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"We're going around aggravating a lot of people, bombing different countries," Paul told a crowd in Dubuque. "Military is militarism, the kind of thing (President Dwight) Eisenhower warned us about. He said watch out for the military industrial complex, they will always have to have an enemy." As president, Paul says he would cut a staggering $1 trillion from the federal budget, audit and eventually eliminate the Federal Reserve, and shift money from the military budget to Social Security and some children's health programs. His pledge to repeal the Patriot Act draws applause, as does his vow to eliminate the Internal Revenue Service. To be sure, Paul's campaign hasn't been entirely unconventional. He's run attack ads against several rivals, especially Newt Gingrich, whom Paul has depicted as trading on contacts he developed as House speaker to enrich himself in the private sector. And Paul has benefited from a well-established network of supporters in Iowa left from his 2008 campaign. With renewed interest comes renewed scrutiny. Paul walked out of a CNN interview Thursday when pressed on statements that appeared in newsletters he published in the early 1990s, when he was on a hiatus from Congress. Paul has disavowed the statements and said he did not know who had penned them. Among the statements: "Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities." Another newsletter passage said "if you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be." Paul previously said such material was the work of ghostwriters, while acknowledging he bore "some moral responsibility" for it. Confronted by a tearful breast cancer survivor on how he would ensure health insurance companies did not discriminate on the basis of a pre-existing condition, Paul suggested she rely on churches and charitable hospitals to ensure her continued care. "You can't say to the insurance company, `You have to insure me no matter what I have, I've had a prior disease,'" Paul said. "It's like me being on the Gulf Coast and not buying wind insurance until the hurricane's right off the coast." The woman, Danielle Lin, 35, of Iowa City, said she had been ready to caucus for Paul until hearing his answer. "There has to be a middle ground, there has to be regulation to protect American people from corporations," Lin said. "I love Paul's ideas, but there just has to be someone who gets the human piece of this."
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