Posted on 02/09/2007 8:22:33 AM PST by BunnySlippers
Rudy Giuliani: Supply-Sider-in-Chief
Republican primary voters should rally around the GOP field's most accomplished supply-sider, the all-but-announced Rudolph W. Giuliani. Having sliced taxes and slashed Gotham's government, New York's former mayor is the leading fiscal conservative among 2008's GOP presidential contenders.
Before Giuliani's January 1, 1994 inauguration, New York's economy was on a stretcher. Amid soaring unemployment, 235 jobs vanished daily. Financier Felix Rohatyn complained: "Virtually all human activities are taxed to the hilt." Punitive taxes helped fuel a $2.3 billion deficit.
Mayor-elect Giuliani sounded Reaganesque when he announced he would "reduce the size and cost of city government" to balance the budget. In his first State of the City address, he said: "We're going to cut taxes to attract jobs so our people can work."
Giuliani spent eight years keeping these promises.
"America's Mayor" cut or killed 23 levies, saving taxpayers $9.8 billion. Giuliani pared Gotham's top income-tax rate by 20.6%. Washington, D.C.'s CFO reported that between 1993 and 2001, local taxes on a family of four New Yorkers earning $50,000 fell 23.7%.
Giuliani cut the commercial-rent tax, curbed sales taxes, and curtailed the marriage penalty on taxpaying couples. Giuliani proudly shaved Gotham's hotel tax from 6% to 5 in 1994. Consequently, that tax's revenues soared from $135 million in Fiscal Year 1995 to $239 million in FY 2001.
Giuliani defends his supply-side instincts with bracing candor. Asked after September 11 if he would hike taxes, Giuliani called that "a dumb, stupid, idiotic, and moronic thing to do."
Giuliani's expenditure growth averaged 2.9% annually, while local inflation between January 1994 and December 2001 averaged 3.6%. His FY 1995 budget decreased outlays by 1.6%, while his post-9/11 FY 2002 plan lowered appropriations by 2.6%.
If President Bush had followed Giuliani's example and limited Washington's spending to 2.9% average, annual growth, the just-unveiled FY 2008 federal budget would cost $2.275 trillion, not $2.9 trillion, saving taxpayers $625 billion, the Cato Institute's Stephen Slivinski estimates. Such Giulianian fiscal discipline would generate a $386 billion surplus, not an anticipated $239 billion deficit.
Giuliani repeatedly privatized municipal assets. Giuliani sold WNYC radio for $20 million, WNYC-TV for $207 million, and Gotham’s share of the U.N. Plaza Hotel for $85 million. Divesting the New York Coliseum excised an eyesore from Columbus Circle and added $345 million to city coffers. Giuliani also let the private Central Park Conservancy manage Manhattan's fabled urban forest.
These eight years of tax reduction and fiscal responsibility helped hammer unemployment from 10.4 percent in 1993 to 5.7 percent in 2001. Simultaneously, personal income advanced 53 percent.
It's hard to compare a two-term ex-mayor, a one-term governor, and a four-term U.S. senator. Nevertheless, Cato's 2006 gubernatorial report card gives former Massachusetts chief executive Mitt Romney a "C." While the top personal tax rate fell 6 percent on his watch, thanks to a referendum voters approved before he arrived, Romney's first budget raised $140 million by closing corporate-tax loopholes. It also featured some $501.5 million in increased fees, including higher marriage licenses (from $4 to $50), pricier gun permits ($25 to $100), a $100 biannual fee for volunteer firefighters (rescinded under pressure), and a $10, previously free, ID card that lets the blind ride Boston public-transit gratis.
Few in Congress expose outrageous federal boondoggles as fervently as does John McCain. However, he is an ambivalent tax fighter. According to Club for Growth research, McCain opposed President Clinton's 1993 tax increases and supported his 1997 capital gains tax cuts. He also voted to extend President Bush's 2003 tax cuts. For 2005, McCain earned a 78% National Taxpayers Union rating -- an "A."
Unfortunately, McCain opposed President Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. McCain voted against repealing the Death Tax in 2002. Also, in 1998, McCain embraced former Sen. Tom Daschle's (D.-S.D.) motion to approve Big Tobacco's Master Settlement Agreement, including a $1.10-per-pack cigarette-tax increase.
