Posted on 02/23/2007 4:36:50 PM PST by Reagan Man
Over on the Corner, Terry Jeffrey continues to make the case against Rudy Giuliani as the Republican nominee. He argues, correctly, I think, that Rudy's social liberalism and personal peccadilloes will hurt him in the general election, as well as in the primaries. This is an important point to make because Giuliani's appeal for movement conservatives is not that he is the most conservative candidate, but that he is the most electable Republican (kinda like how liberals thought John Kerry was the most electable Democrat). But another point for conservatives to bear in mind is that even Giuliani's successful record isn't going to resonate with voters, nor does it address the issues conservatives find most important now.
The best argument I've seen for Giuliani's conservatism was this City Journal piece. Leaving aside the question of whether these issues are enough to qualify Giuliani as a conservative, it should be noted that only one of them has pressing significance for conservatives now.
Fighting crime is no longer a major concern of the public at large, nor of the conservative base. Ditto for cutting the welfare rolls and taxes. Conservatives have largely succeeded on those fronts, and Giuliani deserves credit for what he did in NYC. But because crime, welfare, and taxes are down nationally, he can't run on those; we don't need the guy who saved NYC to save the rest of the nation. His success gives him a claim to competence, but he can’t appear as the knight in shining armor come to slay dragons of the same brood as those he slew in NYC. Education remains a problem, but that's the one issue Giuliani didn't succeed on.
Of course, there’s 9/11, which the Onion has neatly satirized. America is tired of 9/11, and while the Mayor’s work in the aftermath is admirable and will no doubt help him, I don’t think being a competent mayor who stood strong after the attacks is going to be enough to win a national election seven years later, especially given all of his baggage.
It’s an old saw that the Pentagon is always gearing up to fight the last war. Well, the Republicans who want to nominate Rudy are gearing up to fight the last political war. Crime isn’t the problem it used to be, so an effective record in fighting crime isn’t going to appeal to the voters the way it used to, and the same goes for welfare and taxes. Rudy is a victim of conservative success on these issues.
The war remains a top concern of voters, but evoking the memory of 9/11 isn’t going to be enough in 2008.
I think Giuliani is the least electable of the leading Republican candidates. His personal life makes Bill Clinton look good, his views on social issues from abortion to gun control are to the left of the American mainstream, let alone the Republican mainstream, his personality is nasty and abrasive, and his successes are mostly in areas that the public doesn’t worry about much anymore.
STOP RUDY 2008 PING
WTF?
I think Giuliani is the least electable of the leading Republican candidates. His personal life makes Bill Clinton look good, his views on social issues from abortion to gun control are to the left of the American mainstream, let alone the Republican mainstream, his personality is nasty and abrasive, and his successes are mostly in areas that the public doesn’t worry about much anymore.
***Well written, sums it up for me.
In October 1993, candidate Rudy opposed letting Louis Farrakhan speak at Yankee Stadium. In March 1995, a wall of cops surrounded City Hall, with horses, scooters, nightsticks, riot gear, barricades and Mace, to keep 20,000 high school and college students from marching on Wall Street. That June, Rudy kicked Yasir Arafat out of Lincoln Center. The following May, he would use armored cars against homeless squatters.
When cabbies last spring objected to a new set of onerous regulations, they were met with ridicule by Rudy, an accusation by his police commissioner that a proposed convoy of protesters constituted a "terrorist threat" (wonderfully coded, since many cabbies are Middle Eastern), a deployment of livery drivers as scabs and an army of cops with tow trucks who closed the East River bridges to any taxi without a fare, forcing angry drivers to walk from Queens and Brooklyn to Manhattan. "They know we broke their strike -- destroyed it really," Rudy boasted.
In September, the city refused a permit to Khallid Abdul Muhammad for his Million Youth March, suggesting that he agitate instead on Randall's Island. And when Muhammad won won his right in court to gather on Malcolm X Boulevard, the cops closed all the subway stations and cross streets so nobody could join in along the route. In December, demonstrators seeking to observe World AIDS Day and mourn the 77,000 New Yorkers who've died of the disease were likewise denied a permit to rally in City Hall Park. Then, when 150 of them showed up, they had to pass through motorcycle cops and metal detectors before they arrived at a parking lot surrounded by a brand-new eight-foot chain-link penitentiary fence and looked down upon by sharpshooters.
