Conservative Case Against Rudy Giuliani

Rudy Giuliani, a contender for the presidency in 2008, is receiving an inordinate amount of positive attention. That's quite understandable since Rudy is charismatic, did a great job on the campaign trail for President Bush in 2004, and his phenomenal performance after 9/11 was much appreciated. However, likeable or not, having Rudy as the GOP's candidate in 2008 would be a big mistake. Here's a short, but sweet primer on some of Rudy's many flaws.

As these comments from a 1989 conversation with Phil Donahue show, Rudy Giuliani is staunchly in favor of abortion:

"I've said that I'll uphold a woman's right of choice, that I will fund abortion so that a poor woman is not deprived of a right that others can exercise, and that I would oppose going back to a day in which abortions were illegal.

I do that in spite of my own personal reservations. I have a daughter now; if a close relative or a daughter were pregnant, I would give my personal advice, my religious and moral views ...

Giuliani: Which would be that I would help her with taking care of the baby. But if the ultimate choice of the woman - my daughter or any other woman - would be that in this particular circumstance [if she had] to have an abortion, I'd support that. I'd give my daughter the money for it."

"I'm pro-choice. I'm pro-gay rights,Giuliani said. He was then asked whether he supports a ban on what critics call partial-birth abortions. "No, I have not supported that, and I don't see my position on that changing," he responded." -- CNN.com, "Inside Politics" Dec 2, 1999

It's bad enough that Rudy is so adamantly pro-abortion, but consider what that could mean when it comes time to select Supreme Court Justices. Does the description of Giuliani that you've just read make you think he's going to select an originalist like Clarence Thomas, who would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade -- or does it make you think he would prefer justices like Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy who'd leave Roe v. Wade in place?

Rudy's abortion stance is bad news for conservatives who are pro-life or who are concerned about getting originalist judges on the Supreme Court.

In the last couple of election cycles, 2nd Amendment issues have moved to the back burner mainly because even Democratic candidates have learned that being tagged with the "gun grabber" label is political poison.

Unfortunately, Rudy Giuliani is a proponent of gun control who supported the Brady Bill and the Assault Weapon Ban.

Do Republicans really want to abandon their strong 2nd Amendment stance by selecting a pro-gun control nominee?

Other than tax cuts, the biggest domestic issue of the 2004 election was President Bush's support of a Constitutional Amendment to define marriage as being between a man and a woman. Unfortunately, Rudy Giuliani has taken a "Kerryesque" position on gay marriage.

Although Rudy, like John Kerry, has said that marriage should remain between a man and a woman, he also supports civil unions, "marched in gay-pride parades ...dressed up in drag on national television for a skit on Saturday Night Live (and moved in with a) wealthy gay couple" after his divorce. He also very vocally opposed running on a gay marriage amendment:

His thoughts on the gay-marriage amendment? "I don't think you should run a campaign on this issue," he told the Daily News earlier this month. "I think it would be a mistake for anybody to run a campaign on it -- the Democrats, the president, or anybody else."

"Rudy Giuliani came out yesterday against President Bush's call for a ban on gay marriage.

The former mayor, who Vice President Cheney joked the other night is after his job, vigorously defended the President on his post-9/11 leadership but made clear he disagrees with Bush's proposal to rewrite the Constitution to outlaw gays and lesbians from tying the knot.

"I don't think it's ripe for decision at this point," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Although Rudy may grudgingly say he doesn't support gay marriage (and it would be political suicide for him to do otherwise), where he really stands on the issue is an open question.

As Tom Bevan of RealClearPolitics has pointed out, Rudy is an adherent of the same approach to illegal immigration that John McCain, Ted Kennedy, George Bush, and Harry Reid have championed:

"While McCain has taken heat for his support of comprehensive immigration reform, Rudy is every bit as pro-immigration as McCain - if not more so. On the O'Reilly Factor last week Giuliani argued for a "practical approach" to immigration and cited his efforts as Mayor of New York City to "regularize" illegal immigrants by providing them with access to city services like public education to "make their lives reasonable." Giuliani did say that "a tremendous amount of money should be put into the physical security" needed to stop the flow of illegal immigrants coming across the border, but his overall position on immigration is essentially indistinguishable from McCain's."

That's bad enough. But, as Michelle Malkin has revealed, under Giuliani, New York was an illegal alien sanctuary and "America's Mayor" actually sued the federal government in an effort to keep New York City employees from having to cooperate with the INS:

"When Congress enacted immigration reform laws that forbade local governments from barring employees from cooperating with the INS, Mayor Rudy Giuliani filed suit against the feds in 1997. He was rebuffed by two lower courts, which ruled that the sanctuary order amounted to special treatment for illegal aliens and were nothing more than an unlawful effort to flaunt federal enforcement efforts against illegal aliens. In January 2000, the Supreme Court rejected his appeal, but Giuliani vowed to ignore the law."

