Free Republic

Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman said Thursday he's backing Rudy Giuliani for president, throwing his support behind a fellow moderate Republican and former mayor. "The shared vision as mayor of getting things done, tied in with his strong stance on security, Rudy gets that," Coleman told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Thursday. "So you tie those two together and it's a pretty powerful combination." Coleman also called Giuliani "ultimately electable," a pitch that Giuliani has made throughout the campaign. The two men got to know each other when Coleman was mayor of St. Paul, Minn., and Giuliani was mayor...

What if the current polls in Iowa are the final result? What if Romney wins in Iowa and then comes in first again in New Hampshire? What if Giuliani stumbles badly in Iowa and finishes fourth? What if Huckabee surges and finishes second in Iowa? What if Fred Thompson makes an unimpressive third-place finish there? And, on the Democratic side, what if Hillary only narrowly beats Obama in the first caucus state? With two months to go before the Iowa caucus, everything can change, and probably will, but it is worth speculating on what the impact will be if things...

It's over. The tempestuous love affair between Rudy Giuliani and New York City is headed for divorce court. It's a mutual, bitter split. Voters strayed first. Ever since the former mayor left City Hall in January 2002, many New Yorkers have airbrushed him out of their pictures. Like cheaters ashamed of a one-night stand, liberal New Yorkers woke up and lied to themselves — they never voted for that Republican! Now Giuliani is returning the favor. Just as he dumped his second wife before the TV cameras, he is dumping much of the crossover approach that made him a great...

<p>Yes, Giuliani - the national front-runner for months now - holds close to a five-point lead over former Sen. Fred Thompson in the latest Real Clear Politics averages.</p> <p>But there are big warning signs that make a Giuliani nomination a dubious proposition at best. Look - I'm no disinterested observer. I am an active Democrat and was a polling strategist for President Bill Clinton. But a big part of me would like to see the former mayor win the nomination; I'm a New Yorker, and of all the Republicans, he is most to my liking philosophically.</p>

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani on Saturday used news of a plot to blow up a John F. Kennedy International Airport jet fuel line as another example of why he should be elected president. Giuliani told a crowd of 700 gathered at a Broward County Republican fundraiser that Democrats ignore the Islamic terrorist threat and that he is the Republican candidate best capable of handling it. "I've had the most experience dealing with terrorism," Giuliani said, citing his experience as a federal prosecutor and later as mayor of New York City, where he served during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks....

Powerline Post by John Hinderaker (excerpts) "A couple of years ago, the conventional wisdom was that Rudy Giuliani would be a formidable Presidential candidate, but could never get the Republican nomination because of his liberal views on some social issues. I believe that we were among the first to question this assumption...At the Candidates' Forum, the Giuliani campaign has started a thread titled Social Conservatives Back Giuliani, which cites some of the recent poll data...UPDATE: Interesting--so far, the commenters on Giuliani's Forum site are pretty much unanimously OK with his position as laid out above. That could change as more...

HOUSTON — In a shift of tactics, Republican presidential contender Rudolph Giuliani acknowledged his liberal views Friday, calling a woman's right to choose an abortion one of his "core beliefs." After a week of criticism for making contradictory comments about abortion, Giuliani also said he backs gay domestic partnerships that aren't marriage and the right of states to restrict guns. Meanwhile, in an article titled "Behind Giuliani's Pro-Choice Gamble," found at www.Time.com, author David Von Drehle states that "Giuliani's decision to be more forthright about his pro-choice stance on abortion may be the boldest step of the Presidential campaign so...

HENNIKER, N.H. -- Republican presidential contender Rudy Giuliani defended his positions on a late-term abortion procedure and gun control Tuesday as he faced skeptical GOP voters who questioned his sincerity. "I don't think there's an inconsistency," the former New York mayor said of his long-standing support of abortion rights and his affirmation last week of the Supreme Court's decision to uphold a ban on what critics call partial-birth abortion, a measure he opposed in the past. Once an advocate of strong federal gun controls, Giuliani also disputed the characterization that he advised President Clinton on the matter, talked of leaving...

The popularity of presidential candidates in opinion polls at this stage of the campaign is almost completely a function of name-recognition or how much media coverage they have already received or purchased from the liberal media. Yet that is one of the unfair criteria that Fox News will use to select the Republican presidential candidates for a May 15 debate in South Carolina. The arrangement could prevent a true conservative from emerging as a "serious candidate" in the GOP. It may also be designed to help frontrunner Rudy Giuliani, labeled a fake conservative by Terence P. Jeffrey of Human Events,...

