Free Republic

It is clear that Rudy Giuliani is the right man at the right time. Rudy is already showing the leadership skills of a President and it is still early on the campaign. In the Fox News debate, Rudy stressed to the American people that we as a nation must focus on the terrorists’ war against us and our economy. Those are the defining issues of our time, and we need a strong leader like Rudy who is focused on defending this country against terrorism and growing our economy. Rudy’s answers on foreign policy issues show that he will not let...

March 19, 2007 6:00 AM America Needs RudyThe cases of Libby and Diallou. By Barbara Lerner I don’t think Rudy Giuliani’s high poll numbers are a fluke or solely a result of his stellar performance in New York on 9/11. I don’t think they’ll drop and stay down when more conservatives learn more about his past marriages or his position on abortion, despite the importance of those issues. I think many Bush supporters, former Bush supporters, and others are drawn to Rudy by a powerful intuitive feeling that he has something America needs badly, something they can’t quite articulate yet,...

The deluge of commentary on Rudolph Giuliani’s presidential prospects has forced me finally to break my long silence about the man. Somebody’s gotta say it: He shouldn’t be president, not because he’s too “liberal” or “conservative,” or because his positions on social issues have been heterodox, or because he seems tone-deaf on race, or because his family life has been messy, or because he’s sometimes been as crass an opportunist as almost every other politician of note. Rudy Giuliani shouldn’t be president for reasons more profoundly troubling. Maybe you had to be with him at the start of his electoral...

(CBS) -- Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani asked for privacy Monday to deal with strained relationships within his family, and defended his wife as a "very loving and caring" mother and stepmother. The Republican presidential candidate came to Southern California to speak with sheriffs about gang violence, but found himself answering questions about his family after his son, Andrew, publicly said their relationship had become distant after Giuliani's messy divorce from Andrew's mother, Donna Hanover, and his later marriage to Judith Nathan. "My wife Judith is a very loving and caring ... mother and stepmother. She has done everything...

Political observers are falling over themselves trying to determine the cladistics of a newly-emergent population of political animal, the Rudy booster. This appears to be the first new species of Republican to emerge in over two decades in the Family Republicanae (the last being Conservatisi reagani), and displays a particularly odd range of behaviors that call into question the long-term political viability of the new species, as well as that of Republicanae in general if they assume a position of dominance. Some observers have proposed classifying the new population as a subspecies of Rinous rockefelleri, whereas others have made a...

A March fund-raiser for Rudy Giuliani in John McCain's home state is nearly sold out, said one of the event's co-hosts. Barron Thomas, an Arizona-based Republican donor backing Mr. Giuliani said that the $1000 - $2300 tickets for a March 9th event at a private residence is Phoenix are nearly gone. Thomas said that while a McCain fund-raiser on March 3rd "somewhere downtown" had lined up "all the high society guys," Giuliani's fund-raiser was attracting "blue collar and white collar" supporters. The guest list, he said, "cut across economic and cultural lines." Thomas said that he had decided not to...

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has endorsed GOP Assemblyman Vincent Ignizio in Tuesday's special election for the South Shore City Council seat. "Vincent is clearly the best choice for the job," said Giuliani, a 2008 Republican Party contender for president. "He has the experience and record of success to represent the people of Staten Island in the City Council." Ignizio (R-South Shore) is facing Democrat Manny Innamorato in the special election to fill the seat left vacant by state Sen. Andrew Lanza (R-Staten Island). Giuliani said Ignizio, a former chief of staff to Lanza and GOP South...

The book on Rudy Giuliani is that he is too liberal on social issues to win the Republican presidential nomination. Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, put it succinctly: "I don't see anyone getting the Republican nomination who is not pro-life and a staunch defender of traditional marriage." But Mr. Giuliani is running strong in Iowa and New Hampshire polls and leading most national surveys of Republicans. He's charming crowds of conservatives everywhere he goes. So it's worth wondering if Mr. Perkins is missing an undercurrent coursing through conservative politics. Republicans have just experienced a bruising midterm election...

Views of Giuliani put GOP to the test His moderate stands on social issues part with conservative base .......On the first day of his five-day California swing, a blog popular with state conservatives, Flash Report.org, posted a YouTube clip from a February 2000 Meet the Press in which Giuliani boasts that no public official in the nation is "more strongly pro-immigrant than I am." For conservatives who want a president who will crack down on illegal immigration, that sort of talk is very troubling. "That's a big mistake," said Linda Sutter, 50, of Crescent City, Calif., who supports Giuliani because...

Today Peggy Noonan makes a glancing reference to something I've been meaning to write about for a while with respect to Rudy Giuliani: On 9/10/01 he was a bum, on 9/11 he was a man, and on 9/12 he was a hero. Life can change, shift, upend in an instant. Noonan is over dramatizing for effect, of course, but a while back I got an email from a self-described liberal in NYC saying much the same thing - namely, that in the mythical afterglow of Rudy's performance on 9/11 people have forgotten that (to paraphrase my emailer's formulation) "on September...

[snip] Giuliani transformed a city whose budget and workforce were larger than those of all but five or six states. He and police chief William Bratton famously cracked down first on quality of life crimes like panhandling and public urination. Teenagers who leaped over the turnstiles at subway entrances were arrested — a departure from the practice under Mayor David Dinkins. Giuliani later quipped that the police under his predecessor had become "highly skilled observers of crime." Those turnstile jumpers turned out to possess a huge number of illegal guns, which were confiscated, and criminals throughout the city discovered that...