"I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues," McCain conceded to Wall Street Journal editorialist Stephen Moore. "I still need to be educated."
Conservatives seeking a proven leader to lasso taxes and rein in runaway spending have a natural choice for President: Rudolph W. Giuliani.
Mr. Murdock, a New York-based commentator to HUMAN EVENTS, is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
You're right about that, of course, and I'm trying to make a point that sometimes even the best of intentions ends with the worst results.
He will split the party.
Nonsense.
Alot of conservatives left the republican reservation last November. Rino Rudy will get more off.
You know that speech I keep making to you about threatening to hold your breath? It holds true here too.
I'm an evangelical and a gun owner and I'm voting for Rudy, so perhaps you shouldn't speak for everyone?
The National Shooting Sports Foundation has already come out hard against Rino Rudy. Check it out at nssf.org.
I agree, but here's the catch though - the social conservatives running for President haven't done a thing to reduce the size of the federal government. No reformation of the tax code. No trade policy that puts the U.S. at a level playing field.
So you have Rudy who's at least fiscally and national security conservative, and you have Hunter, Tancredo, etc who are social conservatives but who voted for liberal big government spending bills (and who did nothing about abortion or the existing gun control laws). Sorry, but there's no contest. I'll take the guy who has executive experience, who has the fiscal conservative credentials, and who had a bird's-eye view of terrorism than the career Congresscritters who kept a chair warm.
The post was not intended to tear anyone down... except maybe Hunter's web site administrator. We can't be pushing a site for a presidential candidate with broken links to "rightwingnews.com".
I was responding to the myriad of 'over the top' posts on every thread that mentions Rudy, or most anyone else beside Hunter. (Mostly from Hunter supporters) Some fool even posted that if Rudy is the nominee, he/she hoped Hillary wins to teach 'us' a lesson.
Rudy is not the second coming, but he's not Hillary or Obama either. Think War on Terror. Let the primaries run and let's not self destruct again. Then we need to defeat the DEM's.
But yes, Rudy's gun control, gay rights, & abortion stands are huge problems for him.
NOTE: thats more than enough reason to SLAP him even SILLYER.. multiple times.. and laugh him off stage..
I was still in Connecticut in 1989. I don't think anyone will question my bona fides as a pro-lifer since I represented (way back when I practiced law) 1100 pro-lifers arrested in abortion mill "rescues" or sit-ins.
You are right when you say that Rudy ran as a pro-lifer the first time in his first race in 1989. He lost to Dinkins who was a standard issue NYC abortion worshiper. Then Dinkins proceeded to absolutely obliterate himself politically by mishandling the Crown Heights riots against Orthodox and Chassidic Jews by black rioters enraged over the accidental death of two young black kids when a rabbis' funeral car was broadsided by a drunk driver and shoved into the kids.
Giuliani ran again in 1993 and was supported by a LOT of New York Democrats and liberals fed up with the near criminal ineptness of Dinkins. He ran as a pro-abort that time and in 1997 (undoubtedly because he had to and not because he had really converted on the subject). Having been brought around on abortion, he then embraced lavender "rights" and even appeared in a ballet tutu on stage at a lavender fundraiser complete with phony facial (MarilynMonroelike) birthmark and about three pounds of powder and rouge. The photo is forever enshrined in cyberspace and may well haunt him forever. Hear her Satanic Majesty taunting Rudy that even the Arkansas Antichrist never went THAT FAR.
All that having been said, Rudy did an absolutely magnificent job as to 9/11. I don't think that any other mayor from anywhere (other than maybe former NYC Mayor Ed Koch) would have done anywhere near as well.
