Posted on 08/11/2006 8:33:13 AM PDT by Reagan Man
Many pundits accurately noted that Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman’s loss in last week’s Senate primary in Connecticut would cause the Democratic Party to lurch further left, making it less viable in national elections.
But Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol came up with a novel idea wherein Lieberman’s loss would lead the Republican Party into a leftward lurch of its own—thus killing the GOP in national elections.
Kristol floated the idea that Lieberman—who filibustered the nomination of John Bolton as UN ambassador, voted against the Bush tax cuts, and boasted an American Conservative Union rating of 0% in 2004—could run as the next Republican vice presidential candidate, possibly on a ticket headed by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. That would give the GOP an all-liberal, all-Blue State ticket in 2008.
Class Warrior
Whether Lieberman wins or loses in Connecticut in November, Kristol wrote in an editorial for the Weekly Standard, “the possibility exists for creating a broader and deeper governing party, with Lieberman Democrats welcomed into the Republican fold, just as Scoop Jackson Democrats became Reaganites in the 1980s. Is it too fanciful to speculate about a 2008 GOP ticket of McCain-Lieberman, or Giuliani-Lieberman, or Romney-Lieberman, or Allen-Lieberman, or Gingrich-Lieberman?”
What Kristol ignores is that with few significant exceptions, other than his position on the Iraq War—which is effectively the same as Sen. Hillary Clinton’s position on the Iraq War—Joe Lieberman is a hard-core liberal.
He was right at home as Al Gore’s Democratic running mate in 2000, and had Gore won an Electoral College victory that year, there is no doubt Lieberman would have enthusiastically supported and advanced all the left-wing causes Gore was preparing to advance.
In fact, Lieberman’s ACU rating has drifted leftward since 2000, when he scored a 20%. As noted, in the election year of 2004, when he was seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, Lieberman scored a perfect 0%. Last year, he bounced back all the way to 8%. Liberal Republican Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, by contrast, both scored 32%. Sen. Arlen Specter (R.-Pa.) had a 63%.
There can be no disputing that on social, fiscal and regulatory issues, Lieberman marches with the far left. He repeatedly opposed the ban on partial-birth abortion, voted to lift President Reagan’s Mexico City policy which denies U.S. foreign aid to groups that perform or promote abortions, voted for a resolution that claimed Roe v. Wade was correctly decided, and filibustered the constitutional amendment to protect traditional marriage. Lieberman also filibustered the nomination of Miguel Estrada to the federal Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and voted against Sam Alito for the Supreme Court.
On the fiscal front, Lieberman opposed the Bush tax cuts and attacked them with the typical class-war demagoguery employed by virtually all contemporary Democrats. “George Bush protects loopholes for corporations and tightens the noose around the necks of America’s working families. His policies have abandoned the middle class and attacked the poor,” Lieberman said in a 2003 speech. “… More than a million Americans fell into poverty in just the first year of the Bush Administration. But George Bush has ignored these crises, and he’s given a huge tax cut that we can’t afford to people who already can afford just about everything they want.”
In fact, Bush cut income taxes for everybody who actually paid them.
Meanwhile, Lieberman has never been opposed to big government, pushing increased federal spending and intervention in the free market. In 2005, he got a 9% rating—or a grade of “F”—from the National Taxpayers Union.
Lieberman voted to force the U.S. to comply with the terms of Al Gore’s Kyoto global-warming treaty, even though the treaty was never ratified.
He voted against allowing oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
He voted against extending the moratorium on Internet taxation.
He voted to extend the phony “assault-weapons” ban and against exempting gun manufacturers from lawsuits seeking to hold them liable for violence committed by others.
Even on national security-related issues, his supposed strong suit, Lieberman has sometimes gone soft. In 2002, he was one of only 19 senators who voted against the American Servicemembers Protection Act, designed to protect U.S. military personnel from prosecution by the International Criminal Court. As noted, he filibustered the nomination of John Bolton as UN ambassador, and he voted against confirming his former colleague John Ashcroft (who predictably became a stellar force in the war against terror) as attorney general.