Meanwhile, our Rudy, who began by threatening to abolish the Department of Consumer Affairs and the Civil Rights Division, to sell off public hospitals and East River bridges, to cancel the city's contract with Legal Aid; (snip) ....won't even talk to the black community ("They're going to have to learn to discipline themselves in the way they speak"); who has declared Holy War on squeegee men ("drug-addicted psychopaths").
He has abolished remedial classes at City University. He's cut every social service for the poor, from medical assistance to foster care to food stamps to heating for the elderly, and slashed the budget for parks and recreation, hospital workers and after-school sports and enrichment programs ....forced single-mother welfare recipients onto "workfare" even if they can't find child care, ordained that the disabled show up in downtown municipal offices to prove that they are indeed disabled, abolished the methadone program and unleashed a gleeful police force to do whatever it chooses in the Mussolini meantime, from invading mosques to no-knock wrong-address raids on black and Latino homes.
How mean is Rudy? So mean, to wrench a Molly Ivins quote from context, "He wouldn't spit in your ear if your brains were on fire." Which is why the municipal unions are so scared of him that leaders of District 37 -- the city's largest municipal union, representing everybody from social workers to crossing guards -- fraudulently rigged a 1996 vote to ratify a wage freeze contract.
bttt
when his personal life was a 'train wreck'! Could we expect him to run the country as well as he has run his own life?
Rudy is the only candidate running for President in either party,,,,
who's personal life (aka the 'train wreck') could make Bill Clinton look like a,,,,
"GOOD FATHER, DECENT FAMILY MAN, AND CARING HUSBAND!!!
How?
Ill stay home before I vote for Rudy.
There is no point in choosing between two liberals (rudy and hillary).
Having said that, I'll proably go to the polls anyway to vote for a 3rd party conservative candidate.
This perfectly sums up why I will not vote for Guiliani. Republicans need a fresh face with fresh ideas. This guy is the Old Europe of the Republican candidates.
Hillary Clinton reeks of corruption and she's nasty and calculating to boot. The Republicans should counter program with a squeaky clean, charismatic, nice guy (or woman) with smarts, real managerial experience, and a record of accomplishment. Someone who's had one spouse and has a good solid family life. This will bring out strong, family-oriented conservatives who still think it's worthwhile to go to church and to live according to moral principles. Neither McCain nor Guiliani even comes close to fitting the bill.
From the FBI:
1986 = 1.489 million violent crimes; 620.1 per 100K
1992 = 1.932 million violent crimes; 757.7 per 100K
1995 = 1.798 million violent crimes; 684.5 per 100K
2000 = 1.425 million violent crimes; 506.5 per 100K
2005 = 1.390 million violent crimes; 469.2 per 100K
He started campaigning too early. If he kept quiet until closer to the primaries, he may have had a chance at winning the primaries on his name recognition.
He has WAAAAY too much pass to hide. And this early start will give us all plenty of time to get the info out.
>>>How in the world could anyone claim that Rudy is the 'most electable',,,,
"TELL A LIE ENOUGH TIMES AND IT BECOMES THE TRUTH."
- Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda director
I don't feel like repeating what I wrote on another thread. Feel free to go to this other Rudy thread for my reasoning. I'm running out of time right now.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1789169/posts?page=626#626
Nope...not worth it. I have a life.
Rudy DID benefit from the good economy in the ENTIRE US, of the 90's--both in tax revenues and drops in crime rates.
Rudy may deserve some credit for both--but no where near to the extent that the Rudy-apologists would have you believe. Maybe that's why Rudy is such a vocal defender of Slick!!!...lol
(I'd rather vote for someone who CAN ACTUALLY BE ELECTED)
When is the last time a mayor won the presidency without holding higher office first?
And when is the last time someone from NY State was on the winning presidential ticket?
Hello? What color is the sky in the place where you live?
Okay, one by one, here.
Fighting crime comes from his law-and-order position, and the fact that he was a former federal prosecutor. This translates into appointing strong law-and-order justices at all levels. Not a minor matter for a commander-in-chief, I think.