If you agree with the way that Nancy Pelosi and Company deal with illegal immigration, then you'll find the way that Rudy Giuliani tackles the issue to be right down your alley.

Rudy Giuliani may have many fine qualities, but he is not a conservative, nor has he always been a loyal Republican.

For example, back in the mid-nineties, when he was actually running New York City, Rudy could have fairly been said to have governed as a moderate at best and to the left-of-center at worst:

* "The National Journal’s rating system put him at 56 percent conservative and 44 percent liberal on economic issues in 1996 and assessed him as liberal by 59 to 40 percent in looking at his social issues votes."

The New York Observer also had a very interesting selection of quotes from and about Rudy over the years that may give his conservative supporters more than a little pause. Here are a few of those quotations:

* Some ask, How can the Liberal Party support a candidate who disagrees with the Liberal Party position on so many gut issues? But when the Liberal Party Policy Committee reviewed a list of key social issues of deep concern to progressive New Yorkers, we found that Rudy Giuliani agreed with the Liberal Party's stance on a majority of such issues. He agreed with the Liberal Party's views on affirmative action, gay rights, gun control, school prayer and tuition tax credits. As Mayor, Rudy Giuliani would uphold the Constitutional and legal rights to abortion. -- N.Y.S. Liberal Party Endorsement Statement of R. Giuliani for Mayor of New York City April 8, 1989

* Mr. Rockefeller represented "a tradition in the Republican Party I've worked hard to re-kindle - the Rockefeller, Javits, Lefkowitz tradition." -- Rudy Giuliani, New York Times, July 9, 1992

* What kind of Republican? Is [Giuliani], for instance, a Reagan Republican? [Giuliani] pauses before answering: "I'm a Republican." -- Village Voice, January 24, 1989

* "Shortly before his last-minute endorsement of Bob Dole in the 1996 presidential election, [Giuliani] told the Post's Jack Newfield that "most of Clinton's policies are very similar to most of mine." The Daily News quoted [Giuliani] as saying that March: "Whether you talk about President Clinton, Senator Dole.... The country would be in very good hands in the hands of any of that group."

* Revealing at one point that he was "open" to the idea of endorsing Clinton, he explained: "When I ran for mayor both times, '89 and '93, I promised people that I would be, if not bipartisan, at least open to the possibility of supporting Democrats." -- Rudy - An Investigative Biography of Rudolph Giuliani, Wayne Barrett, Page 459

* "From my point of view as the mayor of New York City, the question that I have to ask is, 'Who has the best chance in the next four years of successfully fighting for our interest? Who understands them, and who will make the best case for it?' Our future, our destiny is not a matter of chance. It's a matter of choice. My choice is Mario Cuomo." -- Rudy Giuliani: Emperor of the City, Andrew Kirtzman, Page 133

* "[Quite] frankly, you have to understand the fact that Rudy Giuliani was a McGovern Democrat, he was endorsed by the Liberal Party when he ran for Mayor. In his heart, he's a Democrat. He's paraded all over this country with Bill Clinton and, in fact, he's very comfortable with Mario Cuomo. But what Rudy Giuliani wants is to be bailed out in the city, in the mess he's in, and everybody understands very clearly in politics that they struck a deal, that Mario's going to continue to be the big spender, save Rudy the options of raising taxes by pouring money statewide into the City of New York and bailing it out. Quite frankly, I predict that he will join the Democratic Party." -- Interview with Michael Long, Chairman N.Y.S., Conservative Party, CNN Crossfire, October 25, 1994

Does this really sound like the sort of candidate we want as a standard bearer for the Republican Party?

There has only been one man who has ever made it to the White House after being divorced and that was Ronald Reagan, who had been married to Nancy for more than 25 years before his campaign in 1980. Rudy, on the other hand, is on his third wife.

Furthermore, his second divorce from Donna Hanover was extremely ugly. Hanover accused Rudy of "open and notorious adultery." She also claimed Rudy had an affair with a staffer, Christyne Lategano-Nicholas, which both Giuliani and Lategano-Nicholas denied. However, Rudy has acknowledged that he started seeing his current wife, Judith Nathan, before his divorce from Hanover was finalized in 2002.

Given how recent this divorce was, Rudy's adultery, and the fact that he married, "the other woman," the press can be expected to cover Rudy's marriage to Hanover exhaustively if he gets the nomination and needless to say, Rudy, quite deservedly, will not come off very well.

As you've just seen, Rudy hasn't necessarily made the best decisions in his personal life. Unfortunately, the Bernard Kerik incident shows that Giuliani's poor judgment can spill over into political matters as well.