Most of the prospective presidential candidates whom Bill Kristol ponders heading a 2008 Republican ticket with Joe Lieberman as running mate can be expected to hit the campaign trail after the November elections to try to prove to Republican primary voters that he shares their conservative values. These include McCain, Romney, Allen and Gingrich. It will be harder for some—particularly McCain, who has committed many grave apostasies in recent years—than for others.
But Rudy Giuliani was never a conservative of any kind.
As Kate O’Beirne pointed out in a recent analysis in National Review, Giuliani was endorsed for mayor in 1989 by the Liberal Party, which said of him: “He agreed with the Liberal Party’s views on affirmative action, gay rights, gun control, school prayer, and tuition tax credits.”
In 1992, O’Beirne reports, Giuliani said Nelson Rockefeller represented “a tradition in the Republican Party I’ve worked to rekindle—the Rockefeller, Javits, Lefkowitz tradition.”
The Republican Party is in trouble today not because it has drifted away from Rockefeller Republicanism, but because it is drifting back toward it.
The conservative vision is comprehensive. It believes in limited government, traditional values, and a foreign policy that looks at our national interests with cold, clear eyes and works aggressively to defend them. Since the Republican Party unambiguously embraced this vision with the election of Ronald Reagan as President in 1980 it has lost only one presidential election, and has become the majority party in Congress.
The one presidential election that was lost—by the senior President Bush—came after Bush had turned his back on core conservative values.
In recent years, many Republicans have begun again to betray these values. That is why the GOP congressional majority is vulnerable in this November’s election.
The job of conservatives between now and then, and through the next election cycle, will be to take our party back—not to hand it over to Rudy Giuliani and Joe Lieberman
If Giuliani somehow gets elected POTUS, Rudy would become the most liberal President in US history. More liberal then Clinton, Carter, LBJ, JFK, Truman and FDR. And those are just the Democrats!
A Jew and an Italian walk into the White House.....
We don't MUMBLES one heart-beat away.
Pretty scary !
Oh please. Say what you like about Rudy, but he is definitely not to the left of Carter, Johnson, Clinton, and the like.
Seems like everyone who is not from New York has a pretty distorted picture of him. I wonder whose interest that is in? It's not in the GOP's interest, that's for sure. Rudy has big-time cojones and isn't at all afraid to take on the left-wing establishment, including the grievance groups and the education lobby, which is a hell of a lot more than can be said of almost any other GOP politician. And unlike too many in the GOP he is not confused about terrorism and you won't hear any "Religion of Peace" BS out of his mouth.
And round here suddenly LIEberman has become a "principled statesman." What a laugh.
Maybe not as Republicans.... But as leaders of a new party that would marginalize the hate-America Democrats and give us two parties that believe in defending America... that would be a good thing for the nation.
Kristol floated the idea that Lieberman—who filibustered the nomination of John Bolton as UN ambassador, voted against the Bush tax cuts, and boasted an American Conservative Union rating of 0% in 2004—could run as the next Republican vice presidential candidate, possibly on a ticket headed by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Did he really?!?!
I know the lead paint chips taste good Bill, but they are doing damage.
Yup, liberal socially but a hawk on the war, which is paramount at the moment. How 'bout Giuliani-Rice? Giuliani won my war heart forever when he told the Saudi's to take their ten million and put it where the sun doesn't shine. No tap dancing around the issue.
The job of conservatives between now and then, and through the next election cycle, will be to take our party back?
The job of conservatives is to come up with a powerhouse, winning candidate. Right now there are none.
OR vica verca!
