Posted on 01/27/2007 1:26:55 PM PST by S. T. Karnick
In a very interesting City Journal article, Steven Malanga argues that "Yes, Rudy Guiliani Is a Conservative/And an electable one at that."
Malanga makes a strong case for Rudy as a Reagan-style conservative. After recounting Giuliani's record as mayor of New York City, in which, as Malanga establishes firmly, Rudy supported free markets and individual responsibility, as exemplified vividly in his tax cuts , welfare reform success, "zero tolerance" crimefighting, and firm rejection of racial politics.
As Malanga notes, Giuliani did this in what was one of the most leftist cities in the United States until he became mayor.
There's no question in my mind that Giuliani was a superb mayor and is a solid man of the right in most of his public stances. What many conservatives question, of course, is his record on social issues (such as support for legality of abortions, homosexual marriage, and gun control) and his occasionally unsteady personal life (such as his divorce from his somewhat eccentric wife).
None of this, Malanga argues, should preclude conservatives from supporting Giuliani for President:
[I]n a GOP presidential field in which cultural and religious conservatives may find something to object to in every candidate who could really get nominated (and, more important, elected), Giuliani may be the most conservative candidate on a wide range of issues. Far from being a liberal, he ran New York with a conservative’s priorities: government exists above all to keep people safe in their homes and in the streets, he said, not to redistribute income, run a welfare state, or perform social engineering. The private economy, not government, creates opportunity, he argued; government should just deliver basic services well and then get out of the private sector’s way. He denied that cities and their citizens were victims of vast forces outside their control, and he urged New Yorkers to take personal responsibility for their lives. “Over the last century, millions of people from all over the world have come to New York City,” Giuliani once observed. “They didn’t come here to be taken care of and to be dependent on city government. They came here for the freedom to take care of themselves.” It was that spirit of opportunity and can-do-ism that Giuliani tried to re-instill in New York and that he himself exemplified not only in the hours and weeks after 9/11 but in his heroic and successful effort to bring a dying city back to life.
Malanga's argument against conservative rejection of Giuliani is twofold. Point one is that the social issues are not as important as the economic and national defense policies which are Giuliani's great strength. Point two is that Giuliani is conservative in the really important ways:
As part of Giuliani’s quintessentially conservative belief that dysfunctional behavior, not our economic system, lay at the heart of intergenerational poverty, he also spoke out against illegitimacy and the rise of fatherless families. A child born out of wedlock, he observed in one speech, was three times more likely to wind up on welfare than a child from a two-parent family. “Seventy percent of long-term prisoners and 75 percent of adolescents charged with murder grew up without fathers,” Giuliani told the city. He insisted that the city and the nation had to reestablish the “responsibility that accompanies bringing a child into the world,” and to that end he required deadbeat fathers either to find a private-sector job or to work in the city’s workfare program as a way of contributing to their child’s upbringing. But he added that changing society’s attitude toward marriage was more important than anything government could do: “[I]f you wanted a social program that would really save these kids, . . . I guess the social program would be called fatherhood.”
As a consequence of his rejection of the time-honored New York liberal belief in congenital black victimhood, Giuliani set out to change the city’s conversation about race. He objected to affirmative action, ending Gotham’s set-aside program for minority contractors, and he rejected the idea of lowering standards for minorities. Accordingly, he ended open enrollment at the City University of New York, a 1970s policy aimed at increasing the minority population at the nation’s third-largest public college system but one that also led to a steep decline in standards and in graduation rates.
This is a strong and important argument, and it will be good for the right to argue this one out.
