Ann Coulter On Rudy Giuliani : "I Think He's The Only Republican Who Can't Beat Hillary."

Fox News ^ | 1-31-06 | Bill O'Reilly

[TitansAFC]

Ann Coulter analyzes GOP Presidential hopefuls:

---Rudy Giuliani:

"I Think He's The Only Republican Who Can't Beat Hillary."

"I don't see him winning the Primary."

"If you can't get MY vote as a Republican against Hillary....."

---John McCain:

"Not a Conservative, but a patriot."

"A genuine war hero, unlike John Kerry."

"His weaknesses are half of his positions."

---Mitt Romney:

"Red stater in a blue state."

"Has a working knowledge of God."

---Newt Gingrich:

"Absolutely brilliant."

"His closet has certainly been thoroughly investigated already."

"I wish we could bring him in to pinch-hit for all presidential debates."

[WhistlingPastTheGraveyard]

A number of people I have talked with have vowed to never let social conservatives dictate again after 2006.

Then they're politically tone deaf. Because 2006 had next to nothing to do with social conservatism. It was about corruption, scandal and a war the American people have lost the stomach to even watch (Lord know, they're not the ones fighting it).

A bastardized, liberalized GOP should fix that right up, though. You betcha.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

And if you're going to veto any pro-choice candidate even tho he's a political conservative, then that's the end of the R party, in my opinion.

Which brings me back to my original question which you, to this point, have not answered - what is so difficult about supporting a candidate that is both a social and fiscal con? They are out there - why are we not drafting them to run in '08 in an effort to reunite the party?

Again, the only answer I can figure is what I stated - the desire by some in the GOP to reassert their control of the party outweighs their desire to win national elections.

If there is another reason I am missing, please educate me.

[Dominic Harr]

But if Rudy has no intention of changing abortion laws either way -- what would it matter if he's pro-choice?

I'm pro-choice, personally. I'm 'conservative' as in "conservative with my money". As in 'careful choices'. Tough love. The 'ant' to a liberal's grasshopper.

I started voting R because of the Contract with America. Now it appears the Rs are abandoning that, and the 'Socials' such as yourself are openly fighting for abortion and gay sanctions as top issues.

I want politicians who will keep their hands off those issues entirely.

Do you want me in your R party or not?

[LS]

Whether you're right or not, it's irrelevant. You cannot challenge the TRUTH of what I said about a candidate needing to be a "celebrity." It simply is our culture, and we better deal with it.

Moreover, I seem to remember taking a huge beating a few months ago because I kept telling people to disregard the polls. Well, I've learned my lesson. They are real, and they do measure stuff, and anyone who dismisses them as an indicator of where the VOTERS are (not as to "what do do" or "what is right or wrong") is in for a big defeat.

[My2Cents]

(Cue all the people who say, "I won't vote then." Then cue the Hillary inauguration music).

Good analysis, as usual, LS. My concern with the Rudy/McC/Romney bashers is that their "principles" won't allow them to vote for any of these candidates, but their "principles" will allow them to sit on the sidelines in '08 and watch Hillary waltz into the Oval Office. Those kind of "principles" don't impress me, and in fact, are infantile at best, and dangerous as worst. These folks remind me a bit of the Democrats in regard to the war on terror. The Dems will trash the Bush Administration, trash the effort in Iraq, all for political purposes. They spend their time trashing Bush more than they do the terrorists. They don't like the war in Iraq? Fine. Let them tell us what they would do to defeat terrorism and deny al Qaeda state-sponsorship. They don't have a plan to defeat terrorism. Their only interest is in defeating Republicans.

Along the same lines, many "principled" conservatives here will not vote for Rudy or McCain, but what is their plan for defeating Hillary. They spend more time clawing at a possible Giuliani candidacy than they do an inevitable Hillary candidacy. I have a hard time respecting one's "principles" when they have completely lost sight of the big picture.

[Dominic Harr]

They are out there - why are we not drafting them to run in '08 in an effort to reunite the party?

I am pro-choice. If you're going to suggest a candidate that will actively move to outlaw abortion, I am not on board.

I'm a fiscal consevative. The ant to a liberal's grasshopper.

I want my politicians to stay out of abortion. And gay issues. And 'vice' laws, for that matter.

I want politicians to manage the infrastructure of the country, nothing else.

[PhiKapMom]

I only answered because Howlin wanted verification it was a House scandal. I reserve comment on Hunter because I was asked not to comment by a very good friend because everything will sort itself out as the election season progresses.

Keep in mind that some people announce and run to get noticed for cabinet or VP slots.

[My2Cents]

OK, I asked those who support Rudy to explain why we should vote for Rudy.