Rudy Guiliani has marched in lockstep with liberals on affirmative action, gay rights, gay marriage, gun control, school prayer, tuition tax credits, liberal immigration policies, and he's reinforced it, time and time again. Just about everytime Rudy opens his mouth, offensive liberal words come pouring out. As Mayor, Rudy put liberals in high-paid city jobs, an indication what a Rudy WH would look like. Here then is Rudy in his own words:
--The New York State Liberal Party on its endorsement of Rudy Giuliani for Mayor: "When the Liberal Party Policy Committee reviewed a list of key social issues of deep concern to progressive New Yorkers, we found that Rudy Giuliani agreed with the Liberal Party's stance on a majority of such issues. He agreed with the Liberal Party's views on affirmative action, gay rights, gun control, school prayer and tuition tax credits. As Mayor, Rudy Giuliani would uphold the Constitutional and legal rights to abortion." N.Y.S. Liberal Party Endorsement Statement of Candidate Giuliani for Mayor of New York City April 8, 1989
--On the Republican Party: "Mr. Rockefeller represented 'a tradition in the Republican Party' I've worked hard to re-kindle - the Rockefeller, Javits, Lefkowitz tradition." Rudy Giuliani told the New York Times July 9, 1992
--Village Voice Interview with Guiliani: He was asked: "What kind of Republican Is [Giuliani]? A Reagan Republican?" Giuliani pauses before answering: "I'm a Republican." Village Voice January 24, 1989
--On Attending 1996 Republican Convention: Rudy expressed his pleasure when he wasn't invited to the Republican National Convention in San Diego. "If I take three or four days off from city business, I want to do it for a substantive purpose. It didn't seem to me any substantive purpose could be served by going to the Republican convention." said Rudy. Rudy! An Investigative Biography of Rudolph Giuliani, Page 459, by Wayne Barrett
--On Barry Goldwater: Giuliani described John Kennedy as "great and brilliant. Barry Goldwater as an "incompetent, confused and sometimes idiotic man." New York Daily News, May 13, 1997
--On President Bill Clinton: Shortly before his last-minute endorsement of Bob Dole in the 1996 presidential election, Giuliani told the Post's Jack Newfield that "most of Clinton's policies are very similar to most of mine." Rudy! An Investigative Biography of Rudolph Giuliani, Wayne Barrett.
--The Daily News quoted Giuliani as saying March 1996: "Whether you talk about President Clinon, Senator Dole.... The country would be in very good hands in the hands of any of that group." An Investigative Biography of Rudolph Giuliani, Wayne Barrett.
--Revealing at one point that he was "open" to the idea of endorsing Clinton, Rudy said: "When I ran for mayor both times, '89 and '93, I promised people that I would be, if not bipartisan, at least open to the possibility of supporting Democrats." Rudy! An Investigative Biography of Rudolph Giuliani, Wayne Barrett, Page 459
---Rudy Giuliani Endorses Democratic Governor Mario Cuomo October 1994: "From my point of view as the mayor of New York City, the question that I have to ask is, ˜Who has the best chance in the next four years of successfully fighting for our interest? Who understands them, and who will make the best case for it?' Our future, our destiny is not a matter of chance. It's a matter of choice. My choice is Mario Cuomo." Rudy Giuliani: Emperor of the City book by Andrew Kirtzman, Page 133
--Reaction to Giuliani Endorsement of Cuomo: "Once again, Rudolph Giuliani has demonstrated that liberalism is the foundation of his political philosophy. While Giuliani sold a bill of goods to trusting Republicans and Reagan Democrats that he had abandoned his roots as a McGovern Democrat, in his endorsement of Mario Cuomo, Mr. Liberal himself, he has shown his true colors. Giuliani's argument that Cuomo will be better for the city has a hollow ring to it. Perhaps Rudy wants a governor who will sign over a blank check to constantly bail out the city from its fiscal problems. Giuliani knows, as do all New Yorkers, that Cuomo's liberal policies have been an economic disaster for our city and state." "But Rudy doesn't care. He has proven he will do anything to stop the election of a conservative Republican - but he won't succeed." Michael Long, Chairman N.Y.S. Conservative Party Press Statement, October 25, 1994
--"[Quite] frankly, you have to understand the fact that Rudy Giuliani was a McGovern Democrat, he was endorsed by the Liberal Party when he ran for Mayor. In his heart, he's a Democrat. He's paraded all over this country with Bill Clinton and, in fact, he's very comfortable with Mario Cuomo. But what Rudy Giuliani wants is to be bailed out in the city, in the mess he's in, and everybody understands very clearly in politics that they struck a deal, that Mario's going to continue to be the big spender, save Rudy the options of raising taxes by pouring money statewide into the City of New York and bailing it out. Quite frankly, I predict that he will join the Democratic Party." Interview with Michael Long, Chairman N.Y.S. Conservative Party, CNN Crossfire, October 25, 1994
