If Rudy runs - Dobson will sit it out - like he did in 2000, Rudy can NOT be the candidate...
Sharper Minds Daily...
Posted on 12/31/2004 4:22:22 AM PST by Ed Current
Human beings are imperfect.
And some are more imperfect than others.
So, elections are choices among imperfect alternatives.
A voter's task is to choose the best available viable candidate.
Rudy Giuliani WAS preferable to his predecessor as Mayor of New York City, David Dinkins, notable as New York City's first African-American mayor and a very good dresser.
Giuliani lost to Dinkins the first time, but, after Dinkins' dangerously inept handling of the Crown Heights riot, not even the Democrats could stop Giuliani from winning the rematch .
Guiliani WAS a great improvement.
He made New York City a safer and more enjoyable city
And the thought of Dinkins as Mayor on September 11, 2001 is frightening.
BUT, New York City is well to the left of America generally.
And the sad fact appears to be that Rudy Giuliani, a baptized Catholic, set aside his Church's basic teachings on abortion, homosexuality and marriage to be politically viable in New York City.
The recent embarrassing withdrawal of President Bush's nomination of former New York Police Commissioner and Giuliani business partner Bernard Kerik to be Homeland Security Secretary, "for personal reasons," highlights the need for the Republicans to nominate a better person than Giuliani in 2008.
Yes, Giuliani would be better than Hillary.
BUT, that's far from enough.
Of course, Kerik was Giuliani's personal recommendation to President Bush.
And that recommendation demonstrates that Giuliani lacks the judgment a President of the United States needs.
Kerik is like Giuliani, a man at his best during the War on Terror but a thrice married adulterer.
That may not be an impediment to electoral success in New York City, but it is hardly the path to the Republican Party's presidential nomination.
Giuliani's undeniable leadership in the War on Terror and cancer problem do not excuse his sins or substitute for repentance.
Giuliani's first marriage was to his cousin and childhood sweetheart, Regina Peruggi, to whom he was married from 1969 to 1982.
Giuliani had his first (childless) marriage annulled, supposedly because he discovered that they were second cousins instead of third cousins!
(How many people REALLY believe him about that?)
Giuliani had discovered Donna Hanover.
Giuliani married Hanover, an actress and television personality who became Donna Giuliani helped him get elected mayor and became the mother of his children, Andrew and Caroline.
Still not content, Giuliani became involved with an attractive press aide, prompting Donna Giuliani to resume the use of her maiden name.
Then Giuliani became involved with his latest wife, Judi Nathan, an increasingly public affair that prompted Ms. Hanover to appeal to the Cardinal to help preserve her marriage.
Unsuccessfully.
Ultimately, Giuliani moved out of the Mayor's residence, Gracie Mansion, and moved in with a gay male couple until his divorce from Ms. Hanover was final.
Then he promptly married Nathan, in Gracie Mansion, with his successor, Mayor Bloomberg, performing the civil ceremony.
Incidentally, Gracie Mansion was the one place that Ms. Hanover fought to keep Ms. Nathan from visiting while she and Giuliani were still married.
An appeals court ultimately upheld an order barring Ms. Nathan from Gracie Mansion in October 2001, when Hanover was still living there with Andrew and Caroline.
Friends of Giuliani said he picked the location solely for its privacy.
(How many gullible souls accept that explanation?)
In the eyes of his Church, Giuliani is not married to Judi Nathan and, unless he can secure an annulment, on only God knows what grounds, he's still married to Ms. Hanover, who remarried.
Giuliani IS more fit than SOME to be President, but his priorities are misordered and surely the Grand Old Party can do much better!
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Email: GaynorMike@aol.com
Yeah, that's it: a WATTS/FRANKS ticket in '08 (they're from different states, correct?)!!!!!!!!
Tommy Franks is a down-to-earth, plain-talkin, reverent, & patriotic man. I admire both of them.
And to off the wall. No one could take him seriously.
It would be interesting if Watts were the candidate. I would vote for him in a heart beat. I can hear the dims now with the racial slurs like they have done with Rice, Thomas and others.
I like Frist, but he doesn't have much fire. Rice is a bureaucrat, and no politician; I love her, but she would be a disaster.
Where's James Traficant when you need him? Oh that's right he's in jail. FREE TRAFICANT!!! LOL
Methinks you are right...I dunno if his heart is in it anymore either.
My, my, RINO Rudy is so clueless as to the magnititude of the political ground-shifting. Rudy and Kerik thought they could pull off their con game on the Bush admin, and are now paying a very heavy price. A typical self-serving politician, in the Clinton mold, Guiliani later gave his pal Kerik the bum's rush when the bum Kerik proved a lethal threat to Rudy's political and business ambitions.
Even before the Kerik debacle, Rudy was in polical No-Man's Land.
Let's not forget, Giuliani ran three times for mayor on the state’s Liberal Party line. At the same time, he distanced himself from the state’s influential Conservative Party.
He helped clean up New York after 911 but he raised eyebrows in the aftermath when he sought to suspend the city’s elections to extend his term of office.
Rudy’s loyalty to the party is nil. In the hotly contested 1994 gubernatorial race pitting incumbent Democrat Mario Cuomo against Republican George Pataki, Giuliani endorsed Cuomo in the closing days of the campaign, almost costing Pataki the election. Rudy figured Cuomo would ease the way for a later Giuliani bid. Wrong again, Rudy.
