Is that really what we want?
Posted on 01/31/2007 8:47:58 AM PST by Reagan Man
Rudy Giuliani runs for President, if he runs, from the same place where George Bush still tries to run his war in Iraq - from the rubble and ashes of Sept. 11.
Giuliani doesn't run from any city he still governs, or any state, or even from the U.S. Senate. He runs from a place called Sept. 11, and you would, too.
Giuliani runs, if he runs, from a job to which he was never elected, just appointed. Or perhaps anointed. It's the job of America's Mayor, and it is the best job he is ever going to have, one with which he can have a longer run than a Supreme Court justice if he plays his cards right.
When you are the mythical mayor of America, instead of a declared candidate for the Republican nomination for President of the United States, it means nobody wants to talk about what kind of mayor of New York City you were before Sept. 11, 2001. That is a real good thing for Giuliani.
There are a lot of reasons why Giuliani should quit while he is ahead in some of the polls, but the best is this: the inevitable collision between some of the myths that have grown up around him in the last six years and the facts.
If the other guys in the race just let him run on Sept. 11, let that be the only thing in play - "It really is all people see," one veteran Democrat said last weekend in New Hampshire - then he wins the nomination. Only it doesn't work that way, not in a world where everything is in play, and where the whole process, with each passing election, becomes dumber than Britney Spears.
The only thing Giuliani has run since leaving office is the booming franchise of Giuliani. He has written a huge best seller and made a small fortune giving speeches all over the world. He has run a lucrative consulting business, one that enables him to fly down to a place like Mexico City for a few days, explain to them how they can reduce the crime rate and then he pockets big change.
Only now he sounds as if he is talking himself into making a run for the nomination it is hard to see him ever getting, one that is hard to see him ever getting from the yahoos in his party, even if he is ahead in some polls the way Hillary Clinton is ahead, mostly for being famous.
But Giuliani ought to ask himself how he gets the nomination of a right-wing, red-state party with his positions in favor of stem-cell research and gun control and gay civil marriages and abortion. If he really does make his run, how do those views play on the Dick Cheney news channels, or in the Church of the Religious Right?
Giuliani ought to ask how long he will be on the stump before everybody starts banging away at him with Bernard Kerik, his police commissioner and former business partner, someone Giuliani thought would be a tremendous head of Homeland Security after turning the job down himself. Kerik is another one who wants you to think he cleaned up crime in New York City all by himself, another guy with a badge who thought the law applied to everybody except him.
Kerik will be in play the way Giuliani's second wife, Donna Hanover, and the way she found out about the breakup of her marriage on television, will be in play. So will the whole subject of race relations in the city during Giuliani's time running it. And even the conditions under which the rescue workers worked at Ground Zero.
Did Giuliani find the best in himself during those first days after the planes flew into our buildings? He did. He did his job and, in doing that job, got carried along by the best in the city, as if he was one of the ironworkers who came walking over the bridge from Stuyvesant High School that first afternoon, coming from everywhere, carrying their tools in leather bags, the ones who told the police, "We're here to work."
And when the police asked them how that day, the ironworkers said, "We cut steel, you're gonna need us." And kept walking towards the ruins of the World Trade Center.
When people see Giuliani now, they see that. They see it all, with Giuliani in the foreground. They see the city getting up, slowly at first, then defiantly. The life of the city changed forever that day. So did Giuliani's. No longer was he a man with a complicated life running the world's most complicated city. He was seen as a hero.
America's Mayor. He runs, if he runs, from there. And if it was only that, if how you did that day and in the days to follow, he wins. It isn't the only issue. There are a lot of them with Rudy Giuliani and always were and always will be.
He never ran for the Senate in the end; he never ran for governor. Now the yes-men he's always had around him tell him he can get the nomination for President. It would be easy if it were all Sept. 11, 2001. The problem for Giuliani is Sept. 10.
Do you bother to read posts before you respond to them?
The MI was one of the policy consulting firms that Giuliani utilized while he was in office.
He was their client, until he wasn't anymore.
I wonder if his failure to remain a paying customer of theirs influenced their report?
They told the story of his fiscal liberalism as Mayor. Nuff said.
As I pointed out, they told half the story.
The City Council had a 75% Democrat supermajority the entire time Giuliani was mayor.
The fact that he was able to convince them to actually reduce taxes was quite a feat.
They speak of him "not abolishing" the municipal income tax as if he somehow had the legal authority to do so.
Answer this question honestly: was Ronald Reagan a fiscal liberal because he failed to abolish the federal income tax?