--On Gay Domestic-Partner Rights: "National Republicans can lump it if they don't like his new domestic-partners bill, "Mayor Giuliani said yesterday. "I really haven't thought about what the impact is on Republican politics or national politics or Democratic politics," Giuliani said. The bill he submitted to the City Council would extend the benefits city agencies must grant to gay and lesbian couples. "I'm proud of it," Giuliani said of the bill. "I think it puts New York City ahead of other places in the country." New York Daily News, May 13, 1998
--On Gay-Rights/Gay Rights Bill: Giuliani favors extended civil-rights protection for gays and lesbians. Giuliani urged, by letter, to the New York Senate Majority Leader to pass the state's first ever gay rights bill, but did it privately. "I am writing to convey my support for the current legislation to prohibit discrimination against gays and lesbians, and to urge you to allow the bill onto the floor of the Senate for prompt action." ".......It is my belief that we can penalize discrimination [against gays] without creating any potentially objectionable special privileges or preferential treatment." New York Post, June 5, 1993
--Now Rudy Giuliani has jumped on the bandwagon, pressing the state Republican Party to release a gay-rights bill to the Senate floor for a vote. Marching in Sunday's [Gay Pride] parade, he has enlisted in the struggle to destroy the family. What a perfectly abominable springboard to seek high political office. Ray Kerrison New York Post, June 30, 1993
--Giuliani said homosexuality is "good and normal." quoting Ray Kerrison New York Post, July 7, 1989
--On Gay Domestic Partnership: "I have no objection to the concept of domestic partnership," said Rudy Giuliani on Informed Sources New York T.V. Show (PBS), May, 1992
--On Abortion: Leaflets distributed by the Giuliani campaign .... said that he opposes restrictions to Federal Medicaid financing for abortions and opposes the Hyde Amendment, which is intended to deny support for that financing. New York Times, June 18, 1993.
--Rudy Guiliani on abortion: "I'd give my daughter the money for it [an abortion]."
--"I never called for the overturning of Roe vs. Wade." Rudy Giuliani, New York Newsday, September 1, 1989
--As mayor, Rudy Giuliani will uphold a woman's right of choice to have an abortion. Giuliani will fund all city programs which provide abortions to insure that no woman is deprived of her right due to an inability to pay. He will oppose reductions in state funding. He will oppose making abortion illegal. New York Times, August 4, 1989
--On Partial Birth Abortion: Mr. Giuliani has said that New York State law should not be changed to outlaw the procedure. New York Times, January 7, 1998
--On School Choice: "He doesn't support tuition tax credits and vouchers." Sandra Feldman, President of N.Y.C. Teacher's Union, 1993
--On Taxes: [Giuliani] says ruling out a tax increase is "political pandering." Newsday, August 31, 1989
--On Rudy's 2008 candidacy: "That dream of Rudy Giuliani as the man of 2008 was a fantasy created in New York City, and not something that is an accepted reality to anyone who knows the national Republican Party or even Washington Republicans," said the former White House official. "That’s the joke of this." Ben Smith, page 17 The New York Observer 12/20/2004 edition.
Hypothetical - what if Guiliani looks like he gonna win the Republican nomination? What to conservatives do?
Related anecdote: I told my wife Guiliani was leading the polls. She said "for which party?"
Lieberman is forever Sore Loserman. He pulled this crap in 00 and now he's sore again. He needs to go away and new leadership needs to come in. Ned Lamont is a great target. He should do his thing. Freaking career pols who flip when they get the boot. Sheesh. Get a job or something.
Billy's Paint Chips or maybe Kristol-meth
Regardless, his seemingly as bonkers as the just video clipped drunken 7 months pregnant Brittany Spears.
I could come up with a similiarly lengthy and one-sided list of left-wing positions held and advanced by our current President. Your analysis is crafted with a conclusion in mind and is not an accurate representation of Giuliani. It is easy to tell from your description of him that you are not at all familiar with New York or what Rudy had actually done as DA and mayor of the city.
But keep on believing the caricature you have created there, if it makes you feel good.