The Rudy Giuliani Truth File in his own words and deeds - quotes, speeches, transcripts, clips, reports This is the start of a series of threads that will be used to expose the truth about Rudy Giuliani in his own words and deeds. Please post all of the quotes, speeches, interview transcripts, video clips, photos, newspaper/magazine articles, reports, records, statistics, NYC budgets, NYC spending, political appointments, gun grabs, connections to the gun control lobby, lawsuits against gun manufacturers, the truth about crime reduction in NYC, private property grabs, asset forfeitures, abuses of office, individual rights trampling, constitution trampling, violations of...

We've got some real challenges facing us. FR was established to fight against government corruption, overstepping, and abuse and to fight for a return to the limited constitutional government as envisioned and set forth by our founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and other founding documents. One of the biggest cases of government corruption, overstepping and abuse that I know of is its disgraceful headlong slide into a socialist hell. Our founders never intended for abortion to be the law of the land. And they never intended the Supreme Court to be a legislative body. They...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani defended Bill Clinton on Wednesday over the former president's counterterrorism efforts, saying recent criticism on preventing the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is wrong. Political bickering over which president _ Clinton or George W. Bush _ missed more opportunities to prevent the attacks has been escalating since Clinton gave a combative interview on"Fox News Sunday"in which he defended his efforts to kill Osama bin Laden. "The idea of trying to cast blame on President Clinton is just wrong for many, many reasons, not the least of which is I don't think...

Despite his promise to appoint "strict constructionists" if elected, Rudy Giuliani recently said he has no interest in overturning Roe v. Wade, that discovered a previously unnoticed constitutional right to abortion......(and) may require government financing of abortions for women who otherwise cannot afford them. Since Giuliani also claims to support "the right to bear arms" (a right that is actually mentioned in the Constitution), he should, by similar logic, advocate the use of taxpayer money to buy guns for poor people. .......his sudden interest in the Second Amendment, like his sudden interest in strict constructionism, is merely an affectation intended...

subscribe to the RNC for Life Report and this month's issue has ranked the candidates. At the top is Senator Sam Brownback, who sponsored the Partial Birth Abortion Act, Human Cloning Prohibition Act, the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act and the Assisted Suicide prevention Act. He has also held hearings on the impact of abortion on women. Also ranked highly are Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter and Tan Tancredo. At the absolute bottom of the pro life list is Rudy Giuliani. The RNC for Life points out that Rudy stated in 1999 "No, I have...

Rudy's Abortion Deal-Breaker By Doug Bandow Perhaps it is inevitable that a man who became a national icon also ended up politically tone deaf. He began to believe his press clipplings, sycophants surrounded him, drowning out any criticism, and the rush of White House staff wannabees left him convinced that the bandwagon could not run off-course. Rudy Giuliani obviously doesn't get it, but his support for taxpayer-paid abortions could --and certainly should--prove to be the deal- breaker for pro-life conservatives. Until now, at least, Giuliani had posed the most serious political challenge yet for social conservatives. He possessed the aura...

Washington needs a hefty dose of fiscal discipline. To restore accountable and effective leadership to America, government needs to run more like a business. That is what I did in New York. My administration inherited a $2.3 billion deficit. We responded by imposing fiscal discipline. We cut programs. We cut taxes. And we got results. We turned the deficit into a multibillion-dollar surplus. We cut bureaucracy by 20,000 workers - while increasing cops on the street and teachers in the classroom. And we cut taxes 23 times, all while working with a Democrat-dominated city council. Every year - in good...

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani tonight joined the members of the National Abortion & Reproductive Rights Action League of New York State (NARAL/NY) for the group's 16th Annual Gala Awards Reception at B. Smith's Restaurant in Manhattan. This year's awards were presented to Wendy Mackenzie, for her work in several pro-choice organizations; Department of Health Commissioner Margaret Hamburg for promoting a policy that reproductive healthcare must be viewed as part of the overall scope of healthcare; Christy Haubegger, founder of the bilingual magazine Latina, which tackles issues like abortion and birth control; and Claudia Crown Ades, who underwent an abortion in...

Rudy Giuliani: Take Me or Leave Me -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Roger Simon Apr 12, 2007 CHARLESTON, S.C. — Rudy Giuliani says that the standard for judging his troubled personal life should be how it affected or did not affect the job he did as mayor of New York. "We all have personal lives, we all have things that go right and wrong in our personal lives," he told me. "The real question is: How does it affect how you can perform?" "Does the fact that I may have had some problems in my personal life mean that I don't perform my...