Later in the article, Malanga makes the case that Giuliani is an important enough figure to merit presidential consideration:
The national, and even world, press marveled at the spectacular success of Giuliani’s policies. The combination of a safer city and a better budget environment ignited an economic boom unlike any other on record. Construction permits increased by more than 50 percent, to 70,000 a year under Giuliani, compared with just 46,000 in Dinkins’s last year. Meanwhile, as crime plunged, New Yorkers took to the newly safe streets to go out at night to shows and restaurants, and the number of tourists soared from 24 million in the early 1990s to 38 million in 2000, the year before the 9/11 attacks. Under Giuliani, the city gained some 430,000 new jobs to reach its all-time employment peak of 3.72 million jobs in 2000, while the unemployment rate plummeted from 10.3 to 5.1 percent. Personal income earned by New Yorkers, meanwhile, soared by $100 million, or 50 percent, while the percentage of their income that they paid in taxes declined from 8.8 to 7.3 percent. During Giuliani’s second term, for virtually the only time since World War II, the city’s economy consistently grew faster than the nation’s.
Today, Americans see Giuliani as presidential material because of his leadership in the wake of the terrorist attacks, but to those of us who watched him first manage America’s biggest city when it was crime-ridden, financially shaky, and plagued by doubts about its future as employers and educated and prosperous residents fled in droves, Giuliani’s leadership on 9/11 came as no surprise. What Americans saw after the attacks is a combination of attributes that Giuliani governed with all along: the tough-mindedness that had gotten him through earlier civic crises, a no-nonsense and efficient management style, and a clarity and directness of speech that made plain what he thought needed to be done and how he would do it.
Like great wartime leaders, Giuliani displayed unflinching courage on 9/11. A minute after the first plane struck, he rushed downtown, arriving at the World Trade Center just after the second plane hit the South Tower, when it became obvious to everyone that New York was under attack. Fearing that more strikes were on the way—and without access to City Hall, the police department, or the city’s command center because of damage from the attacks—Giuliani hurried to reestablish city government, narrowly escaping death himself as the towers came down next to a temporary command post he had set up in lower Manhattan. “There is no playbook for a mayor on how to organize city government when you are standing on a street covered by dust from the city’s worst calamity,” one of his deputy mayors, Anthony Coles, later observed.
This is all true, and I think that Malanga is right to conclude that Rudy Giuliani merits serious consideration as a presidential candidate.
In addition to that, I think that the discussion of Giuliani's qualifications for national leadership could be very salutary for the right. Those who define themselves as conservatives find it hard to support someone with Guiliiani's record on social issues.
As a liberal of the right, I too disagree with Guiliani's positions supporting abortion, gay marriage, and the like. However, I think that Guiliani would have to move a little to the right on these issues in order to secure the Republican nomination, and that as president he would not be any less supportive of the Right's social agenda than Ronald Reagan was as president.
Guiliani reminds me rather strongly of Reagan, in fact. Although Reagan talked the talk on social issues, he didn't really walk the walk, unless I wasn't looking when Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Casey voted to turn back Roe v. Wade in the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision. Similarly, Reagan had been divorced and had a rather less than perfectly salubrious family life. But on the big things Reagan was the best president of the past century.
If Rudy Guiliani could be half that good, that would make hiim a superior president indeed. His candidacy merits serious consideration.
From Karnick on Culture.
Bye-bye! He is a loser. And a liar. And an adulterer. A gun-grabbing baby-killer as well. And your choice! No wonder you run.
Better loosen up that blind fold you're wearing, because those bills are coming down the pike in the few months in Congress, and you better hope that the RINOs don't vote with them, and Bush doesn't sign it, or you can kiss the GOP goodbye, and not just in '08.
We're arguing on this thread now:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1774810/posts
Come on over and join us.
My analysis in Post 4 is correct and factual. I stand on it. Although I don't think you ever read it. I just don't like arguing with judmental, name callers, extremist like you. That's why I'm leaving.
They aren't going to come down the pike.
Oh please! There are plenty of reasons to not support Giuliani, but this isn't one of them. He had prostate cancer for God's sake! He could barely make it through the day without taking naps because of the treatment, and was throwing up constantly.
Fault the guy for his positions all you want, but don't fault him for not being superman.