I was born in NYCity and raised in Brooklyn just like Rudy Giuliani. Grew up with many liberal Democrats, just like Rudy Giuliani. I know what makes Rudy tick. Giuliani is a northeast liberal Republican who joined the GOP to advance his career in federal law enforcement. Obviously Giuliani has many FReepers fooled into thinking he's some type of moderate centrist. Nothing could be further from the truth.
There are plenty of conservatives in the GOP who could lead America and prosecute the WOT just as well as PresBush. We don't need Rudy the liberal in the Oval Office. He offers conservatives nothing.
More like a Condi-Juan Williams or David Horowitz ticket
But only after Juan makes his complete Horowitz conversion
"A Jew and an Italian walk into the White House"
I can see the sectarian violence now.
He offers conservatives a man who will really fight the war the way it needs to be fought. And that is the #1 issue of our time.
That's your stance, that since I'm not a New Yorker my opinion is not valid?
"But keep on believing the caricature you have created there"
I didn't create it:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1665819/posts
It's your opinion that he's not a liberal but the well documented post I copied and pasted proves that he is exactly that.
Ouch. I guess I needed that bit of reality as I had been somewhat positive about Rudy running. He HAD been about #3 or #4 on my list.
No thanks!
My stance is that if you had first-hand knowledge of Giuliani as a politician, you would know that his liberal social positions are the least significant thing about him, rather than emphasize them as if that was all he was about.
The man turned a left-wing, crime-infested sewer into one of the safest cities in the world. He took on the racial grievance lobby and won, something that I know of no other politician to have done. Same with the education lobby and a lot of other entrenched interests. He turned the crime-and-porn infested Times Square into a virtual Disneyland. And of course he told the Saudis to take their blood money and shove it, something I haven't heard from ANY other politician. If he does the same things for the nation as a whole there is no conservative who would be upset about it, and there's no reason to believe that Rudy could not do it. What he accomplished in office was simply unimaginable beforehand.
Compare to our current President, allegedly conservative, yet whose first act in office was to enact a massive entitlement program the likes of which has not been seen since LBJ, who cooperates with Ted Kennedy's education agenda, who aids and abets a massive invasion of illegals in direct violation of his oath of office, and who equivocates on Islam and sadly, now negotiates with terrorists.
Or compare Rudy's accomplishments with those of any other candidate on the radar for 2008. You can naysay about him all you like, but you do you have that is better?
Offer me a credible alternative. Who you got lined up?
Kristol & Barnes: Rockefeller Republicans at the Weekly Standard Country Club dispensing lead balloons to us hayseed conservative "bloggers" stuck on talk radio...
Where did I claim that President Bush is conservative? What our President has done, is appoint 2 conservative S.C. justices.
I am not pleased with his liberal policies either.
I'm sure Rudi made a fine mayor for a liberal big city and I am equally sure he is a patriotic American in the same mold as Joe Lieberman and like Lieberman, he is liberal to the core.
As delusional a statement as anything ever posted on DU. Liberals have paranoid obsessive Bush-hate, conservo-utopians have paranoid obsessive Giuliani-hate.
Kristol seems to be doing another Dick Morris impression. Hard to take either seriously these days.
LOL
you're dreaming NOT_Like_Reagan_Man
He isn't more liberal than FDR.
That said, if he doesn't get the GOP nomination, and he won't, he isn't going to run as an indy. It won't happen.
You are lost in the political ozone. ABRG! That means "anybody but Rudy Giulaini". ANY conservative Republican will do just fine. I'd even support a moderate-conservative. Liberals need not apply. With 2-years and 3-months to go, the field is wide open. The list of candidates will come together in the next 6-9 moinths. We shall see. One thing I'm confident about, Rudy will not win the GOP nomination. That would seriously fracture the GOP, and mark the beginning of the end of the Republican Party as we've come to know it.
Maybe I'm not old enough to remember Kristol's whole career, but I've never read anything that makes him seem like a real conservative.
So, MichellefromOhio shows up and in the spirit of a good old harpy, starts tossing personal insults around. How juvenile of you. LOL
I would never vote for a ticket with Rudy, Lieberman, McCain or Romney on them.