<p>About 9 A.M. yesterday, United States Representative Carolyn McCarthy was on her way to Southampton, L.I., for a day off when a call came in from Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's office. Could she turn around and come to City Hall -- right now -- to appear with the Mayor at an 11 o'clock news conference and help make the case that gun control might have prevented the Empire State Building shootings?</p>

Mayor Giuliani laid down the law to Moses yesterday, telling Charlton Heston that the city's gun laws did help reduce the homicide rate. Heston, who delivered the law in "The Ten Commandments," said the city's plunging homicide rate shows that it is good police work not gun control laws that reduces crime. "In New York City, until very recently, when Mayor Giuliani took office, it shared with Washington the worst murder record in America," Heston, who was recently elected a vice president of the National Rifle Association, said yesterday on NBC's "Meet the Press." "Both cities have absolutely Draconian prohibitions...

LaGRANGE, Ga. -- You wouldn't expect the Rev. Mike Reeves to like Rudolph Giuliani much. The conservative Baptist preacher from this city near the Alabama border is adamantly against abortion and gay marriage. Nonetheless, if he had to choose from the current Republican presidential candidates Reeves would pick the thrice-married former mayor of liberal New York, who supports abortion and gay rights. "He's strong," Reeves said. "I think we need a president who's going to look our enemies in the eye and say, 'No more,' and they'll know he means it." Giuliani's emergence as a Republican frontrunner in the crowded...

...We constantly present the false impression that government can solve problems that government in America was designed not to solve. Families are significantly less important in the development of children today than they were 30 or 40 years ago. Religion has less influence than it did 30 or 40 years ago. Communities don't mean what they meant 30 or 40 years ago. As Americans, we're not sure we share values. We're sometimes even afraid to use the word values. We talk about teaching ethics in schools -- people say, "What ethics? Whose ethics? Maybe we can't." And they confuse that...

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani often enjoys poll scores above all presidential rivals from both sides of the political aisle. He inarguably projects the kind of appeal normally foreign to most candidates trying to convince voters that citizens matter more than a party’s agenda. However, that likely centrist advantage in the general election can be kryptonite in the primaries because centrism has so often been antithetical to the ideologues selecting each party’s nominee. But things are changing and Giuliani’s tough stances in defense of moderate positions are continuously embraced by the respondents of all surveys. Republicans have begun...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Rudy Giuliani's message to social conservatives: If you don't like my views, don't vote for me.

Sean Hannity Interview, 2007: HANNITY: Let me move on. And the issue of guns has come up a lot. When people talk about Mayor Giuliani, New York City had some of the toughest gun laws in the entire country. Do you support the right of people to carry handguns? GIULIANI: I understand the Second Amendment. I support it. People have the right to bear arms. When I was mayor of New York, I took over at a very, very difficult time. We were averaging about 2,000 murders a year, 10,000... HANNITY: You inherited those laws, the gun laws in New...

They held out things for him to sign: Political fliers. Books. A baseball. Yankees hats. NYPD hats. FDNY hats. A girl's crayon drawing of an American flag on looseleaf paper. One woman even held out her checkbook.They told him they loved him and wanted to vote for him and couldn't wait to see him in the White House.They snapped him with their digital cameras and camera phones, shoving their children into the frame.Moving through the aisles of the store on West Charleston Boulevard, Giuliani alternated a mock-serious survey of store shelves with posing for pictures, his rabbity, dimpled smile frozen...

It's Crazy to Nominate Giuliani John LeBoutillier Monday, March 26, 2007 Here is an argument to consider: Our federal government is so poorly run, so inept, and incompetent that the American voter in 2008 may opt for a tough, ruthless, red-tape-cutting quasi-dictator to get things done. After Iraq, Katrina, and Walter Reed, some frustrated voters may have lost patience with trying to do things the "right way" and vote for someone who brags about his successes ? no matter how they are achieved. And that "dictator" would be the man who openly boasts about turning around New York City; cleaning...

Can America's mayor win support from social conservatives to win the Republican nomination? The bundle of social issues that provoke so much vitriol in our politics arise out of an effort to reverse society's moral decay. Giuliani's career in electoral politics began in New York City when moral decay was far enough advanced to be immune from direct attack and eclipsed by other more immediate concerns. Mayor Giuliani delivered what they needed most. He reclaimed NYC from the toxic leftism of his predecessors... social conservatives are concerned about social rot and Giuliani is one of the very few executives in...

David Scull/The New York Times Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, left, at a 1995 news conference with Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, and James S. Brady, who was shot in the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan. As mayor of New York City, Rudolph W. Giuliani became the favorite Republican of gun control advocates. He spoke in favor of a licensing system for gun owners that would require trigger locks and firearms training, and he lobbied Congress to outlaw most military-style assault weapons. He was the only Republican mayor to join a lawsuit by dozens of cities...

