Posted on 04/13/2007 9:34:19 AM PDT by meg88
Rudy Giuliani would make a superb president. He combines Reaganesque vision with extraordinary attention to detail.
He is strong on national security and also has the principles and policies to strengthen the economy. He is a tax cutter and a foe of the federal income tax's complexity.
Rudy Giuliani is not afraid of trying to do Big Things. He successfully tackled the welfare mess in New York City, even before the welfare reform act of 1996. By the time he was through, welfare rolls had been cut nearly 60%.
In short, he is not afraid to pursue major structural changes, even in the face of the conventional wisdom and an entrenched status quo political establishment.
When he took office the city faced a horrendous deficit. He was strongly advised to raise taxes. The new mayor made the point that he was not a tax booster by sending those proposals to the dumpster. Instead, he cut taxes and spending.
Giuliani kept the average growth of government spending at nearly half the growth of the city economy. That restraint was in stark contrast to the growth in federal spending ...
Giuliani cut or eliminated 23 taxes. The overall tax burden for a New York City resident went down a remarkable 17%.
Giuliani was also successful in battling a bloated bureaucracy. While he deliberately increased the numbers of police and teachers, he whacked away at the employment rolls everywhere else.
During Giuliani's tenure the Big Apple's economy blossomed: 423,000 new jobs were created. More people were moving into the city than leaving it. That he achieved so much going against a generations-old spend-tax-welfare political ethos is astonishing.
And, of course, his response to 9/11 is legendary--and rightly so.
Like most legends, this one is a myth.
I called Forbes a phony conservative in 2000.
Events continue to verify that.
If I didn’t already oppose Rudi, this substanceless blather would do the trick.
social conservative concerns about Steve Forbes are proving to be justified.
You'd think Rudy, with his one lone shovel, did all the work.
He also made millions speaking about 9/11. Does that seem a bit unseemly to anyone?
Just what America needs...a Leftist who likes to do Big Things.
"Most of Clinton's policies are very similar to most of mine." - Rudy Giuliani
It does have a certain emetic quality, doesn’t it?
Come to think of it, the entire thread has a musky, Victor-Mature-like scent.
How old is Steve these days? Bless his heart.
Forbes and Giuliani........how can one be that rich or that tenacious and not know they are leaking at the brain ?
RUDY Giuliani has gone from being America's mayor to our top political paradox. How could a pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-gun control, twice-divorced centrist lead the early polling in the 2008 Republican presidential primaries?
Conventional wisdom says that social conservatives who dominate the GOP primary process just don't know Rudy's record. Once they see that the emperor has no clothes - or, rather, likes to wear women's clothes - his numbers will slip and his prospects will sink.
But don't be so quick to write off Rudy. Deconstruct that conventional wisdom, and you find that it rests on shaky premises, knee-jerk biases - and, perhaps most importantly, a fundamental misunderstanding of the post-9/11 political climate.
Of course, Giuliani's had a rough week or two; even if he's still the front-runner, he's hardly a sure thing for the nomination. He raised an impressive $10 million in March alone, but keep in mind that his high standing in the polls has a lot to do with the relative weakness of the current field, which could change.
That said, I suspect the "Rudy can't win" mantra is being driven as much by Democratic fear and loathing - of both conservatives and Giuliani himself - as by Republican politics and performance.
As Deborah Hart Stroberand Gerald Strober's "Flawed or Flawless" amply documents through dozens of interviews with friends and foes alike, liberals widely despise Giuliani. Not just because they see him as a racially insensitive, rights-suppressing bully, but because he succeeded in this big blue city largely because of his hard-charging style, not despite it.
To these liberals, Giuliani winning the GOP nomination is doubly scary: He threatens their worldview - and, worse, as a socially tolerant 9/11 hero, he's probably the biggest threat to beat the Democratic nominee. So when they say he can't win, part of what they're really saying is they don't want him to win.
More important, though, is how the left sees the right. The way many of my Democratic friends view evangelicals, and conservatives more broadly, is best summed up by the infamous Washington Post mischaracterization - "poor, uneducated and easy to command." So in their eyes, what's wrong with Kansas will prove to be what's wrong with Rudy's campaign.
That glib analysis is flawed, though. It treats movement conservatives as an unthinking monolith and wrongly presumes they would never tolerate or nominate a moderate.
Democrats also ignore the conservative appeal of Giuliani's strong moral streak, which he memorably demonstrated in his 1999 confrontation over the Brooklyn Museum's controversial "Sensation" exhibit. That's probably not enough to compensate for his apostasies on abortion and gay rights, but at a minimum it'll help him connect with some less-doctrinaire primary voters and likely mollify others' concerns about his cultural profile.
But liberals' big error here is to dramatically discount the long-term political impact of 9/11. They just don't see how the terrorist attacks of that day, and the ongoing threat of jihadism, have transformed millions of Americans (especially on the right) into security-first voters. This is the pre-eminent, transcendent issue for this generation of conservatives, and Rudy's credentials are saint-like.
Remember, conservatives willingly overlooked Ronald Reagan's divorce at a time when divorce was a much bigger political taboo than it is today. To righties of that generation, fighting Communism was the preeminent, transcendent cause, and Reagan was peerless when it came to waging and winning the Cold War. (It didn't hurt that he was a tax-cutting zealot, too.)
One of Giuliani's considerable advantages, much like Reagan, is the president he would replace. Many voters saw Reagan's strength and clarity as welcome antidotes to Jimmy Carter's weakness and malaise. To today's Republicans, Giuliani offers the same tough-on-terror leadership that has bonded conservatives to President Bush. But he also comes with an impressive record as a governmental CEO - a stark contrast to Bush's bungling on Iraq and Katrina.
Thus, by nominating Giuliani, Republicans would neutralize the competence issue and take divisive social issues off the table - while focusing the debate on their strength, security. It is plausible that a critical mass of Republicans could make such a pragmatic choice and put winning over purity - just as Democrats thought they were doing by picking war hero John Kerry over the unelectable Howard Dean in 2004.
Whether Giuliani's 9/11 halo is powerful enough to overshadow his cultural deviations and personal shortcomings with enough primary voters to buy him a fair hearing on other issues, like tax cuts and judges and immigration, remains to be seen. But so far, Rudy seems to be on the right track.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/04082007/postopinion/postopbooks/dems_nightmare_postopbooks_gerstein.htm?page=2
Steve Forbes really does worship at the altar of the market. Rudy is a pro-abort and pro-homosexual. When the moral and eternal push comes to shove, Forbes defaults to his pocket book. Sad. He tried to tell us otherwise in 2000, but this demonstrates. The Golden Calf of tax cuts and “growth” (not to mention the free-trade God) trumps life itself — namley the lives of unborn children.
All I can say is, Nicole’s baby finally has a father!
I can watch the Fox channel again. Or not.
” . . . he is not afraid to pursue major structural changes . . .”
(to the Constitution?)
“Like most legends, this one is a myth.”
Sorry you don’t like him, but don’t lie about him.
If it ends up being a battle between Herr Hitlery and Rudy, I'll vote for Rudy with extreme enthusiasm.
Sorry, the heroes of 9-11 went UP the stairs when everyone else was going down.
Giuliani is nothing but a crude political opportunist, and a hard Left one at that.
Agreed.
“The love of money is the root of all sorts of evil.”
Sorry, but I laughed so hard upon reading that that I couldn't get through the last sentence...
Some people should really try and get out of NYC more.
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