The ever-cheeky NY Post today reports that former NYC mayor and SWNID-favored presidential prospect Rudy Giuliani took a couple of shots at prohibitive Democrat presidential favorite Hillary Clinton yesterday.
Campaigning for beleaguered conservative Senator Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania, Rudy referred to "one thing that Hillary and I do have in common: We're both Yankee fans. I became a Yankee fan growing up in New York. She became a Yankee fan growing up in Chicago."
To some this may just look like Rudy making an offhand remark.
To us, it looks like he's taking a few warmup pitches in the bullpen before entering the game.
Comparisons between the two New Yorkers as candidates will inevitably revolve around which is the real deal. But it won't be which is the real New Yorker deal, but which is the real deal in the handling of global terrorism.
Can anyone name a single contribution that St. Hillary has made to the global war on terrorism from her Senate seat?
Can anyone name a single person who isn't in the administration already who has made more of a contribution than Rudy?
11 comments:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that scores of military personnel have already made more of a contribution to the war on terror than Giuliani has.
I said "name one." You named "scores." So you lose.
Nevertheless, I will accept the amendment and allow the post to read "name one politician."
Joe Lieberman might be somebody who has done more than Giulani.
It's hard to get excited about Rudy when he is pro-homosexual and pro-abortion.
Is that Alfred E. as in Neuman?
To anonymous a:
Our culture is also pro-abortion and pro-homosexual. The president lacks the constitutional and the moral power to change that. Politics is the art of the possible, and not much is ever possible politically. So we make political choices around the possible, not the ideal.
Changes on social and moral issues in the current climate will require something other than elective socially conservative presidents. How much difference did Reagan or Dubya make on these issues? Even the appointment of "conservative" Supremes has had no discernable impact.
Changing hearts and minds on this issue requires non-political action, i.e. moral arugmentation and persuasion. The law will only express the consensus of the people on this issue, and the slim consensus but to-this-point firm consensus is to keep abortion legal.
But remember too that Nixon was anti-communist. But who opened China?
So can a moderate Republican (i.e. not beholden to a pro-abortion political machine)with a pro-choice record (i.e. not seen as an extremist by the muddled middle on this issue) move the polarized body politic so that legal action is actually taken to make abortion rarer? E.g. so that there are greater restrictions on the second and third trimesters? No "pro-life" president will be able to do that, and it's a bigger step in the right direction than anything we can imagine presently.
Rudy is not our messiah. But we find him intriguing given the present distress.
to anonymous b:
"What, me worry?"
Oh, and to anonymous pre-a:
Lieberman can't possibly be nominated by his party, unfortunately. We're prepared to say that Rudy was more important than Joe after 9/11, but we admire the Senator from Connecticut for his unabashed support for vigorous military action to establish justice and promote the general welfare.
Of course politics is about coalition building. First you have to build a party coalition (primary). Then you have to build a population coalition (general election).
The key to winning the presidency is to be conservative enough for the primary, but not too conservative for the general election. That is a tip toe dance that is nearly impossible. Rudy will never make it through the primary (even though he would probably win the general election). The polls today are irrelevant. Nobody but you and me is paying attention right now. In the primary battle, he will lose to somebody who is a conservative.
McCain would have blown away Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004. A race against Kerry would have been particulary funny. Kerry's war record (which his whole campaign was based on) was peanuts compared to McCain's.
Before the Republican primaries, McCain was wildly popular with the public and the media. McCain then won Iowa and New Hampshire. Both were major political blows to Bush. But Iowa is a swing state that allows crossover voting. New Hampshire is a black sheep that means nothing.
Bush took McCain out to the woodshed in every primary after.
Rudy could win Iowa and New Hampshire. But it would be a faux pas (you have to know the original definition, not today's use). You can throw a party after the New Hampshire primary. But you should be fleeing the city as Jesus forewarned. A rout will follow, and the mothers of Jerusalem will be eating their babies.
Lieberman can't get the nomination in his party. Rudy can't in his.
The country prefers southern candidates and rightfully so. Ronald Reagan wasn't southern, but he certainly played the part. Mondale, Dukakis, Kerry. The country doesn't elect New England liberals. Rudy is conservative only in his foreign policy.
The public is tired of the war and is likely therefore growing tired of neoconservative foreign policy. Rudy's only strength is a weak one come '08.
I don't want to legislate morality. I want to reduce legislated immorality. The president has veto power. He also can appoint judges. And the judge appointing is going quite nicely.
There has been a conservative shift in the courts because there has been a conservative shift in the population. That shift is 40 years in the running but we are just now beginning to see the fruits in the court system.
The Kelo decision is the last liberal decision that will come down from the court (at least in the next 10 years). If Bush gets another appointment, the conservatives will stop judicial activism for a generation.
If a conservative Republican is elected (I don't know of one yet that can get elected), the federal appeals courts will be shifted as well.
If you want 5 to 10% of your hardcore Republican base to stay home on election day (thereby electing a Democrat), vote for Rudy in the primary.
If Rudy had a credible conservative running against him, he'd have trouble in the primaries. But the choice will be between two moderate Republicans, McCain and Rudy (if he runs), unless something weird happens. Bill Frist or George Allen isn't going to carry South Carolina.
I'd love to back a credible, electable conservative. I just don't see any on the horizon. Reagan's corpse can't run. If you can't be with the one you love, honey, ...
Per judge appointments, remember what the Senate did to the hapless Harriet Miers. President Giuliani will have to appease the right wing of his party with judicial appointments if he wants a Republican Senate to cooperate with him on other matters.
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