Looking good! Much better than before! JoinRudy2008

The 2007 version of Rudy Giuliani defends his past support of gun control as a necessary evil to fight crime in a big city. When pressed recently about his views on the 2nd Amendment by Sean Hannity of Fox News, Giuliani attempted to tap dance around his gun-control record without alienating the 290 million Americans who don’t live in New York City. The former mayor told Hannity that gun control was “appropriate” for the city, but that states and cities should be allowed to make those decisions locally. “So,” Hannity continued, “you would support a state’s rights to choose on...

Can America's mayor win support from enough social conservatives to win the Republican nomination? Maybe not, but social conservatives should think long and hard before they decide to pass on Giuliani. This may be difficult advice to credit. Giuliani is thoroughly alienated from the dominant concerns of the social right. Mayor Giuliani delivered what they needed most. He reclaimed New York City from the toxic leftism of his predecessors but in the process identified himself with the moral elements of their leftism. social conservatives are concerned about social rot and Giuliani is one of the very few executives in the...

When Congress, at the request of many police officials, considered a broad ban on handgun bullets capable of piercing bulletproof vests, Mr. Giuliani – though personally supportive of the measure – pointed out flaws in the bill and laid out the [Reagan] Administration’s case for a weaker alternative more acceptable to gun lobbyists. But he angered some [Reagan] Administrative officials when he added a single sentence to his testimony in which he urged Congress to pass the bill. A similar measure was passed several years later, after gun groups softened their opposition. New York Times, October 11, 1989 (Emphasis Added)...

Unbelievable.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALDfwXIYUX0

One recent anti-Rudy poster stated the following: "And if Rudy does get the nod, expect the MSM to open up the hype floodgates on the cross-dressing and the gay stuff -- oh, not condemning of course (wink) but how it's a big change, how will this play in the South, does this mean gay marriage is A-OK for the GOP." MY REPLY: And if they do it will be countered with images of Rudy's heroism during and after 9/11 and most Americans will be DISGUSTED - at the MSM, NOT at RUDY. The issue in 2008 will be the WOT...

In a match-up between the early 2008 frontrunners, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) leads New York Senator Hillary Clinton (D) 52% to 43%. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds Giuliani’s lead growing in recent months. His current nine-point advantage is up from a six point lead in January and a four-point lead in December. Clinton is viewed favorably by 50% and unfavorably by 48%. The last four times that Rasmussen Reports has polled on a Giuliani-Clinton race, Clinton’s support has remained unchanged at 43%. While both candidates draw reasonable levels of support from within their...

ONE consequence of President Bush's approval ratings being in the porcelain facility (my editors don't like me using the word toilet) is that many people are looking ahead to the next president. This presidential race is no earlier than the other one. Abe Lincoln was laying the foundation for his 1860 run when he helped form a third party in 1854 called "the Republicans." What makes the 2008 race appear to be early is that is where the attention is. The rest of the political circus is boring, as the Senate debates whether to debate a resolution that in a...

The former mayor leads Clinton by five percentage points, 48 to 43. The Republican Giuliani holds a comfortable lead in the “red states,” topping Clinton by 17 percentage points, and he is even with Clinton in “blue states.” Giuliani has strong support among Republican voters, with 40 percent saying they are likely to vote for him. Arizona Senator John McCain trails with 18 percent, followed by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who has said he may not run if Giuliani holds a commanding lead. As for the Democrats, Clinton has the support of 38 percent of those polled. Illinois Senator...

(snip) ....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. (snip) 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...

In last Wednesday’s National Review Online, Evans & Novak reporter David Freddoso hammers former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani as a man with a mean streak. Freddoso’s piece recalls some of Giuliani’s more colorful moments in office including his once saying, “If you tell me off, I tell you off -- that’s my personality.” Freddoso repeats the often-stated myth that Giuliani was hated by the end of his term, until the September 11 terrorist attack rehabilitated his supposedly tattered reputation and rocketed him to global fame and acclaim. On the contrary, a key survey showed that New Yorkers...

Click the link for the detailed table, but here are some highlights of Rudy's record as Mayor: Overall crime down 63.9%; top personal-income-tax rate down 20.6%; overall tax burden down 17.0%; hotel tax rate down 16.7%; hotel-tax revenue up 104.3%; average annual growth in NYC inflation up 3.9%; average annual growth in NYC government spending up 2.9%; unemployment rate down 45.2%; private employment up 15.2%.