Rudy Rising : Giullani's 9/11 legacy and 2008 prospects

National Review ^ | 09/12/2006 | Deroy Murdock

[SirLinksalot]

Rudy Rising

His 9/11 legacy and 2008 prospects.

By Deroy Murdock

America’s still-vivid memories of that miserable morning five Septembers ago may be brightened by recollections of former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani’s focused, confident performance on 9/11. The ongoing goodwill his leadership generated may explain why he outpaces his potential rivals for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.

Recent polls show Giuliani waxing on the right, regardless of any misgivings conservative GOP voters may have with him on abortion, gay rights, or gun control.

Among 432 registered Republicans and pro-GOP independents who CNN and Opinion Research Corp. surveyed from August 30 to September 2, 31 percent favored Giuliani for the nomination, while 20 percent backed Sen. John McCain. (Error margin: +/- 5 percent.)

Of the 6,926 participants thus far in an ongoing Internet survey for the very conservative FreeRepublic.com, 45.1 percent endorsed Giuliani, 28.3 percent backed Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and only 5.3 percent picked McCain.

An August 14–15 Victory Enterprises poll found 30 percent of Iowa Republicans for Giuliani, while 17.3 percent wanted McCain (+/- 4.9 percent). Among these 400 likely caucus voters, 70 percent called themselves pro-life.

Strategic Vision’s August polls of Republican voters discovered these results — Washington State: Giuliani 40 percent, McCain 28; Florida: Giuliani 42 percent, McCain 28; Pennsylvania: Giuliani 44 percent, McCain 24 percent.

In a July 31 through August 3 survey of 623 New York state registered voters, the Siena Research Institute saw McCain beat Hillary Rodham Clinton in New York state by 46–42 percent (+/- 3.9 percent). Giuliani, however, would stomp Clinton even harder, 48–42 percent, and capture the Empire State’s 31 electoral votes.

In a world where Islamofascists plot to use baby-formula bottles to blow up tourist-filled jets, GOP voters understand how vital it is to assign someone tough and talented to confront this life-and-death challenge. Giuliani looks like that man.

Giuliani’s formidable stature seems to make liberals nervous. Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins, authors of Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11, have attempted to rain fresh rubble on Rudy. While they praise Giuliani for his on-camera comments that day, they mainly criticize him for what else they believe he should have done then and, indeed, throughout his mayoralty to cope with such a major terrorist attack. Barrett and Collins are a two-man Hubble Telescope of hindsight. Yes, in retrospect, the Emergency Operations Center might have survived were it not situated at 7 World Trade Center, where it went unused that morning and then collapsed along with the entire building at 5:20 P.M. Besides, as Vincent J. Cannato recalls in his September 3 Washington Post review of this book, Barrett never embraced this “bunker in the sky.” In 2000, he called it “a symbol of Giuliani’s weakness for gadgetry, secrecy, and militarist overkill.”

These authors complain that Giuliani and his top aides kept moving around on September 11. Let’s see: Giuliani’s advisors considered 7 WTC too dangerous, as was the fire department’s impromptu command post at Vesey and West streets. The next stop, a basement at 75 Barclay Street, became uninhabitable after Lower Manhattan choked in dust and smoke. After phoning in a reassuring radio message to New Yorkers from a Houston Street firehouse, Giuliani finally settled in at the Police Academy on East 20th Street in Gramercy Park. Giuliani had little choice but to stay mobile that morning.

Barrett and Collins chide the Office of Emergency Management for not conducting a drill involving a major skyscraper fire. Yes, OEM should have. However, it stayed busy rehearsing for chemical-weapons attacks, securing Times Square’s millennium celebrations (a feared terror target), and guarding against immediate threats, such as a West Nile virus outbreak.

Could New York have prepared for and responded even better to 9/11? Naturally. Still, Giuliani and city employees helped some 15,000 WTC inhabitants flee to safety. While President Bush understandably remained a moving target, Giuliani restored city government, then calmly and firmly reassured Americans and the world that we had endured a serious blow, but bounced back up off the mat.

While Giuliani’s critics try to paint him as someone who first leapt on the antiterror bandwagon on 9/11, he actually has fought Islamofascists since the mid-1970s.

Barrett and Collins blow it big time when they write: “Giuliani had behaved from the outset of his mayoralty as if the 1993 [WTC] bombing had never happened.” In fact, just moments after becoming mayor, Giuliani said in his first inaugural address on January 2, 1994: “Your strength was demonstrated within sight of this place, last year, at the World Trade Center . . . those who work for our city are the most professional and best in the nation.” He praised New Yorkers, in and out of government, for emerging from that terrorist assault, and argued that Gothamites could accomplish great things under pressure.

As mayor, Giuliani had then-PLO leader Yasser Arafat ejected from an October 1995 Lincoln Center concert to which he was not invited. “Maybe we should wake people up to the way this terrorist is being romanticized,” Giuliani said. While a U.S. attorney under President Reagan, Giuliani investigated the 1985 PLO hijacking of the luxury liner Achille Lauro. Four terrorists fired on and wounded ship passengers and fatally shot Leon Klinghoffer, a wheelchair-bound retired New Yorker who was selected for being Jewish.

