<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;"><DIV>KING: Does it -- does it matter? This is a soul searching is what a primary process is about, finding a new leader. But does it matter when you have -- it's a Democratic president, but when you're in the middle of these crises -- the country is dealing with these crises to have a party that is essentially trying to sort it out? <BR><BR>GERGEN: Well it does matter because <STRONG>it will clearly send a signal to others -- other nations if the Republican Party is split over a muscular foreign policy. You know they may just want to wait it out. They may get something that's much different. I mean this is -- the Republicans have been the hawks. <BR></STRONG><BR>I mean the neoconservatives after all you know picked up that banner and charged into Iraq and charged into Afghanistan
and to have the Republican candidates now basically say let's get out of Afghanistan as quickly as we can, or to attack the Libyan thing, you know if you're Gadhafi and watching this, you might take -- you know I don't want to go too far with this because Gadhafi is -- I think he's going to be gone soon, but -- and good riddance -- but you know a lot of Republicans were pushing President Obama to be much more aggressive and muscular in Libya.<BR><BR>And John McCain, Lindsey Graham and others thought that we ought to lower the boom on Gadhafi. It was not that long ago, of course, that President Reagan went after him with some bombs after terrorist attack in Berlin. You know, Republicans have traditionally taken a very hard line against Gadhafi and a lot of these terrorist activities, so I was surprised last night by this and I also wonder where it's going to lead in terms of defense spending among these candidates. <STRONG>If they want to spend -- if
they refuse to cut spending, what is it the military is supposed to be for when we got terrorists facing us? It almost seems like in some ways a repudiation of lot of what George W. Bush was trying to do and I was surprised.<BR><BR></STRONG>KING: An interesting point. Not only criticism of the Democratic president but in many ways perhaps criticism -- you used the word repudiation of George W. Bush. We'll keep an eye on this. It's a very interesting debate within the Republican primary.<BR><BR>David Gergen, as always, thanks for your insight.<BR><BR></DIV></div></body></html>