Hes' sufficiently conservative on important issues to conservatives, that's why. --

Ready for Rudy
By Deroy Murdock
Published 9/26/2006 (EXCERPT)

….Is leadership enough? Do Giuliani's policies help or hinder his political future? Could he become the Great Right Hope in 2008? To paraphrase Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York": If he can make it there, can he make it anywhere?

TO GAUGE GIULIANI'S SUCCESS as mayor, and assess the skills he might muster as president, stroll for a moment through the junkyard he inherited when he entered City Hall on January 1, 1994.

Historian Fred Siegel's indispensable analysis of Giuliani's mayoralty, The Prince of the City, describes the holistic dysfunction that greeted Giuliani.

* New York City's jobless rate was 10.2 percent. The previous four years, Gotham lost 235 jobs-every day. Financial guru Felix Rohatyn complained, "virtually all human activities are taxed to the hilt."

* In 1993, 1,946 New Yorkers were murdered, down from a peak of 2,262 in 1990, but still a spectacular level of carnage. Social pathologies fueled disorder and lawlessness. Vagrants relieved themselves on trash-strewn sidewalks. Mental patients roamed the streets, and occasionally pushed commuters onto subway tracks. Some 1.32 million New Yorkers, one of six, were on welfare.

* In August 1991, an anti-Semitic pogrom erupted in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Street battles raged for days as Democratic Mayor David Dinkins failed to deploy cops. A young hoodlum named Lemrick Nelson fatally stabbed Australian rabbinical student Yankel Rosenbaum as a black mob yelled, "Get the Jew…."

Today, New York City thrives. Unemployment one month after 9/11 stood at 6.3 percent. Homicides had plummeted 65 percent, mainly in once-crime-infested black and Hispanic neighborhoods. Asked once what he had done for minorities, Giuliani responded: "They are alive, how about we start with that?"…

The city is visibly cleaner and more robust. Amazingly enough, Reader's Digest in June dubbed once-abrasive New York the world's politest city, a notch above placid, fastidious Zurich.

Gotham's path from chaos to courtesy closely parallels Giuliani's journey from freshly minted mayor to globally lauded leader. How did he do it?...

Giuliani, who considers himself a Reaganite, did so largely by applying conservative principles of tax reduction, fiscal responsibility, privatization, law and order, and colorblindness. He sounded Reaganesque as mayor-elect when he said to balance the city budget, "we have to increase the number of private-sector jobs." Central to this was "to reduce the size and cost of city government…."

On issue after issue, conservatives should hope what is past will be prologue.

Taxes

"The thing that probably disturbs me the most when I read the New York Times editorials, they've kind of turned around the whole idea of cutting taxes, and they make tax increases morally courageous," Giuliani said April 25. "I have no idea what is courageous about raising taxes. I understand it's courageous to run into a fire and take somebody out, but I can't figure out what's courageous about raising taxes. I don't understand why you would think that in an economy that's essentially a private economy, it makes more sense and is more efficient for the government to confiscate more of that money."

Giuliani was speaking that day to the Manhattan Institute, an influential think tank well regarded by conservatives and libertarians alike. Giuliani credits the organization and its quarterly magazine, City Journal, with inspiring many of his reforms.

Giuliani's tax record matches his rhetoric. He cut or eliminated 23 levies totaling $8 billion. He slashed municipal tax revenues' share of personal income by 18.9 percent and the top local income-tax rate by 21 percent. Spending

Giuliani's expenditure growth averaged 2.9 percent annually, while local inflation between January 1994 and December 2001 averaged 3.6 percent. His fiscal 1995 budget decreased outlays by 1.6 percent, while his post-9/11 fiscal 2002 plan lowered appropriations by 2.6 percent….

Bureaucracy

While hiring 12 percent more cops and 12.8 percent more teachers, Giuliani sliced municipal manpower elsewhere by 17.2 percent, from 117,494 workers in 1993 to 97,338 in 2001….

Public Assistance

Two years before President Clinton signed federal welfare reform, Giuliani started reducing Gotham's dole from 1,112,490 recipients in 1993 to 462,595 in 2001, a 58.4-percent cut, to 1966 levels….

Giuliani also renamed welfare offices "Job Centers." According to Giuliani's book, Leadership, City Hall placed 151,376 welfare beneficiaries in private jobs in fiscal 2001, a 16-fold increase over 1993's 9,215 assignments under Dinkins.

Family Affairs

Minors in foster care fell from 47,509 in December 1993 to 28,700 in 2001. While only 2,312 children were adopted in Gotham in 1994, cumulative adoptions swelled to 27,949 between then and 2001. This effort was led by Nicholas Scoppetta-a one-time Justice Department colleague of Giuliani's and current FDNY commissioner-himself a former foster child.

