Posted on 07/26/2007 8:51:20 AM PDT by neverdem
Ronald Brownstein says that Giuliani is running as a federalist candidate. I'm not so sure.
He's no federalist on abortion. Giuliani eventually came out for a federal ban on partial-birth abortion. He used to be for Roe v. Wade, and now refuses to say if it should remain the law of the land. In neither case, then, is he calling for a state-by-state resolution of the issue.
He used to be for licensure of gun owners, but now says that he favors Judge Silberman's ruling that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to own guns. So does he think that states should have to respect that right? If he favors a state-by-state approach, that can reasonably be called federalist—but it would leave him in the odd position, for a Republican, of treating the Second Amendment as the only provision of the Bill of Rights that shouldn't be enforced against the states.
Brownstein suggests that Giuliani is a federalist on health care as well because he would "encourage more state experimentation with expanding coverage." Since a lot of that experimentation would presumably involve federal money—that's the way it has worked up until now—people who care about authentic federalism shouldn't be cheering.
Another NR tidbit:
Rudy, Nixon, and the Toilets at Yankee Stadium [Peter Robinson]
Traveling over the last few days, I’ve only just caught up with the Corner. May I add a note to the Giuliani versus Nixon thread?
Richard Nixon gave us a rich profusion of federal bureaucrats and regulations, creating, to note just one of innumerable items, OHSA, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration. Below, Rudy Giuliani on such bureaucrats and regulations. (The passage, which is drawn from an interview I conducted with Rudy while he was still mayor of New York City, comes from It’s My Party, a book I published in 2000. Used copies, I burst with pride to note, now command a penny apiece.)
As I was about to leave his office, Mayor Giuliani said there was something he wanted me to see. He stood, walked to his desk, riffled among some papers for a moment, then found what he wanted and picked it up. He showed me a bound report. “This is hilarious,” Giuliani said. “You’ll love it.”
The federal government, he explained, had just conducted a study of Yankee Stadium, checking it for accessibility to the disabled. The inspectors had found some three thousand instances in which Yankee Stadium failed to meet federal standards.
“Listen to this stuff,” Giuliani said. He read one item after another.
The path of travel out of the Yankee dugout was accessible only by steps, not a ramp, making it impossible to get a wheelchair onto the field. The dressing bench in the Yankee locker room was forty-five inches long by sixteen inches deep instead of the required forty-eight inches long by twenty-four inches deep. The toilets in the locker room had a seat height of sixteen inches, one inch below the required seventeen inches. The spout of the drinking fountain in the weight room was forty-two inches off the floor instead of the required thirty-six inches.
“The urinals are too high,” Giuliani continued, laughing. “The toilet paper dispenser is incorrectly mounted on the back wall of the toilet. Do you believe anybody does this? I mean, people get paid to do this.”
Giuliani tossed the report back onto the desk.
“The federal government sent people here from Washington to do this. This is the stupidity they use. They are pointy-headed stupid morons. This is ridiculous! This is ridiculous!”
Rudy Giuliani, a second Richard Nixon? This is ridiculous.
07/25 05:33 PM
He's a second Hillary Clinton.
I don’t trust him. No Rudi.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Except for gun control now.
Hypocrit, thy name is neoCOM.
Leaving Boomer Conflicts Behind
Barone believes the 2008 contest will be decided over the culture war that started with the baby boomers.
Thanks for the text.
[On guns} “If he favors a state-by-state approach, that can reasonably be called federalist...”
Not true. A federalist does not want all power vested in the states. A federalist believes in the proper Constitutional balance of power between federal and state governments. According to federalist principles, the federal government has a limited number of Constitutionally enumerated powers, and the states and the people have expansive powers. Since the prohibition against infringing the right to keep and bear arms is enumerated in the bill of rights, protecting that right is indeed a federal government power not delegated to the states.
Giuliani just proves yet again what a fraud he is when he tries to claim that giving states the power to infringe on RKBA is a federalist position.
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