Rudy recommended his friend and business partner, Bernard Kerik, for the position of Homeland Security Secretary and the Bush administration, perhaps because Rudy vouched for him, didn't do a very thorough job of vetting him.

Soon after Kerik's nomination became public, allegations surfaced that Kerik was having two simultaneous affairs, had ties to a construction company "linked to the mob," and had an illegal alien nanny whose taxes hadn't been paid. Under fire from the press, Kerik withdrew his name from consideration for the Homeland Security position and the Bush administration was left with egg on its face for putting up such a scandal ridden nominee.

While the whole debacle was embarrassing for the Bush Administration, it raised even more serious questions about Rudy. After all, if Bernard Kerik is the sort of person Rudy sees as an appropriate friend, business partner, and nominee to run the Homeland Security Department, it makes you wonder what kind of people he is surrounding himself with on a day to day basis.

One of the biggest selling points for Rudy Giuliani is supposed to be that he's "electable" because a lot of independents and Democrats will vote for him. The problem with that sort of thinking is that if he becomes the Republican nominee, the very liberal mainstream media will spend nine months relentlessly savaging him in an effort to help the Democrats. Because of that, Giuliani's sky high polling numbers with non-Republicans are 100% guaranteed to drop significantly before election time rolls around in 2008.

That is not necessarily a problem; after all the mainstream media is always against the Republican nominee, if -- and this is a big "if" -- the GOP nominee has strong support from the Republican base.

The big problem Rudy has is that he isn't going to be able to generate that kind of support. For one thing, as a candidate, he offers almost nothing to social conservatives, without whom a victory for George Bush in 2004 wouldn't have been possible. If the choice in 2008 comes down to a Democrat and a pro-abortion, soft on gay marriage, left-of-center candidate on social issues -- like Rudy -- you can be sure that millions of "moral values voters" will simply stay home and cost the GOP the election.

The other issue is in the South. George Bush swept every Southern state in 2000 and 2004, which is quite an impressive feat when you consider that the Democrats had Southerner Al Gore at the top of the ticket in 2000 and John Edwards as the veep in 2004. Unfortunately, a pro-abortion, soft on gay marriage, pro-gun control RINO from New York City just isn't going to be able to repeat that performance. Even against a carpetbagger like Hillary Clinton, it's entirely likely that you'll see at least 2 or 3 states in the South turn from red to blue if Rudy Giuliani is the nominee.

Also, the reason why George Bush's approval numbers have been mired in the high thirties/low forties of late is because he has lost a significant amount of Republican support, primarily because his domestic policies aren't considered conservative enough. Since that's the case, running a candidate who is several steps to Bush's left on domestic policy certainly doesn't seem like a great way to unite the base again.

Despite all of his charisma and the wonderful leadership he showed after 9/11, Rudy Giuliani is not a Reagan Republican. To the contrary, Giuliani is another Christie Todd Whitman, another Arlen Specter, another Olympia Snowe. He's a throwback to the "bad old days" before Reagan, when the GOP was run by moderate Country Club Republicans who considered conservatives to be extremists. Trying to revive that failed strategy again is likely to lead to a Democratic President in 2008 and numerous setbacks for the Republican Party.

You are wrong my friend.
It will be so nice for you to say ,"hey at least we defeated gay marraige " as the next 9/11 takes place around you and the PC Dems have Islam running you local school board. Priorities my friend .

He has MANY qualities that make him a capable president ..OK , who else in the REP pary is capable of winning national support ? Allen is gone ...NEXT ?

Well I agree with you 100%. Living here in the northeast where calling the President an idiot passes an intellectuall highbrow activity, I'll say what I did in the last election: security is the one and only issue.

Now I'm disappointed in the President on protecting our borders and I'm not in favor of abortion or any radical social agenda but I have to stick to the guiding principle as you on our security.

Stopping abortion is not going to help us if we lose our country. And if Rudy is the nominee, I'll pull the lever for him against Hitlery in a heartbeat.

OK , who else in the REP pary is capable of winning national support ?

We're still two years out. A lot can happen.
There's many good potential Republican candidates who can win national support.
Rudy Giuliani is not the second coming of the Lord, Jesus Christ.

This cult-like mythology that has gathered around Rudy Giuliani is unhealthy and, to me, inexplicable. I don't get it. There's reality over here and the mythical Rudy over there. It is just so bizarre to me to see so many FReepers falling for it.

romanesq said: "It seems the left has a good stranglehold on the party so she may not get anywhere near the nomination."

Hillary, like Bill, is a very astute opportunist. I would not be surprised to hear her excuse her support for the Iraq effort as just "supporting the troops" or hear her make a breath-taking "change of heart" speech, showing just how willing to do the "right thing" she is.

