Democrat party to get their message out, so the American voter can make an informed decision.” However, he noted that the keynote speakers had not yet accepted the invitation, saying that they were still weighing offers to work as speech-writers for Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco Treat.