I wouldn't know about DU. Never been there. Obviously you have. I come onto Free Republic to discuss how to advance conservatism, not liberalism. You need to get your facts straight.
If you think Rudy Giuliani's isn't more liberal then FDR, Truman, JFK, LBJ, Clinton and Carter, then I doubt you're a conservative. You may get a chance to vote for Rudy and I'm sure it would please you too.
how is it that anyone continues ot refer to bill kristol as a conservative?
Gentlemen, I present to you a challenge. Will you be merely naysayers like the Democrats, or do you actually have a constructive alternative to propose? I'm tired of people bashing Rudy Giuliani, who did incredible - previously unimaginable - things for my home town, and having no better suggestion of their own.
Last night I talked with a man who is a native Texan and WW2 vet who grew up poor but is now a multi-millionaire primarily from frugal living, hard work, and wise investing. Lives quietly in a modest suburban home. Faithful churchgoing Christian his entire life, faithful to his wife his entire marriage, hasn't been to the movies in more than a decade, hates the local paper because it is liberal, doesn't talk fondly of FDR, and can't recall ever voting for a Democrat. Never misses an election. IOW, a rock-solid Southern conservative, both social and economic, who was voting GOP decades before Texas became a 2-party state. The talk turned to politics last night, and one of the things he said was, "Giuliani is the first politician since Reagan that really makes me want to go out and vote for him."
Anecdotal, but this guy has been somewhat of a political barometer ever since I've known him.
When Giuliani wins the primaries, he will have to put a conservative on the ticket to unify the party. We would see something like Giuliani-Allen, and never anything remotely close to Giuliani-Lieberman. Two northeasterners, two social liberals, two "ethnic" candidates -- it isn't the most competitive ticket we can build.
We need moderates to win, yes, but forgetting about conservatives is suicide.
"I'm tired of people bashing Rudy Giuliani, who did incredible - previously unimaginable - things for my home town, and having no better suggestion of their own."
I think they have Tom Tancredo or Mike Pence in mind. The most electable social conservative is George Allen, and I doubt even he could defeat the Hildebeast.
I would support either one before Giuliani. But if they don't run, then they are not a choice. Allen I think would be a poor choice because he does not present himself well on television, and any candidate for President will have to spend a lot of time doing that.
Right now, no one in the GOP has announced they're runnning in 2008. That includes Giuliani. There are many Republicans who have been mentioned as possible candidates. You know the names as well as I do.... McCain, Gingrich, Allen, Rommney, Frist, Tancredo and several others. I'll admit, its not a strong group at first viewing, but I don't consider any of them to be liberal Republicans. Not a one. OTOH, Giuliani IS a liberal Republican, period. We'll know soon enough who will decide to step forward and run for the GOP nomination. Just yesterday a FReeper mentioned that Tommy Franks would make a good candidate for the GOP. Maybe so.
However, Free Republic is a political website where mostly conservatives gather to discuss and debate the issues, and advance the conservative agenda. Certain people around FR have a problem with conservatives and it doesn't go unnoticed. Evoking Democrats and trying to tie free and open discussion on the issues to leftwing partisan websites, seems like a method that liberals use to undermine FR`s conservatism.
Having said that, when you examine ALL the issues, I don't see much differnce between Giuliani and Lieberman. Since I'd never ever vote for Lieberman for Prez, I'd have no good reason to consider voting for Giulinai for POTUS either.
McCain and Frist are absolutely unacceptable, they are icons of everything that is wrong with the Senate. I trust I need not go into detail.
Romney has no shot, as no Republican wants nationalized health care, and unless he fixes the Big Dig - probably impossible - he will be under fire for it ever after.
Tancredo is good, but he needs to break out of the fringe mold he's been cast in. I don't see him doing that, and he really has to prepare the ground now if he's going into 2008 as anything other than a single-issue candidate. Great issue, but general elections are not won on single issues. Gingrich would be great - will he run? I think that ultimately he will not, that he is more comfortable as a private citizen.
However, Free Republic is a political website where mostly conservatives gather to discuss and debate the issues, and advance the conservative agenda.
The #1 issue on every conservative's agenda should be the war. Nothing else matters if we don't survive the onslaught of Islam. Whatever else his faults, Rudy is right, spot on with this one, and in that he is one of a precious few.