Giuliani also spoke in very traditional terms about parental responsibility. "Seventy percent of long-term prisoners and 75 percent of adolescents charged with murder grew up without a father," Giuliani said in his January 14, 1999 State of the City speech. "So, I guess if you wanted a social program that would really save these kids, a lot better than the City of New York, the United States Congress, the Social Welfare Agency, and Administration for Children Services, I guess the social program would be called fatherhood…"

Privatization

Giuliani shrank the 33,000-unit portfolio of city-owned apartments by 69.8 percent. Families and individual residents now occupy those private homes. He sold WNYC-AM, WNYC-FM, WNYC-TV, and Gotham's equity in the U.N. Plaza Hotel. He let the private Central Park Conservancy manage all 843 acres of Manhattan's beloved urban forest.

"One Standard. One City."

Giuliani ran on this slogan in 1993, then immediately implemented it. During his first month as mayor, Giuliani scrapped the city's 20 percent set-asides for minority- and female-owned contractors, and a 10 percent price premium that such companies could charge above the bids of white, male competitors.

As Giuliani explained at a December 3, 1997 Manhattan Institute forum:

“I, number one, thought that was very bad public policy. The city shouldn't be paying 10 percent more. Remember, I was dealing with a city that had about a $3 billion deficit at the time. How we could possibly pay 10 percent more for anything seemed incomprehensible to me.

“And second... the whole idea of quotas to me perpetuates discrimination. It has exactly the opposite effect on people who support quotas think it would have. So, I did away with it.

Crime and Quality of Life

Anyone who thinks Giuliani is a liberal should walk through Times Square. A dozen years ago, it was a gritty, dangerous place, brimming with litter, vagrants, and pornography shops. It now teems with tourists, restaurants, concert venues, broadcast studios for ABC and MTV, and the NASDAQ market site. At the Minskoff Theater, Disney's The Lion King thrills moms, dads, and kids. Next door, at the Amsterdam Theater, Mary Poppins opens this fall….

Education

Giuliani pulls no punches on schools, either. As he said in the June 16, 1994 Newsday: "If you give the Board of Education more money, you end up with something like the old Soviet Union."

…Giuliani scrapped tenure for principals and dumped social promotion, which matriculated pupils even when they could not perform grade-level work. He also launched a Charter School Fund and openly advocated vouchers, traveling to Milwaukee in May 2001 to embrace its school-choice successes. Giuliani worked, as well, with John Cardinal O'Connor and Rabbi Morris Sherer in 1996 to make available to underachieving public-school students as many as 2,000 privately funded seats in Catholic and Jewish parochial schools…

"The one area that I would emphasize... is choice and vouchers," Giuliani said, warmly embracing the "V" word. "The only thing that I believe is going to change dramatically public education in this country is to go to a choice system and break up the monopoly."

Immigration and Terrorism

Giuliani sees immigration and terrorism in tandem. "In an era of a War on Terrorism," he said April 25, "how do we create more security?" He argues against what he calls the House of Representatives' "punitive approach." Giuliani worries law-enforcement officers will be so busy handling "a system that's already unenforceable" that they won't "focus on the people that we have to focus on who... might come here to carry out terrorist acts or to sell drugs or to commit crimes." He wants tighter U.S. borders and high-tech identification for immigrants.

Giuliani favors the U.S. Senate's proposal. "Give people a way to earn citizenship in which they have to demonstrate facility with English, and they have jobs, and they're paying taxes, and they've put themselves in an entirely legal status... It'll be much harder for terrorists to hide in a situation like that…"

While prominent Republicans can give more conservative speeches than Giuliani, one would have to reach back to Ronald Reagan for a leader who has implemented more policies dear to the right.

"He is America's most successful conservative currently in office," columnist George Will wrote in October 1998. "He understands that culture, more than politics, determines a community's success, and he has devised policies to drive cultural change in a conservative direction…"

--------------------------------------

There. Now don't complain that no one has responded.

[LS]

Great points. And I would qualify by saying that for both McLame and Rudy, IF we are attacked again, or if we must move in Iran, and they aren't on the "right" side of that (in the eyes of the public, such as, say, not being viewed as strong enough), then either of them could be toast.

For ex., if someone attacks us and it is shown he has come across the wide-open southern border, McLame and Rudy will both be viewed as no better than the Dems on this and will lose any aura of "national security strength" they might currently enjoy. Or, one or the other could say, "You know, this recent episode made me re-think my position" and instantly get some of the secure-border voters. Long way to go, you're right.

[LS]

I don't think ANYTHING anyone did in the House bank scandal will be at all an issue in 2008.

