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"So you're in New York as well, eh? Geeze."

Predictable. So now political accumen is part and parcel of where one lives? You call that a reasonable argument? It smells of geoghraphic chauvanism, if you ask me. Why many "conservatives' continue to try and make this argument is beyond me, since it's so easily disproved. It gets made everyday on FR without regard to how stupid it is. New Yorkers "must" be brain-dead-libertine-social-liberals, while Southererns and Midwesterners are all fine, upstanding moral pillars of the community. Yeah, right.

If I engaged in that sort of chauvanism, like to say that New Yorkers are all sophisticated and have a monopoly on intelligence, and that shoutherners are all ignorant,inbred social retards, I'd be castigated from the highest rooftops FR can provide. And rightly so. Advancing a badly-flawed stereotype to advance an already weak argument does not reason make, friend.

Not that it's any of your business, but, I am a native New Yorker, who lives more than half the year in North Carolina.
Did I somehow become politically smarter, or more acceptable to you, because Charlotte is not New York? Quite frankly, while I enjoy living in Charlotte, I love New York much more. Not just because it is home, but because it offers a whole lot that Charlotte simply can't.

Be serious. I've heard so many Freepers run New York down so much as a den of sin that it's becoming a joke. Just remember: without that den of sin, you probably don't have a job and this nation is pretty much bankrupt. It is, after all, the economic engine which runs the planet. And by the way, with the exception of a few, easily identifiable groups (i.e. the democratic race bloc, unionized labor) the majority of the so-called "New York Liberals" aren't even New Yorkers; they are the Iowan farm girl, the Missouri businessman, the college professor from Kansas, the doctor from Minnesota. They are, in fact, mostly YOUR liberals, not ours. They come here to earn the kind of living that Davenport, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Minneapolis cannot provide for them.

That they happen to mostly live in Manhattan (where our own "liberals" happen to also live) does not make them a) New Yorkers and b)any less "liberal" than the inhabitants of a Harlem housing project. There's more to New York City than Manhattan (which no one who runs the city down seems to recall -- admitting that undercuts their stupid argument ot begin with), and the outer boros are far more repoublican/conservative than you care to admit. They are, however, outnumbered and outmanuevered, because "conservatives" nationally have arbitrarily decided that New York is a lost cause.

For all that, we've still somehow managed to elect republicans to the Governorship, Mayorality and Congress. For quite a long time, and regularly, no less. Perhaps they are not your "sort" of republicans, but they are republicans nonetheless.

And I'd hardly call a place where trillions of dollars change hands on a daily basis under the auspices of market capitalism "liberal", in the sense in which you mean the word. Most of what you rail against are the compromises that often must be made when 9 million souls live within an enclosed space in the name of relative peace.

"Rudy Giuliani is no conservative."

I beg to differ. Separating his social views from his economic and governing philosophies, there's nothing BUT conservatism on display. You make the mistake of believing that conservatism is simply a moral philosophy or that there isn't more than one form of conservatism. This is why people like you are continually disappointed at the polls. You are narrowly focused on two or three issues where it is impossible for government to fundamentally change society (except at the margins) and you neglect the rest.

"Yes, some candidates considered "conservative" did indeed violate a number of issues that would be considered conservative issues."

This makes no sense. Either the issues were always viewed through a conservative lens (like federal spending and national defense) or they haven't been. They aren't "sometimes" conservative or "considered conservative" as it suits your argument. They are or they aren't. If restraint of government spending was always a conservative prinicple, then Rudy Guliani has a better record in that regard than Trent Lott. The premise is not mutable between "acceptable" candidates and "non-acceptable" ones. Compare the Guliani spedning record with Lott, Frist, DeLay, Hastert, and you tell me: which one upheld that "conservative" ideal better? The panty-bunched-prayer=warrior or the cross-dressing-thrice-divorced-anti-Christ-du-jour?

"However, we're not purists here."

I certainly hope you were drunk or under the influence of a cold medicine when you made this statement, because it is patently false.

Besides, Rudy has an even bigger problem than trying to navigate a safe course through a rigged and prejudicial primary system; everywhere he goes, Al Sharpton will be right behind him shouting "Amadou Diallo" and "Abner Louima". Of course, many here didn't recognize that becaus they were caught up in the cross-dressing and abortion arguments.