Posted on 05/23/2006 9:51:04 AM PDT by Blackirish
May 23, 2006 -- IN my new book ("Can She Be Stopped?"), I suggest that the Republican best suited to the challenge of preventing Hillary Clinton's ascension to the Oval Of fice in 2008 is Rudy Giuliani. A Fox News Opinion Dynamics poll released yesterday offers some strong ballast for the idea: In a head-to-head matchup, Rudy beats Hillary 49 percent to 40 percent, the best showing among all Republican contenders.
By contrast, John McCain has a 46-to-42 advantage over Hillary - besting her but not as decisively as Rudy does. Rudy is viewed favorably by 64 percent of those asked, McCain by 49 percent (Hillary: 50 percent).
And this is not a poll of Republicans alone: The respondents are 41 percent Democrat, 32 percent Republican and 21 percent independent.
It's probably not surprising that Rudy wins in a head-to-head contest for the presidency. After all, Hillary is a lightning rod - while he, once a hugely controversial figure, has become beloved.
But what about in a Republican primary? Can Rudy possibly win?
In surveys of Republican primary voters, two names top every list - Giuliani and McCain. Each gets support from around 30 percent, with every other possible contender hovering around 2 or 3 percent at most.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Senator Allen is the son of the defensive coordinator for the '63 Bears Championship team, George Allen. Hence, I have a soft spot in my heart for him but believe he is not quite ready for 08. I expect the Bears to be very hard to beat this year and would not be surprised to see them against the Redskins in the playoffs with better results than the last two times I would hope.
Dear Jameison,
I'll rephrase: Because most of the potential nominees on the Republican side have had little national exposure previously, at this point, the polls for Republican candidates are little more than exercises in name recognition.
There are two Republicans who have had national exposure: Sen. McCain and Mr. Giuliani. Sen. McCain, because he ran in 2000, and Mr. Giuliani, because he was mayor of New York City on September 11. The others just haven't been on the national stage, yet. Thus, polls that show Mr. Giuliani and Sen. McCain as the most popular Republicans reflect that superior name recognition.
Although political junkies (a status for which most active members of Free Republic qualify) are already deep into the 2008 presidential race, most of the rest of the country hasn't really started paying attention to the November 2006 election, no less the 2008 election. When they and the lamestream media start to, then we'll see what happens.
I doubt that John Kerry had much name recognition in May 2002, even though he'd run for president before. I know that Howard Dean didn't have much name recognition prior to the 2004 election season, and if he hadn't shown publicly that he was mentally ill, he may well have had the nomination. I know that Bill Clinton had very little name recognition in May 1990. You might ask Gary Hart how much his name recognition helped him in 1988. ;-)
That's what the presidential nomination race does: it gives attention to folks. It's tough to guess who will emerge from the process. However, it is usually someone acceptable to all parts of a party's coalition, and if it isn't, the party usually loses the general election.
sitetest
Dear George W. Bush,
You make a good point about what Mr. Bush did previous to the 2000 nominating season.
Mr. Giuliani is trying to do some of that stuff, from what I can see. Someone here said he's doing well in the polls while not even running, but that's not really true. Every time I look, I see Mr. Giuliani campaigning for this or that Republican, which is, in effect, the act of running for president. He's trying to accumulate those political chits. I just don't see that he'll be as successful as Mr. Bush was in the run-up to the 2000 election season.
"The GOP will try its best to pre-select the nominee that their downstream candidates will have to run with, just as they did in 2000. I don't think they're going to pick Guiliani."
That, I'm not too sure about. I think that a large part of the party elite would be pretty happy with Mr. Giuliani. I think that a large part of the party elite is also okay with our borders being overrun by illegal immigrants. I think that a lot of these folks are a little out of touch with the grassroots. If they succeed in ramming Mr. Giuliani down the party's collective throat, I think that it will go poorly in 2008.
I think, though, that you really hit the nail on the head when you say that September 11 and the war on terror have receded as issues. This is largely due to Mr. Bush's success in defending the United States against new attacks by taking the battleground of the war from the territory of the United States to the territories of Afghanistan, Iraq, the Phillipines, and a host of other places all over the world. Ironically, the Republicans' best issue is muted by the Republican president's greatest success.
To make matters worse, Mr. Bush shot himself in the foot with the whole DPW / ports deal, giving the Democrats the opportunity to unjustly paint Mr. Bush as not as good on security and the war on terror as people previously perceived him. As well, his handling of the illegal immigration issue, before the speech last week, wasn't especially adept, either. This, too, added to doubts about the Republicans on matters related to national security and the war on terror. I think that Mr. Bush and the Republicans can, and probably will, turn a lot of that around, and before this November, at that.
But it's clear that the war on terror is currently waning as an issue, and may continue to do so right into the 2008 election.
sitetest
I don't think so. Most conseratives prefer other potential Republican candidates over Guilliani.
Dear Jameison,
"Now Guiliani has been relatively very quite since he stopped being mayor,..."
That's not true. Mr. Giuliani has been remarkably active, showing up in places where they have early primaries, campaigning for Republican candidates, etc. He may be flying a little low under the national radar, but he already has so much name recognition that he doesn't need anymore.
He is, however, doing what smart presidential candidates do in the spring of the mid-term elections - he's trying to connect with local Republicans, and with individual Republican office-holders and candidates. He is working hard at it, and not without some success.
However, in the final analysis, he is a party-splitter. The social conservatives are the single largest part of the Republican coalition, but the hard-core social conservatives are not a majority of the party by any stretch. The rest of the party could force Mr. Giuliani on social conservatives. In fact, there appear to be folks here at FR who would love nothing better, to force a showdown isolating social conservatives from the rest of the party. They amuse themselves by fantasizing how good it would be for the party to get rid of social conservatives, and how Mr. Giuliani would realign the Republican Party, effectively silencing the voice of us evil social conservatives once and for all.
It's an interesting fantasy. It's even theoretically possible that it could happen, although I don't really think that Mr. Giuliani's the fellow to get it done.
However, the alternative, and more likely, reality is that after sundering social conservatives from the party, Mr. Giuliani would go on to be the first Republican presidential candidate since 1976 to be defeated by a Democrat while giving the Democrat an actual majority of the popular vote.
sitetest
He is not ready in the ability to draw the American people to him from what I have seen. He needs to be able to electrify people as Guiliani does. That kind of charisma is invaluable in political endeavors. It also overcomes a lot of faults a candidate may have.
Who knows? At the very least, he might set a good example for an increasingly tubby nation.
"To tell the truth, 9/11 just wasn't that big a deal for the rest of us. T"
Groan!
Dear God.
Did I just see an American, and a supposed conservative actually say that?
Astonishing.
And sad. Very sad.
I doubt it. Guilliani is too Liberal for most Republicans.
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