Frankly, I would also hope that if Rudy is what we get that he would use the same theory about subway muggers jumping turnstiles to actually patrol the borders looking for terrorists (even if he'll, sadly, let the illegals march right in).
Welfare is down? It can go down more. More folks can get off the dole and back into jobs. (And, sadly, more folks will need to find those jobs once he lets all the illegals march right in).
Taxes are low? No they aint, and there are cuts set to expire. Let him cut spending and challenge the Dems to give it back to the people who are getting squeezed in the middle (instead of p*ssing it away on all the illegals that march right in).
Conservatives have not succeeded. Or rather, if they have, they got a bit lazy and cozy where they are and went on their own spending sprees. More fat that can be cut.
As far as education goes, no, he didn't have much success, but I can't fault the guy for trying. And the way the system was set up, the mayor had no control over education. Bloomberg is the one that forced the union's hand and he'll be the first that will actually be able to take credit or blame in NYC. He must be doing something well because the union is bitchin' and moanin' an awful lot.
The John Kerry as most electable wasn't disproved. The guy got 48% and came up within a state of winning against an incumbent, popular, wartime President with a good economy. It wasn't like he got blown out McGovern or Mondale style, two other dems who ran against GOP incumbents.
I'd say that Kerry probably was the most electable of Dean, Edwards, Clark, Gephardt and Kerry and did better than any of the other 4 would have against Bush. If the same election was held last year with Iraq having gotten worse and the GOP corruption coming to the fore he may well have won.
So saying Rudy is the most electable doesn't mean he's a lock to win. It just means that against a Clinton, Obama or Edwards(and most likely Clinton), he has the best chance of winning out of him , McCain and Romney.
As for his record being in the past and the terrorism being overrated, we'll see. To be fair, what record is McCain running on? What has he accomplished? He has zero executive experience of any kind. What's Romney running on? Is fixing the 2002 Winter Olympics or helping out Staples or Domino's Pizza going to be impressive in 2008? Are voters going to say "he made the bobsled and luge turn out ok and Domino's makes good pizza so he'll win in Iraq and fight the terrorists"? I don't see Rudy's record as any worse than the other top two guys and in many respects it's better.
Better than the dems as well. What's Obama gonna say "I was a community activist and law professor, Khameini and Ahmmadinejad will be shaking in their boots"? or Edwards with his trial lawyer ambulance chasing antics. Are the American people going to trust Hillary Clinton to keep them safe? I don't think so.
Rudy has said in the past that elections are about getting the voters to have you as the answers to the problems they want solved as they go to vote. In NYC the problem was who's going to fight crime, fix welfare, improve the business climate, improve quality of life, make things better, etc.... He's said that if he were running when things were good and it was more a question of who will continue the status quo or a question about more kitchen table aissues like education and health, he'd probably have lost.
Similarly in 2008, if the election hinges on who can keep us safe, who will fight terrorism, who will stand up to the bad guys in the world, who will build up the military and have a tough foreign policy and who will maintain the economic growth and low taxes of Bush, he'll win.(as would McCain, I think)
If it comes down to things like who will fix global warming, pass socialized medicine, retreat from the ar on terror and more dem-friendly issues like that, no GOP candidate will win.
But of the three top candidates, at least at this early stage, Rudy does have the best chance of winning. When you have a GOP President like Bush who's been mired at 35% or below for a while now, numbers like his are hard to ignore.
You're arguing issues in favor of Rudy that the majority of Americans don't find a MAJOR concern right now. Its not that crime rates, welfare rolls and taxes can't be reduced any further. Of course, they can. The fact is, those issues aren't front and center as they once were. Today the bigger domestic issues for conservatives are getting a handle on runaway spending, reducing an out of control entitlement bureaucracy and stopping illegal immigration.
>>>>>And the way the system was set up, the mayor had no control over education.
That is not true. As Mayor of NYCity Rudy added 15,000 new teachers to the city employment rolls. This increased the overall city budget, raising the final deficit and debt under Rudy, and increasing the membership of two major liberal organizations, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Not a good record.
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