LOL, yeah, you back a known loser and you whine. So do tell, since you care nothing about the issues of guns, gays or life - what matters to you?
~ Rudy supports big government Republicanism.
* Conservatives support limited government.
~ Rudy has supported gun control and an assault weapons ban.
* Conservatives oppose gun control and an assault weapons ban.
~ Rudy has supported abortion on demand and a ban on partial birth abortion.
* Conservatives oppose abortion on demand and support a ban on partial birth abortion.
~ Rudy has supported and even promoted special rights for homos.
* Conservatives oppose special rights for anyone.
~ Rudy supports liberal immigration reform, amnesty and a path to citizenship for illegals.
* Conservatives are opposed to liberal immigration reform, amnesty and a path to citizenship for illegals.
There is nothing conservative about Rudy Giuliani. Rudy`s major accomplishment upon leaving office as Mayor of NYCity was to reduce crime. The current liberal mayor of NYCity Mike Bloomberg has also reduced crime. Doesn't mean conservatives will vote for either Giuliani or Bloomberg to be POTUS. Only a moderate, centrist or liberal Republican could vote for Rudy. Unless you pull a "Vito Fossella", and sell out your conservative principles for the liberal bandwagon of Rudy Giuliani. Rudy`s given a lifetime of support to liberal policies and liberal causes, and that should be a turnoff to anyone who calls themselves a conservative.
Your positions here are over-broad and subjective, and you boiling down the 'conservative' position to what you say it is, is arrogant to the max.
That said, I'm not a Rudy supporter, and I didn't even comment on any of these issues. You attacked him for having the unmittigated gall to have prostate cancer. That's stupid.
Yeah, Rudy is so against gay marriage that he signed legislature to make any "partnership" equal to marriage under the law.
He fought to protect illegal immigrants from arrest when they use our hospitals, essentially fighting to give free health care to illegal immigrants at the taxpayers' expense. And he also fought to protect them when they send their children to our schools.
Yeah, he cut social welfare for citizens but he increased social welfare for illegals at the taxpayers' expense.
and yes, he's a gun-grabber who went so far as to file lawsuits against 26 U.S. handgun manufacturers in June 2000, seeking compensation for New Yorkers shot by illegal guns.
You say its not an issue? Well, I think he's just the kind of the guy to make it an issue if he's elected.
Sorry, but Rudy is for almost everything I am against.
Now we are going to see if those NRA A and A+ ratings, both Republican and democrat count for something..." 2/22/07
Didn't take months after all...coming "down the pike" in days. Time to take your head out of the sand, but then it was time a couple of weeks ago when I told you it was on the way and you said the Democrats would NEVER do that!
I believe it will they pass it which I don't think they will.
YES! YES! YES! And you think that Rudy wouldn't sign this if it's passed by the Democrats and Rinos? Bush has already said he would (AFTER being elected) and the Republicans, to save him from himself, never took it up. Rudy has said he is for this BEFORE being elected. This is the BEST reason I know of to NEVER EVER vote for Rudy in the primary or the general should he get the nomination, but Rudy will NOT be the Republican nominee because he will NOT get the votes of 2nd Amendment voters whether it passes or not and whether Bush signs it or not.
I'm not going to sacrfice electability for any one issue. Like Michael Reagan said, we don't need litmus tests. I believe Rudy is the only one that can beat Hillary and Hillary would be worse on the 2nd Amendment than Rudy and worse on every other issue, most of which Rudy is right on. No President is perfect. Heck, Reagan gave amnesty to 3 million illegal immigrants. And like I said, I don't think Congress will pass it.
True! But I prefer mine to have a little respect for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. That's the reason I can't vote for Democrats or liberal Republicans. Obviously you are only interested in winning the Presidency even though winning and losing in a Rudy vs. Hillary race is the same thing.
Rudy's not perfect on the 2nd Amendment but he's not going to try to ban all guns and take them away. Hillary might though.
"Not perfect on the 2nd Amendment" - Wow! What an understatement!
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