As President Gerald Ford’s associate deputy attorney general, Giuliani was a member of the Cabinet Committee to Combat Terrorism. According to a declassified June 10, 1976, State Department memorandum, this panel addressed the “increased danger of major terrorist attacks in the US requiring urgent preventive and preparatory action.” Among other things, this memo reveals that, at a meeting that May 27, “Mr. Giuliani said that it would be important to have the USG [U.S. government] respond to press queries during an IT [international terrorist] incident with a single voice. He suggested that a model plan be worked out.”

As Barrett and Collins aim their lances at Giuliani’s post-9/11 armor, they largely miss what GOP primary voters clearly see: a dedicated and relentless patriot who has been fighting terrorists for 30 years. Facing an unprecedented crisis, Giuliani stayed remarkably cool, maintained order, and helped evacuate the financial district’s dangerous streets. “Just keep going north,” he told those still in Lower Manhattan.

To amplify his enduring post-9/11 reputation, Giuliani should educate Republicans on his Reaganesque tax-reducing, budget-restraining, crime-cutting mayoral record. Somehow, Giuliani also needs to make peace with pro-life and Second Amendment activists. But for now, “America’s Mayor” — previously caricatured as “too liberal for the nomination” — looks like 2008’s Republican to beat.

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— Deroy Murdock is a New York-based columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a senior fellow with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. Researcher Marco DeSena contributed to this piece.

[jla]

This has already been posted, and it was later found out that Deroy was hitting the crack pipe when he wrote it.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

Liberals and the MSM sure want far left wingers for POTUS of both parties.

[Prysson]

Rudy doesnt have a prayer of winning the primary..maybe if he had been a vp he would probably be able to win the primary..but not an open presidency.

[dollar_dog]

If you think Clinton has skeletons in his closet, wait til you get a load of Rudy!

Ask him how his cousin/first wife is doing.

[Dark Skies]

This is what we need in a leader in the "war against islamofascism"...

As mayor, Giuliani had then-PLO leader Yasser Arafat ejected from an October 1995 Lincoln Center concert to which he was not invited. “Maybe we should wake people up to the way this terrorist is being romanticized,” Giuliani said.

[Michael Goldsberry]

I'd hate to see either get the nomination, but I'd have to take Rudy over McCain if it came to that.

[Dark Skies]

Ask him how his cousin/first wife is doing.

Second cousin and childhood sweetheart.

[Spiff]

blockquote>
The Real Rudy Giuliani:

• Pro-abortion - He even opposes banning partial birth murder.
• Anti-2nd Amendment - supports gun grabbing legislation including the Brady Bill and the Assault Weapon Ban
• Pro-big government - amassed unprecedented debt as Mayor of NYC
• Pro-radical gay agenda
  

  - Supports gay marriage
  - Attended every gay pride parade in NYC while mayor (even one in 1992 that included a NAMBLA contingent of pedophile activists)
  - Has received many awards from radical gay groups
  - Attends and supports many functions and fund-raisers held by radical gay organizations (even did a cross dressing act at Pride Agenda fund-raiser)

• Pro-illegal immigration - said no one in New York City is going to assist the federal government with the enforcement of immigration law, sued Feds in 1997 to be able to ignore immigration law, lost in court, vowed to ignore law anyway
• Endorses liberal Democrat candidates over Republicans - endorsed liberal Dem Mario Cuomo over Republican George Pataki in NY Governor's race
• Ran for NYC Mayor in 1994 on Liberal Party ticket. Appointed Liberal Party State Chair to a Deputy Mayor position. Endorsed 3 times by the Liberal Party for his liberal views.
• Holds many other liberal views
• Republican In Name Only - opposes many major planks of the GOP Platform

Read more about Giuliani's liberal positions here and here.

[bigbob]

It isn't about liking everything about Rudy or any other candidate, it's about winning the next Presidential election and keeping this country on course. Consider the alternative.

[dollar_dog]

Second cousin and childhood sweetheart.

Oh. That's much less creepy.

[Jake The Goose]

That's funny...

[conservative in nyc]

Marrying your FIRST cousin is legal in the state of New York.... And to think we make fun of the folks in West Virginia, where it's not.

FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt were second cousins, by the way.

[familyop]

No, no, Rudy needs rest for a few years. He also needs to collect those benefits, as per the long-standing tradition. That's how so many of the descendents of 1800s immigrants blackmailed...er, worked their way into law, teaching and other government jobs.

DOWNTOWN RUDY'S OWN HEALTH FEAR
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1700143/posts

[camas]

spot on!!!!

[2dogjoe]

bump

[jla]

Well, these Rudy threads can get a little heated up, so I thought a bit o'levity would be nice for a change.

jla - Bringing conservatives and Republicans together

[Stonewall Jackson]

I love sitting back and watching these Rudy threads. Half of the posts are pro, half are con, and most are just plain Crazy!!!

[George W. Bush]

Left the city in more debt than when he started, divorced three times (as recently as a few years ago), ugly divorces involving adultery, pro-gay marriage, pro-abortion, pro-partial birth abortion, supported Cuomo over Pataki (disloyalty), made New York a haven for illegals, etc.

This is never going to fly in the South or some of the conservative states in the west. Rudy is guaranteed to lose several southern states, giving us President Hillary.

To many ordinary Republicans, they can't see any difference between Rudy and Hillary. Other than Guiliani talks tough on terrorism but has had no foreign policy experience.

Why doesn't he run as a Democrat? It would be more honest.

[jla]

...most are just plain Crazy!!!

Yes, well you have to understand that a person can't be rowing with both oars in the water if they're supporters of Rudolph G.