I really don't believe that there is anybody to the left of the "real" Hillary.

Dear Sabramerican,

"He captures the 'I wouldn't vote for a Republican but Giuliani is the exception' vote."

Yep. I'll grant he'll get all those votes.

All 82 of them.

LOL!

sitetest

Spiff said: "This cult-like mythology that has gathered around Rudy Giuliani is unhealthy and, to me, inexplicable."

I am always suspicious of people who are "media darlings". The liberal media is quite willing to play up the tremendous "leadership" shown by Rudy. I believe that the media would like nothing better than running a far-leftist against Rudy. Either way, they win.

There are Republicans so eager to "win" that they will sacrifice practically any principle to do so. Just look at Arnold in Kalifornia working on his "Kalifornia Kyoto Treaty". If not for an economic recovery for which Arnold deserves no credit, Kalifornia would be in bankruptcy, and deservedly so.

Do you believe we'll all just sit around with our fingers up our noses while the islamo nazis take over our school boards? LOL! I worry more about the enemy within.

Romney takes it. McCain is hopeless, Rudy is a liberal, Allen is a buffoon with the wattage of a zippo who'd drop like a stone in the general.

Don't count Pence out. Even though I'm rabidly anti-Amnesty for illegal aliens and Pence's plan does include a form of amnesty, I could put that aside and vote for Pence. He's the most solidly conservative Republican in the bunch and highly electable. I just hope he lets his awful amnesty plan die a quiet death so that he can make a serious run. At this point, and it pains me to say it, I still favor Pence. However, that does not mean that I won't oppose his amnesty plan if he keeps promoting it. I have a principled disagreement with a principled Republican. He's wrong on the amnesty thing but right on just about everything else. Pence is a guy that any real Republican and conservative can get behind.

Bottom line:

Rudy is a SOCIAL LIBERAL with fiscal conservative LEANINGS.

He's a RHINO and would be a disaster for conservatives as President. Just as Arnie, a SOCIAL LIBERAL in California has proven to be a DISASTER for social and fiscal conservatives.

All I can say is I strongly disagree. There are not enough independent and moderate Democrat votes to offset the loss of social conservatives. Bush won twice because of social conservatives, not in spite of them.

"You have to know what New York City was like until Giuliani came on the scene to fully appreciate his common sense approach to government.
He is far and away the better choice to most candidates on both sides. "

If you can improve NYC, you can improve the world.

Facing down Islamic fascism is the primary issue for the next President. Why would I trust someone who has embraced the left on so many issues to do that?

I like the way you think.

Hillary can move from Far Left to left of Center, But Rudy after 9-11 can't move from center to right of center? Know what I think? There are some people out there who know Rudy will get a large chunk of NY Democrat cross over votes, out of gratitude, respect and trust. Nothing will change that, so the plan is to invalidate him in the eyes of all the conservatives who never really got 9-11, and there seems to be quite a few of those.

Thanks. I have been ignoring most of the posts people have directed to me on this thread today because they are rabid pit bulls with more heat than light to offer the discussion. But your user name intrigued me so I decided to check yours out.

You make a really valid point. If so many others moved right after 9-11, including supposedly Hillary (pshaw right), then who's to say Rudy hasn't as well? His speech at the 2004 Republican Convention sure sounded conservative to me.

Some of the loons just can't get past the fact that to be mayor of NYC one has to move left. They also ignore the many ways he's shown himself to be a conservative. And I suspect as president we'll see more of the latter and less of the former.

Anyway, thanks for your civil, and sane, post compared to some of these raving loonies on this thread.

Republicans have fought hard over the last 25-30 years to advance a conservative agenda for America. We elected Reagan twice, a GOP majority in Congress for the last 12 years and helped to put Bush43 over the top in 2000 and 2004. I don't see conservatives tossing aside those historic accomplishments in order to now elect a liberal to represent the GOP in the 2008 general election.

With about 16 months to go until the GOP primary season kicks off, anything can happen. Jumping on the Giuliani bandwagon should be the last thing conservatives do. Obviously some Republicans aren't interested in seeing another conservative get the GOP nomination. Giuliani maybe a good politician, but its his liberal politics that are raising the red flag with many rightwingers. Besides, without support from the GOP baqse of religious and social conservatives, Giuliani doesn't ahve a prayer of getting the nomination.

You must not be familiar with the American politician who told a would be Saudi donor to stick his money up his arse.

Yes, that would be Rudy.

Who claimed Rudy was a conservative? He's a pragmatic centrist strong on security.

If it's between Rudy and George Allen do you go with the phony puffy guy?
I'd still choose Rudy but I don't vote in primaries anyway.

If it's between Rudy and Al Gorbot/John Frenchface/Hitlery you going to have trouble with that choice?

C'mon.

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