Call me Pollyanna but I think that Rudy may well be privately pro-life but he will not likely be publicly pro-life. Given a checkered marital history, he may be honestly favorable to freedom for lavenders to be lavenders as the Church in which he grew up was very hostile to divorce and remarriage. Query whether he has EVER been married in the contemplation of the Catholic Church since his first marriage was forbidden by being to his first cousin and even the priest who witnessed was a first cousin of both. His second marriage was to a non-Catholic divorced woman likely without an annulment of her first marriage. If he is presently married to Judith Nathan in the eyes of the state, he may not be in the eyes of the Church unless she was not married previously or only invalidly "married" previously in Church terms. If either of those situations prevails, Rudy can marry Judy and straighten out the Church problems. OR, they can obtain the relevant annulment(s) and marry in the Church. Apologies to non-Catholics for discussing these tedious details.
Suppose that Rudy hears from his deceased mom in a dream that he has been wrong on abortion. He told Hannity the other night that he thinks abortion is a bad thing and he would counsel women not to have them. Suppose that Rudy can convince social conservatives that he really, really, really will only appoint pro-life judges and justices and defines pro-life to their satisfaction. Suppose further that he continues to oppose "gay marriage", serve traditional Italian meals at White House functions, hold an annual San Gennaro Festival on the White House Lawn (with Bernie Kerik providing security) featuring a bocci tournament televised live.
As conservatives (social, guns, fiscal, military, foreign policy, antiregulatory, and/or whatever), we have very little to choose from in the way of electable, policy purist conservatives. Neither Tancredo nor Hunter have a ghost's chance in hell although Hunter is a very good guy. That likely is the case with the excellent Sam Brownback as well. Mitt Romney has an awful lot of news footage out there promising to be a social revolutionary on abortion and lavenders whatever he may say now. It is more credible in our day and age (unfortunately for this Catholic) that Rudy thought he could be Catholic and pro-abort than that Mitt thought he could be Mormon and pro-abort. I see Mitt as Secretary of Commerce or Treasury. In truth, I probably see Rudy as Attorney General (with pledge not to help abortion or lavender "marriage" in any way).
Mike Huckabee is NOT going to be president or nominee. Maybe he will be Secretary of HHS. Hagel is not going to be president. The GOP does not nominate war resisters even if they are otherwise pro-life.
I think we will wind up nominating McCain who has been pro-war, pro-life, ? on lavenders, a POW, and generlly has a good voting record, though not perfect. Rudy is more liberal than McCain. Right now, it looks like Rudy may be the second choice of primary voters. I would like Gingrich but a lot of people would not.
So long as Rudy is bound and chained on the social issues (babies, guns, marriages, judges, at least), he just might win the nomination and the election.
I do hesitate to post this stuff this early because so verrrrrry much can happen between now and 11/2008. I do hope that people will calm down with the non-negotiable demand style of politics and be both principled enough and shrewd enough to get the best deal for the conservative movement and therefore for our country. We have litte room to indulge ourselves in the insistent search for absolute perfection.
I suspect that I will cast my primary vote for Sam Brownback and that he will not be nominated. I certainly cannot vote for Barack Obama or Her Satanic Majesty. Nor can I vote third party and facilitate the election of either. I have instructed my wife not to allow the words "He had a perfect voting record" to be put on my tombstone if she is making the decision. I expect to vote Republican and to urge others to do so.
Who knows? Rudy might turn out to be an outstanding president. Then again, maybe not, but I sure as heck know that the Demonrat won't be even an acceptable president.
We have 21 months to go and I am prepared to eat these words if convinced that I should do so.
I wouldn't count on that. Rudy has a lot of support here in the Dallas area
Boy. There's a hope to hang your hat on. /s
Somebody damned well better have some non-negotiable principles left, or this republic is finished.
...and be both principled enough and shrewd enough to get the best deal for the conservative movement and therefore for our country.
"Dealing" with liberals of either party is a losing propostion. I'm shocked that you can't look at history and discern that.
We have litte room to indulge ourselves in the insistent search for absolute perfection.
Absolute perfection? Give me a break. Giuliani is very close to absolute perfection, but, unfortunately, it's as a Democrat.
I'm really disappointed in you. At a critical moment in history, you're preaching appeasement and surrender.
Now, I will agree with you on the over the top postings and never you fear... the moment a Hunter thread comes up, it is attacked in the same manner that the Rudy threads are, which is a shame because instead of debate we have insults. (I wonder if that is the level our debate can rise too. Instead of intelligent conversation we just have name calling)
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