I do think if someone runs on "character" which is part of Newt's schtick, then he better not be handing his wife divorce papers while she's on a hospital bed with cancer. Newt's smart, but apparently not smart enough.

[TitansAFC]

---"Do you want me in your R party or not?"---

That has never been the issue. SoCons want a united party behind a candidate who is both fiscally and socially Conservative, and will fight the war. It is the Rockefeller wing of the party telling a large group of the base to drop all of their issues, not the other way around.

Yes, I want you in the party, but I also want the SoCons as well. It takes both to win, as is evidenced in Reagan/Bush 43 vs. Ford/Dole/Bush 41. Rudy will polarize a great deal of the base, and get flanked in the election by folks like myself who will see no other alternative than to run another candidate. To expect Rudy to win in excess of 70% of the swing vote - a reasonable number when one considers the revolt on the right - is not realistic.

BTW - The Contract With America started out with Prayer in School. It wasn't all tax cuts. Gingrich knew what he was doing when he added something for everybody on the right.

[PerConPat]

I only answered because Howlin wanted verification it was a House scandal...everything will sort itself out as the election season progresses.

I understand. And I am keeping my fingers crossed that you are correct about the "sorting out."

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

I am pro-choice. If you're going to suggest a candidate that will actively move to outlaw abortion, I am not on board.

Then, with all due respect, you are no different ideologically than the social cons you deride - it is a litmus test with you, the same as it is with the pro-lifers. Maintaining that litmus test is more important to you than electing someone who half agrees with you - which makes you exactly the same as me and other social cons, if you choose to look in the mirror.

Sorry Dominic, the country clubbers can't do it (win national elections) without us, much as you might like it to be otherwise.

I've told others, if pro-lifers aren't going to be welcome in the GOP, so be it. We'll continue to work, go to school, go to church, exercise our second amendment rights (for as long as we can), and protect our families - in other words, live our lives - while waiting for the inevitable to come crashing down on this nation as the socialists destory it, one election at a time. Is that really what you want?

Best wishes - I hope you reconsider your position. We need you and you need us - a fiscal AND social conservative GOP presidential candidate (add in being a hawk on national defense) is the one path to victory, for both the party and the nation.

[LS]

I understand. And I have to say on McLame, he scares me more than Hillary. She's the devil I know, but he's flat crazy. Honestly, you can predict what Hillary will do, but McLame? Wow. So when/if the time comes, I'll have to fight that battle myself.

To me, it does get to character, and I guess I see more character in a guy whose positions I disagree with (Rudy) but who is UP FRONT about those positions than someone like McClame or Hillary who constantly lies about his or her positions to get elected.

I'll support the most conservative candidate I can each step of the way . . . and that's the key. Who'se up there when it's time to actually vote?

[LS]

In other words, of all the major candidates who move the meter at all in the public sphere, Rudy, McLame, Hillary, Osama/Obama, and Mitt are all open-borders types. That's exactly what I thought. I'm not surprised, but you'd think SOMEONE would put the pieces together and say, "You know, to win AND have a safe country, I better oppose amnesty."

[Plutarch]

Rudy's got a whole list of issues which disqualify him...

Pro-big-government

So Rudy's being pro-big-government, disqualifies him, but Duncan Hunter' Big Government Spending is just fine?

[Antoninus]

So Rudy's being pro-big-government, disqualifies him, but Duncan Hunter' Big Government Spending is just fine?

Never said that. I said I'm not a one issue guy. I can over-look an issue here or there. I can't overlook 5, 6, 7, 8, a dozen issues. At that point, you have to admit that the guy's a liberal.

Rudy is a liberal.

[Plutarch]

Giuliani favors the U.S. Senate's proposal.

There is nothing conservative about the U.S. Senate's 2006 Amnesty bill. Do you purport there is?

[Dominic Harr]

FIRST, require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress;
SECOND, select a major, independent auditing firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of Congress for waste, fraud or abuse;
THIRD, cut the number of House committees, and cut committee staff by one-third;
FOURTH, limit the terms of all committee chairs;
FIFTH, ban the casting of proxy votes in committee;
SIXTH, require committee meetings to be open to the public;
SEVENTH, require a three-fifths majority vote to pass a tax increase;
EIGHTH, guarantee an honest accounting of our Federal Budget by implementing zero base-line budgeting.

No prayer in schools (which i do support, but only as a matter of freedom of choice).

Many, many socials call pro-choice 'political' conservatives -- like myself -- liberals. They don't want us in the R party.

[ozzymandus]

The best thing about watching Ann on O'Reilly is how utterly clueless O'Reilly looks as he sits and stares at Ann and tries to understand what she's saying.