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.

Giuliani's Legacy: Taking Credit For Things He Didn't Do
By Wayne Barrett
Rudy Giuliani's legacy is that he was the luckiest mayor we have had in a long time. He was blessed by being mayor when we had a great national upsurge in the economy. He was blessed by being mayor when we had a national downturn in crime. He was blessed because he had very little to do with either phenomenon in New York, but most New Yorkers and most tourists will think he did.
Most celebrants of Rudy Giuliani seem mesmerized by the disappearance of the squeegee men. As I wrote in my book "Rudy," the issue of the squeegees is where the hocus pocus started:
Candidate Rudy promised to wash them out of our hair. While they seemed everywhere, an NYPD report found that there were only 75 of them in 1993, planted like Calvin Klein billboards in unavoidable locations. So Ray Kelly, the police commissioner who worked for Dinkins, heard Giuliani's campaign cry and drove the squeegees off the streets before Rudy raised his own Windex-free right hand on inaugural day. The whole world, years later, thinks Rudy did it -- the predictable result of endless repetition.
But Bill Bratton himself conceded in his 1998 book that by the time he arrived at police headquarters, the squeegees were gone, noting that, "ironically, Giuliani and I got credit for the initiative." Only politics, Bratton concluded, prevented David Dinkins and Ray Kelly from receiving their due.
Similarly, there is almost no Giuliani policy that has anything to do with the economic boom. Wall Street drove the boom. The only policy that he has ever even specifically argued had anything to do with the economic upsurge was his lowering of the hotel tax, which he says opened the way for the surge in tourism. Actually, Governor Mario Cuomo lowered the state tax on hotels by several times the amount that Mayor Giuliani lowered the city tax. I think in any case, people could reasonably doubt whether the lowering of the hotel tax was responsible for the expansion of tourism.
We are in a recession now, and nobody blames the initial downturn on Rudy Giuliani. In the same way, nobody should credit him for the rising economy.
Of course, some people attribute some of the rising economy in the city to the drop in the crime rate. But what did Rudy Giuliani do to produce the drop in the crime rate? The crime rate has declined in cities throughout the country. In Seattle, for example, where the murder rate was declining far faster than it was in New York, Lenny Levitt of Newsday called the police c ommissioner and asked him what was causing the lowering crime rate in his town. And the police commissioner said, "we have no idea" He did not say, "we did it."
In the final days of the administration of David Dinkins, we had 36 consecutive months of decline in the crime statistics across the board, in the seven index crimes. Murder went down 14 percent. Those last 36 months under Dinkins reversed trends that were a decade old. Who should get the credit, the mayor who reversed the trend or the mayor who deepened the trend?
Obviously, we know who's gotten the credit. The New York Times has done, by my latest count, twelve front-page articles about the decline in the crime rate under Rudy Giuliani. It did one article about the decline in the crime rate under David Dinkins -- and in that 55-paragraph story, it never mentioned the name of David Dinkins. What Rudy Giuliani has managed to do is mug the media into accepting as fact that he is the man who caused it to happen.
John Tierney points out the irony of communities of color being the communities that have benefited most from the decline in crime. Maybe they caused that decline. If the crime rate was soaring, we know they are the ones who would be blamed. In the Giuliani years, there has also been a decline in AIDS deaths, in drug deaths, in infant mortality, in all the major problems that have plagued poor communities. Did Giuliani cause all that too? Or was it that the communities of color, ravaged by the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s, looked at themselves and did something about it.
There is not a single police tactic other than Comstat, that any of the experts has ever looked at and said was responsible for the decline in crime. Rudy has tried to say, for example, "we cracked down on guns," and by cracking down on guns, the guys in the subways who had the guns could not go out and commit the murders." But did you know that in the final three years of the Dinkins administration, gun arrests averaged 7,300? They have averaged 4,000 under Giuliani. The strategy of cracking down on guns was a Ray Kelly/David Dinkins initiative. By the time Rudy Giuliani took office, gun arrests, if they had any impact on the murder rate, were already having it.
The only real claim that Rudy Giuliani can make to a legacy at all is in the crime statistics, and they have been miserably manipulated
Thirteen percent of the total decline in crime statistics in New York was in larcenies of under fifty dollars. In 95 percent of larcenies, there is no contact between the individuals involved. It is the least threatening crime. Forty-two percent of the total decline in crime under Rudy Giuliani was auto thefts and the theft of auto parts. There are three different kinds of burglary: forcible, non-forcible, and attempted forced burglary. Attempted forced burglary is where you are sitting in your living room, somebody tries to break in, sees you there, and turns around. Or you come home from work, and you can see somebody has tried to get into your apartment, because somebody jimmied with the lock.
The statistic in burglary that has gone down dramatically, by 90 percent under Giuliani, is this victimless attempted forced burglary. In one year, 1996, it went from thirty thousand to four thousand. This is unparalleled anywhere else in the United States. It went from 41 percent of all burglaries to three percent of all burglaries.
And how did it happen? When you call a precinct and tell them, "Somebody tried to break into my house. Come over and take a look," they will tell you, "We don't do that anymore. If you want to report an attempted forced burglary come to the precinct." There is no insurance claim to file, so people don't go to the precinct. That is why that statistic dropped off the books of the City of New York.
This is how the crime stats have been manipulated. Rudy Giuliani is not a management expert, he is a statistical expert. He has jimmied every number we live by. This is not to say that crime has not declined, and has not declined dramatically, in the Giuliani era. But is he responsible for the margin of difference between that decline in New York and the decline in other major urban areas? He is not. And he has tricked us into thinking that he is.
Some people seem to believe that the perception of a reduction in crime is more important than the reality. But I think there is another perception, that Rudy Giuliani's administration, while it may have been effective in dealing with crime, has caused great pain in minority communities through abusive police tactics. I believe that that is an accurate perception. Rudy constantly throws numbers around that suggest it is inaccurate. I think he completely distorts those numbers. But the point is that that is a profound perception in the city now
It is not just issues of police abuse. Under Giuliani, black employment in city government reversed a decades long trend of slow and gradual growth. We actually saw a significant decline in black employment in all city agencies. During the greatest increase in the police department in the course of any administration, and a police exam that had produced the largest number of blacks and Latinos who passed, the Giuliani administration threw out the results of the exam as they began to hire. The fire department, where 95 percent of the supervisors were white when Rudy Giuliani took office, got even whiter. In the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which is supposed to examine instances of police abuse, black staff declined by 49 percent between 1995 and 1999. Above all, no one knows what happened to the 600,000 people, mostly minority, who have been knocked off the welfare rolls in course of the Giuliani era. Nobody knows how many of them got jobs. The workfare program was used to knock people off of welfare. People were kicked off welfare if they missed a day, if they came in late. That was the primary purpose of the workfare program, because there was certainly no training. There was certainly no job placement. The New York Times reported that only 3.5 percent of a thousand welfare recipients that it sampled got permanent jobs.
The faultline between the mayor and the black community is really quite deep. It is just common courtesy to meet with elected officials, such as Carl McCall or Virginia Fields, but Giuliani did not do so for years.
That he made war on one of the communities of the city is one of the reasons why Rudy Giuliani will never be regarded historically as one of the great mayors of New York.
Wayne Barrett, a senior editor at the Village Voice, is the author of "Rudy! An Investigative Biography of Rudolph Giuliani"

Guiliani should have his own section at Snopes.com.

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