Grow up. LOL
This kind of talk is not the most graceful way to admit you've lost the argument, but I'll take the admission nonetheless.
I'm reading all the posts and I'm reading between the lines too. The poster is blinded with hatred for the writer, he is ignoring the facts of the argument against Rudy. The issue is Rudy and his liberalism. Mike Lupica got it right! The Manhattan Institute got it right. The facts speak for themselves.
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I would support primarily based on his performance pre-9/11. He was a magnificent leader and administrator of NYC, and refused to crumble under tremendous media/leftist pressure. Those are the characteristics I want in a President.
Though Lupica specializes in sports coverage, he has used his columns to criticize the policies of president George W. Bush as well as other conservative officials, receiving criticism for politicizing the sports section. Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lupica"
Have you noticed the anti-Rudy spam on other threads? Why doesn't someone stop that? Why this?
Isn't that code for making things up?
The poster is blinded with hatred for the writer
Something you appear to be toward a non-candidate.
I know. Lupica's a leftist hack, but he's your leftist hack.
If Giuliani decides to actually run, I fear for your health. The election is a long way off.
One of the most important issues now, as always, is who will name the next Supreme Court justice.
A President Giuliani simply could not be trusted to come up with an acceptable candidate. We can't afford to be reSoutered.
After Dinkins, the City Council realized that without cutting taxes NYC would continue losing jobs. The goal was to reduce taxes just enough to possibly get businesses to locate or relocate into NYCity. It worked. The main reason it worked was thanks to a strong national economy that was expanding in the 1990`s. Rudy and the City Council agreed to cut back on the socialism of the city govt. More traditional Democratic Party liberalism was advanced. WOW!
BTW. This isn't about Reagan. It's about Giuliani. Stick to the issue. NYC is the most overtaxed big city in America and Rudy is a liberal. Those are the issues I'm talking about. You want to go off on some tangent and ignore the main issue.
>>>>>This kind of talk is not the most graceful way to admit you've lost the argument, but I'll take the admission nonetheless.
Its you who has lost the argument. You offered nothing of substance to the debate about Giuliani adn hsi liebral record as mayor. You trashed Lupica. BFD! You're done a lot of whining and crying. Nothing more.
I've been following his career since the early 80s ..probably because I am in the stockmarket and he took down Milken and Boesky. But his entire career fighting crime has been awesome.
Rudy is terrific!
The issue is Rudy and his liberalism. Mike Lupica got it right!
That's not what Lupica is writing about. Lupica is a hard-left moonbat himself - he has no problem with Giuliani's social liberalism.
The Manhattan Institute got it right.
I've explained to you twice now how the MI got it wrong. And you've got no answers.
The facts speak for themselves.
Which "facts" are those? The "fact" that Donna Hanover discovered her marriage was over on TV, when she threw her own husband out of the marital home before the TV press ever got wind of it?
Or the "fact" that Giuliani didn't abolish a tax which he had no legal authority to abolish?
You could also point out the "fact" that Giuliani failed to use magic psychic powers to read Mohammed Atta's mind.
You're right, the election is a long way off, but lets stick to the issues. Lupica makes a strong case against Rudy Giuliani. You may not like the case he makes, but its on the mark.
I wonder if leaving off the name was intentional. It was such a critical part of the article that the guy is a big LEFTY.
Lupika is afraid Rudy can win ... as are others.
bump
I freely admit that I think the same. I am afraid the mountebank can fool enough otherwise conservatives, garner the votes from the liberal cultural Republicans, pro-abort/pro-homo indies, and some cross-over Dems to win in '08.
Yes, jla is afraid that Rudolph Giuliani can win, thus setting conservatism back a minimum of fifty years.
But he shall not do it with my vote. I pledge, no, I swear to God Almighty, I will never cast my vote for the likes of Rudy Giuliani.
You agree with it and that's fine. It doesn't make a case, it states one man's viewpoint that you approve of.
Or are you "reading between the lines again?"
That was my point. Rudy Giuliani hasn't announced his entry into the race, either. If he doesn't enter, how can he possibly win? This is likely all smoke, to divide the GOP.
I don't know if Rudy is or isn't presidential material. Cleaning up NYC and running it smoothly was no small feat, and he did handle 9/11 and the aftermath very competently. The people working around him have always spoken well of him with admiration and respect, which is a far cry more than what can be said about Hillary. He's certainly more qualified and "presidential" than anybody the rats are fielding, such as Obama, Kucinich and Hillary.
I disagree with Rudy on bedrock conservative issues, but he's a likeable and talented man.
I don't rule him out.
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