Kerik's atrocious personal behavior----which DOES reflect his public actions----was shared by RINO Rudy whose life reads like a sordid tale from an X-rated paperback romance novel. Rudy was first married to his cousin for 14 years, dumping her when he met Donna Hanover, then had the 14-year marriage annuled telling the Church he didn't *realize* his first wife was his second cousin.
Yeah, sure Rudy.
Mayor Rudy, while a married man and father of two, got involved with his present wife, and insisted his lover move into Gracie Mansion while he was still married to Donna.
RINO Rudy's Clintonesque political ambitions have been short-circuited by his own hand. Kerik was exposed. Now he and Rudy stand linked together as two consummate con men.
My vote is Bill Owens-
Called "the best governor in America" by National Review magazine, Bill Owens was sworn in as Colorado's 40th Governor in January 1999. He was re-elected in 2002 with the greatest majority in Colorado history, earning a broad mandate for his innovative leadership.
Gov. Owens pushed through the largest tax relief package in state history, amounting to $1 billion in cuts in rates of sales, personal-income, and capital-gains taxes, and an elimination of the marriage penalty. As a result, he has won high marks for his fiscal leadership, earning the highest grade among the nation's governors from the Cato Institute. His policies of low taxes and restrained government spending were cited as an example for other states in a lead editorial in The Wall Street Journal.
Touted as one of the major emerging leaders in American politics by The Economist magazine, Owens was also identified as one of the country's top ten rising political stars by syndicated columnist Robert Novak. He is the Chairman of the Western Governors' Association and the immediate past-Chairman of the Republican Governors' Association and the Natural Resources Committee of the National Governors' Association. Owens is a member of the Board of Governors of Young America's Foundation, which owns and runs the Reagan Ranch in Santa Barbara, California.
Keeping his promise to institute sweeping school reform in Colorado, Gov. Owens created an education accountability system - including detailed, online school report cards - that U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige has called "the envy of the nation." His accountability system has been praised as among the best in the nation by Education Week magazine and the Heritage Foundation. He combined this model education accountability plan with six consecutive years of full state funding for K-12 public education. Under Owens' leadership, in 2004 Colorado became the first state in the nation to send students to college with vouchers. The College Opportunity Fund replaced block subsidies to colleges or universities with individual stipends for students to use at the school of their choice.
Gov. Owens kept his commitment to transform Colorado's transportation system, which had been neglected for nearly a quarter century. Through TRANS (Transportation Revenue Anticipation Notes), an innovative financing program, he accelerated $1.7 billion in transportation projects statewide that would have taken up to half a century to complete - projects that will now be done in a decade without an increase in taxes.
Known as one of Colorado's most effective policy makers, Bill Owens served in the State House and Senate and as Colorado Treasurer. He authored landmark legislation creating charter schools, toughening prison sentences, modernizing child abuse statutes, and reforming the tort system. He is a leading advocate of the Colorado Taxpayers' Bill of Rights (TABOR), which caps government spending and requires that excess funds be returned to state taxpayers.
Gov. Owens, who holds a Master's degree in public administration from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, worked for 20 years in the private sector with the consulting staff of Deloitte and Touche, with the Gates Corporation, and as director of a trade association. The Governor is an expert on Soviet affairs and writes and lectures often on Russia.
As I said, we need to make sure that it is not Rudy that gets the nom. However, I do know how to hold my nose and vote, I did that with Dole. Even though he is a very good republican we could have chosen someone better to run.
It may be early for me this morning but JC Watts doesn't ring a bell.
I think I like at this point.......Jeb Bush, or one of our other Republican Gov's.
Just curious.....does Mike Gaynor ever write paragraphs longer than one sentence?
Like it or not, "Rudy Republicanism" is real and has a large base of support. You can call us RINO's if you want, but we will never vote for a Democrat or Liberal simply on foreign policy and fiscal grounds.
So what do you want us to do? Where do you want us to go? And how would you label those of us that are anti-abortion but pro-gay marriage? Does that screw up your labeling process?
This type of puritanical litmus test for who is or who isn't a good or true Republican is the best friend the Democrats have right now. So if you want the Republican Revolution to continue to grow and prosper, we all had better figure out how to live under the same tent - and you do that by being civil to one another. Snide remarks or biblical put-downs do not a united party make.
We have bigger fish to fry in this world. I'm not letting someone's stance on gay rights, divorce - or even abortion - sway me one iota. Show me a candidate's stance on pre-emption and the War on Terror, show me lower taxes, show me the important stuff, and who cares if you lived with a hundred gay men?
Yall are forgetting Condy Rice.
She would be the best. Teamed with J.C. Watts as V.P., the ticket would be unbeatable. We would have a brilliant, person of faith in the White House again. Yes, W is brilliant, all the silly statements by the leftist losers to the contrary.
And, he is awful on gun control...just as bad as Schumer.
Looks like he would veto all those GOP/socialist spending bills.
He wouldn't win too many Southern states with comments like these:
guns kill many more people than automobiles do, even though there are many more cars than guns
...........
I applaud the President's (CLINTON'S GUN CONTROL) proposals, and I will support them any way I can.
-Rudolph W. Giuliani
Gun-grabber JulieAnnie will never win a GOP nomination.
awful on gun control...just as bad as Schumer.
Looks like he is more terrorist material than Presidential material.
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