Posted on 02/11/2007 11:29:10 AM PST by Clintonfatigued
In 1993 it became obvious that if Rudy was to avenge his narrow defeat for Mayor four years earlier, he would need more Democratic voters to cross party lines and support him. His campaign strategists knew I was disenchanted with the incumbent and put a full court press on me to meet with Giuliani. I was the elected head of the Democratic Party in a large Democratic district whose vote could be pivotal if it turned out for the
I met him and we talked for about an hour. He impressed me then as he does now with his intelligence, humor, and vision. I agreed to publicly support him, and shortly thereafter I stood on the steps of City Hall with Rudy in a far reaching press conference where the press corps did everything they could to dig up a nefarious motive for my sacrilege of becoming the first Democratic Party Leader to endorse Rudy. I felt then he was the best candidate for my city .Though I was a Democrat, and an unpaid Party official, I had to choose reason and conscience over Party. The “man bites dog twist” made for a good story and it was picked up by all the city papers, and went national when the Associated Press picked it up.
Read on . . .
Rudy won by a scant 60,000 votes with about a third of that number coming from my staunch Democratic district. On many occasions after that, he praised my political courage and occasionally stated that my support at that time launched his successful elected political career. For the next eight years, I served as Rudy’s (unsalaried) Personal Representative at three different City funded agencies. I got to know him, his public and private personae, his convictions, his strengths and his weaknesses.
(Excerpt) Read more at redstate.com ...
Good post!
Then you would be content to accept a slower drift to the left implemented by a "pragmatist" Republican as opposed to the faster path with Hillary or Barak. Personally I can't see the difference if the destination is the same.
Thanks!
Many disagree, it seems, and take time to post their disagreements to the posting. Why can't they post their own threads instead?
I consider it a bit disingenuous of you to have not mentioned in your posting that the writer is a Democrat leader.
Not surprising to see Dem support, since Giuliani is ideologically a Democrat, not a Republican, and since almost all of the judges Giuliani appointed to the bench as Mayor were Democrats. The vast majority of his appointments within his administration were, too.
I would say the destination is decidedly not the same.
"The irony is anybody supporting Rudy because he is "electable". He isn't. To much of the base will sit home on election night if he is the nominee."
100% true. He would be a disaster for the party. Millions of true conservatives would leave the party over the nomination of a pro-gay, anti-gun, anti-life RINO. I very well might. At the very least i'd vote third party in that election.
You'll really have to explain your logic here, because I can't follow it.
Should we have voted for Humphrey or McGovern in 1968 and 1972 because Goldwater wasn't on the ballot? Or should we have just stayed home, which is practically the same thing?
I don't know who your knight in shining armor is, probably one of the House Republican candidates who will never get into double digits on a national basis, but we're not going to nominate him this cycle. It can't be done. All the posts on Free Republic aren't going to change that.
Maybe I can't see the forest for the trees, but I'm not playing this game for some elusive victory 16 years from now. I don't want the President two years from now to be any Democrat now in the race.
I've never seen so many lemmings in my life.
"I mean, we only have to look at the 1964 election where Nelson Rockefeller himself ran, and the GOP selected Goldwater instead. That didn't work out so well."
And you could as easily point to 1980 where the Ford wing ran George Bush and John Anderson, while castigating Reagan as nutty and unelectable. The real conservative won. And it's a lot closer to the present than 1964, which was only a year after the death of JFK.
In truth, neither 1964, nor 1980 apply to this current situation.
"He impressed me then as he does now with his intelligence, humor, and vision."
Yep, but Rudy is a still a LIBERAL.
1) pro-abortion; 2) pro-gun control; 3) pro-special rights for gays; and 4) pro-illegal immigration.
Every election is different; I don't disagree with that. 2008 will be no exception.
The GOP will nominate the candidate that it believes is most electable out of its current crop of candidates. I think we all know who that is.
I'd like to see a Jeb Bush/John Cornyn ticket. That's not going to happen, at least in this cycle. But I'm going to vote for whomever I think has a chance in winning my primary and then I'll support whomever is the GOP candidate, even if it's the truly wretched McCain, because he's better than anything the Democrats will offer.