Certain people around FR have a problem with conservatives and it doesn't go unnoticed.
If you are referring to me as one of those "certain people", you are dead wrong, and you know it. I don't march in lockstep with any dogma, but to characterize me as unconservative is pure ad hominem. Those familiar with my posts know that such an allegation is laughable. I was engaged in conservative activism here before you ever showed up, buddy, so you can stuff that in your pipe and smoke it.
Evoking Democrats and trying to tie free and open discussion on the issues to leftwing partisan websites, seems like a method that liberals use to undermine FR`s conservatism.
Democrats are "evoked" here all the time. Your imputation that I am trying to "tie free and open discussion" is ironic given that the sentence prior is designed to have that very effect. And your mention of leftwing partisan websites is misplaced, as any person can see there has been no such mention. You weren't engaged in any "free and open discussion", you were engaged in a smear of a fellow Republican (supremely ironic given your handle, perhaps you have forgotten the "11th Commandment"?), and had proposed no better alternative, which is exactly what the Democrats have been doing on every issue, oppose oppose oppose, and nothing when asked for a better idea. So before you start taking potshots at longtime FReepers like myself, maybe you ought to look in the mirror.
All I can ask is consider the consequences of us losing the global war on terrorism.
If the Dems pull us out of Iraq, the members of the global Islamist movement aren't going to stop. Seasoned terrorists will be delirious with victory over the Great Satan and will relocate, setting up shop in Europe and North America. Democrats, with the bully pulpit, will put the blame squarely on Bush for making a tiny minority from the Religion of Peace mad at us. They don't understand the gravity nor the scope of the problem.
Plus there is the issue of Ahmadinejad, an end-of-times fanatic, developing and using nuclear bombs.
Now, Tancredo, Pence, Allen et cetera are excellent on the terror issue. But if they cannot defeat Hillary, we all lose. Tancredo will be labelled a racist, Romney is a Mormon, Pence is our version of Howard Dean-- we need someone who can win. At this point in history, that looks like McCain or Giuliani, or some unknown candidate as you mentioned above.
I'd vote for a flaming communist that would defend American over a solid conservative that wouldn't. That's how serious our historical situation is today. We can roll back bad abortion law. We can't replace Atlanta after terrorists nuke the city.
Been around the GOP and conservative politics since the 60`s. You're the one who compared conservatives, that like to engage in political dissent, aka. "free speech", on FR, as "merely naysayers like the Democrats". Smoke that bulls**t yourself, bucko.
>>>> And your mention of leftwing partisan websites is misplaced, as any person can see there has been no such mention.
DU WAS mentioned by one FReeper and as far as I'm concerned, your "naysayers" remark was along the same lines.
>>>>So before you start taking potshots at longtime FReepers like myself, maybe you ought to look in the mirror.
Potshots? What potshots? LOL Stop your whining already. If you think I'm gonna hold back on my criticism of Giuliani, you're wrong. I suggest you get use seeing Rudy being picked on, especially should he decide to run for POTUS. And we're both longtime FReepers, 1998&1999 respectively.
>>>>You weren't engaged in any "free and open discussion", you were engaged in a smear of a fellow Republican (supremely ironic given your handle, perhaps you have forgotten the "11th Commandment"?....
Reagan did not create the phrase, Eleventh Commandment. Instead it came about during his 1966 run for the California Governorship. Reagan in his own words:
"The personal attacks against me during the primary finally became so heavy that the state Republican chairman, Gaylord Parkinson, postulated what he called the Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican. It's a rule I followed during that campaign and have ever since."
Reagan actually broke his own rule when he ran against PresFord for the GOP nomination in 1976. Reagan criticized Ford during the primary season, right up through and including the GOP convention. Reagan was a gentleman and he wanted everyone to like him, but when the chips were on the table Reagan was a tough SOB. Ford found out how tough Reagan was in 1976 and George Bush found out how tough Reagan was in the 1980 campaign for President.
I'm playing hardball politics with the idea that some folks are expressing, that a liberal like Rudy Giuliani is the right man to be POTUS. IMO, Rudy is not that man. No liberal is!
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