If Rudy runs - Dobson will sit it out - like he did in 2000, Rudy can NOT be the candidate...
Sharper Minds Daily...
Immigration politics have similarly harmed New York. Former mayor Rudolph Giuliani sued all the way up to the Supreme Court to defend the city’s sanctuary policy against a 1996 federal law decreeing that cities could not prohibit their employees from cooperating with the INS. Oh yeah? said Giuliani; just watch me. The INS, he claimed, with what turned out to be grotesque irony, only aims to "terrorize people." Though he lost in court, he remained defiant to the end. On September 5, 2001, his handpicked charter-revision committee ruled that New York could still require that its employees keep immigration information confidential to preserve trust between immigrants and government. Six days later, several visa-overstayers participated in the most devastating attack on the city and the country in history.
I for one would not vote for Rudy.
Activists go for pro-life candidates. I will not support Rudy. Now if Rudy does go on to be the R candidate, then I will hold my nose and vote for him. He's still better than Hillary.
J. C. Watts, Jeb Bush, Zell Miller....... NOT Rudy ever!
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.
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.
George Allen
Jeb Bush
Mark Sanford
(just to name a few)
The MSM only talk about the ones they can control and want to pump up, such as McCain. It is up to the Party, the activists and the individuals to make their preferences known.
I'm confident that within two years, a frontrunner (probably not even named/considered at this point) will emerge. I really didn't know about GW Bush until he made his candidacy known.
There is no democrat around (with the exception of Zell Miller or Joe Lieberman) who can shine Rudy's shoes.
I don't see how Rudy could carry many small rural red states any other way than as a protest vote against whomever the Democrats run in 2008. Rudy has next to nothing in common with voters like me; I see him as nothing more than an urban politician.
I cannot even jump onto the 'America's Mayor' bandwagon. I have lived in a rural area for my entire life hence it follows a mayor title has no more sway than that of dogcatcher.
Being a Broken Glass Republican, I would support Rudy or McClintock for President.
But, there are others who would gladly support McClintock (Or someone like him) but bash Rudy to death, and take their ball and go home on election day.
Against Hillary, Rudy would win in a landslide. McClintock would lose in a landslide.
What is so hard to understand??
They know full well that the country as a whole is shifting toward the right, and both groups want to protect their funding. Liberals and RINOs are terrified that the people will choose freedom over Big Government spending and Big Government people control.
The reason we have primary elections is to choose our candidates.
If it was between Hilllary! and Guliani, I would stay home and pack.
Better get used to President Giuliani.
The constantly-bleating, haranguing, gun-to-the-head, "I'm gonna sit at home again", "I'm so pure, I wouldn't even vote for myself", utopian, cranky, self-appointed but not representative, keyboard-spamming 'voices of social conservatism' will sooner or later find fault with almost every primary candidate and end-up splitting their vote, while simultaneously ticking off most primary voters because they NEVER SHUT UP, even for a second.
Keep up with the daily 'bash-Rudy', 'bash CINO-Bush', 'bash the party heathens', 'we are owed and we want everything yesterday', and 'everybody is a RINO but me' threads and the re will be a bit of an undercurrent backlash and schadenfraude when Rudy emerges as the GOP candidate. Right now he isn't my first choice, but I'll support him in the general should he win the primary(and I'd bet money that he will.)
You may not what to hear that, but consider it helpful advice. Annoyance is not the path to victory.