My point is simply this. The Republican party has returned from whence it came before Reagan. It's a shadow party of the Democratic party which desires the same goals but just differs tactically in how to achieve them. They are what Ayn Rand referred to as Me Tooers. Those types (Rudy and John) disgust me and I won't vote for them. Better to travel in the wilderness than be a fellow traveler.
A fair question, and I'm not sure that the sympathy flowing from the Kennedy assasination could have been over come.
My view of it derives from the nature of the electorate: There are about 35% each of 'conservative' and liberal' voters, and 30% in the middle, the so-called 'swing' voters.
The base of each party does not vote for the other side; they must be energized, and gotten to the polls, but that is only a starting point. In addition to them, a politician at the national level must also win a little over half of the swing votes in the middle. This is important to understand: neither left or right has enough votes to elect a president. As Common Tator (now gone from FR, or I would have pinged him) used to say, "35% of the electorate can not cast 51% of the votes".
The swing voters are pragmatic; they judge on how the candidates' resumes compare with what are seen as the most pressing problems, and they judge on a canditate's personal qualities. Interestingly, they are not just non-ideological, they are anti-ideological. That's what killed Barry; the dems were able to paint him as a rigid ideologue that would start WWIII. The swing voters all ran away to the left and LBJ's coatails grew proportionately longer.
Eight years later, McGovern was seen as a leftist ideologue, and the swing voters all ran away to the right and voted for Nixon, the pragmatist.
Goldwater got the nomination in '64 because the activist conservatives, had chafed under the DDE administration, and lost in '60 with Nixon. Their attitude was "We need to run a real Republican", and they did. But that did not turn out too well, and I'm afraid it wouldn't this year either.
For me, the issue always is to elect the most conservative candidate possible. Note the word 'elect'. Many here seem to confuse 'elect' with 'nominate', and we are back the the topic of the thread, Mr. Giuliani.
It's pretty much a wash between him and Hilary on the social issues, but a 'President Giuliani' scenario would have definite positives:
1) He is not Hilary. (Enough said?)
2) His cabinet and lower level appointees would be from the ranks of Republicans.
3) He is committed to the war against terrorism.
4) He can only get elected with the support of the base; if he uses his office to aggressively push the social issues his base abhors, he will be a one-term president, and he knows it.
I understand that many here (including me) would prefer 'President [true conservative]'. Just explain to me how 35% of the electorate can cast 51% of the votes, and I'm with you.
However it goes, I'm going to support and work for whoever is the Republican nominee.
If that's true, and I'm undecided about that, it's because we let them.
While Presidential politics are largely decided before we get a chance to vote, that's not the case in the elections for other offices. The place to make a difference in the party is in the primary elections for all offices up through the state and federal positions. And we need to put the candidates up for election in the primaries that will represent us and then support them.
It's no good to complain that the party left us if you made no effort to keep it.
Duncan Hunter may be a fine man, although I actually did some research and determined that I disagree with him on trade matters. We could do worse, I think. But it's moot, because he won't even be in the race when I vote in Texas unless he wants to be an Alan Keyes type of gadfly.
I'm not a travel in the wilderness kind of guy. I won't throw away my vote if I think I can make a difference, even if it's selecting between two evils. If I can make a difference in affecting my life, I'll do so. A vote is not an endorsement. It's a preference. Big difference.
"This country needs a winner...."
That's what they said about Governor Arnold, my friend, but it was a huge loss for conservatism.
If you would like to jump on board for Rudy for President 2008, please freep mail areafiftyone or let us know on this thread! We will be glad to add you to our ping list!
PKM
For every conservative who says he won't vote for Rudy, there are probably 5 swing voters who will.
Maybe you're right, but I think you're underestimating how many different blocks of the Republican base are alienated by Rudy. Pro-lifers hate him. Gun owners hate him. Anti-amnesty people hate him. I don't see him winning the primary.
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