Since Bush engaged the terrorists on their side of the world, and we seem to have gotten two pretty good jurists on the SCOTUS, would you vote for someone like Rudy who is pro-choice (though I think he would appoint jurists and not legislators to the courts) if you knew he was going to finish the war and be a champion of National Security? My friends and I always come back to the fact that he was on the ground on 9/11 and lost a good amount of friends and colleagues and he knows more than anyone the importance of finishing/continuing this war until we win. Seems the primaries will come down to the social issues, like abortion, in which case Rudy would lose, but I would trust the guy on National Security. Thoughts please.
National security doesn't mean a damn thing when the guy in charge wages war on his own people and creates a police state. There's no justification for abandoning Freedom in any war with the jihadists. The US doesn't need his authoritarian RINO ass to save us.
"A philosophical question here for all those looking at this thread. This is something I have debated with myself and a few friends for a few months now.
Since Bush engaged the terrorists on their side of the world, and we seem to have gotten two pretty good jurists on the SCOTUS, would you vote for someone like Rudy who is pro-choice (though I think he would appoint jurists and not legislators to the courts) if you knew he was going to finish the war and be a champion of National Security? My friends and I always come back to the fact that he was on the ground on 9/11 and lost a good amount of friends and colleagues and he knows more than anyone the importance of finishing/continuing this war until we win. Seems the primaries will come down to the social issues, like abortion, in which case Rudy would lose, but I would trust the guy on National Security. Thoughts please."
I will take a stab at answering your question.
First, I worked down at World Trade and was there on 9/11. I survived. Rudolph Giuliani was not the only person at Ground Zero. Yes, he provided leadership, particularly symbolically, during the aftermath of the attack. But then, so did the Chief of Police, the Fire Marshall, the chaplains. There was a lot of heroism that day. Rudy has always been a glory hound. I remember the great snowstorm of January 1996, with Rudy down in The Bunker, the Command Post he had erected. Snowploughs were sent left and right, and the City was practically in lockdown. The snow got cleared quickly and efficiently, and Rudy was hailed as practically a hero by many, for facing up to the storm with aplomb.
Of course, just this past winter we got a WORSE storm, and New York City cleaned it up just as quickly and efficiently. Bloomberg was not hunkered down in the bunker and standing before every television camera in battle fatigues. New York is a big, sophisticated city with big, sophisticated, extremely well trained public workers: firemen, police, road crews, transport personnel. RUDY didn't clear the streets in the Blizzard of '96, or save those who were saved at Ground Zero on 9/11. The road crews and rescue crews did. Rudy got the lion's share of the CREDIT, because he's a New York politician in the tradition of Schumer and Peter King: great on camera, and always seeking one out.
Likewise the crime statistics. Nobody can dispute that murders in New York dropped precipitously during Rudy's watch. But they also dropped precipitously in Detroit, which remained the same morass of corruption and drift. Rudy had a politician's knack for successfully taking credit for the New York version of a national downward trend in crime. It wasn't Rudy that did it though, nor even the police (again: Detroit's murder rate plunged too, and they didn't change anything). It was what Wall Street Journal Online's James Taranto has dubbed "The Roe Effect" - the abortion of the criminal unborn during the preceding 17 years - that probably is the real reason.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciated Rudolph Giuliani as Mayor of New York. I voted for the man. But the hero worship is the result of good marketing. He put a face before the cameras and got credit for the hard work of other people. And he also axed the Chief of Police who presided over the crime drop, because he saw in him a rising political rival.
When thinking of the President, I would NOT vote for Giuliani under any circumstances. Giuliani is pro-choice. It's whistling past the graveyard to think that he is going to put anybody pro-life on the bench: he will put New York lawyers up there, of the likes of Jeanine Pirro - tough on crime, and socially liberal, like himself. He will not put a conservative in the Attorney General slot, but a liberal who is tough on crime.
He will never close the border nor take any other measures to stem illegal immigration. And he has a New York liberal and New York cop's view on guns: they're bad and people don't need them. He is a tough, stubborn, principled man, and he is not going to change any of those policies.
Also, please remember that he's an open adulterer. Some people care a great deal about those things.
So, the only thing left is the bare assertion that Giuliani will be better in the War on Terror than anything the Democrats put up.
Really? General Wesley Clark (whom I don't much care for) would certainly be a more competent Commander-in-Chief for the purposes of fighting and winning the War on Terror than Rudolph Giuliani. Rudy has no more military experience than Hillary Clinton. Clinton has been as pro-war as Rudy. Now, perhaps the assumption is that she's just saying that to get elected, but that's actually not a good position for her to take vis-a-vis her own base. Also, there is no reason to think that Lady MacBeth would be anything but a bloody-minded hardass ballbreaker if she were in power. Do you really think that the First Woman President, particularly the Harridan-In-Chief, would let herself also be the only President other than Richard Nixon to intentionally lose a war? No way in Hell.
No Republican will withdraw, but some Republicans might try to micromanage the war. Watching Rudy in New York makes me suspect that he might do with the military - concerning which he has no experience whatsoever - what he did with the New York Police Department: micromanage, and seek to monopolize the glory.
Of the Republican candidates, McCain is unquestionably the most qualified and experienced military man, and there is no reason, at all, to believe that he would be any less dedicated to winning the thing than Bush is. However, he brings more understanding to the table than Bush or Cheney, and given McCain's temperament, there is little reason to think that he would make mistakes like pulling back from Fallujah, as the Bush Administration ordered the first time. McCain's errors are likely to be more on the side of excessive violence and fire, rather than excessive patience and timidity. Rice could be expected to carefully weigh the advice of her military commanders. Allen? Don't know anything about his military knowledge or experience. Pence? Ditto.
If you are just focused on the War on Terror, then you have to vote for McCain. McCain would probably be as good as Bush in the War on Terror, maybe better, because he is less patient and would have broken more heads early on.
If your sole front of consideration is the War on Terror, then McCain has to be your man. If you raise the objections to McCain that many have, about his position on campaign finance reform, the border, the judicial filibuster, etc., then you've moved off the pure look at just the War - and if you do that then Rudy is a left wing liberal horrorshow.
I voted for Rudolph Giuliani for Mayor of New York City, and he was a great Mayor too. I would have voted for him for Governor of New York, or for Senator had he run against Clinton. But for President? No. Giuliani would be an effective Chief Executive Officer: very effective at ramming through a bunch of policies and judicial appointments I could not stand.
If we're ONLY going to look at the War, then the most credible candidate is McCain, period.