Getting desperate are we?
Posted on 02/13/2007 10:25:55 AM PST by NormsRevenge
New York City before Rudy was an aging courtesan. Visiting New York City was a trip to a third-world country that had become so by choice.
Times-Square was disgusting . . . full of the sort of raunchy shops that the morally stunted think are adult. Much of the city smelled of urine and I could hear gun shots in the distance walking back to my rooms . . . not once but often in my short trips to pre-Rudy New York.
It was obvious why people stayed in New York City, even loved her, but it was a dying, even fetid, beauty . . . and I was sorry to be too late to fall for her. I remember thinking, “She must have been something once.”
When I visited New York City post-Rudy, I could not believe the difference. Times-Square was fun again . . . and the entire City was cleaner, vibrant, and was young. . . nor was the change cosmetic surgery, because the City has continued to be vibrant long after Rudy left.
Obviously, Giuliani had not been responsible for all this miracle, but leaders deserve credit and Giuliani led by making the tough decisions. He led and the results were good for traditionalists. He made the City better for families, of all colors, and the voters have never looked back.
On the day of 9/11 and the immediate after-math, Rudy Giuliani was masterful and he has been sound on the War . . . the single most important issue of our time.
The Mayor is smart, a great speaker, and will be able to raise buckets of money. He can also win by putting many blue states in play.
Rudy is no Lincoln Chafee . . . he is the sort of “left-of-center” Republican I personally admire . . . up to a point.
Despite this, I certainly will not vote for Rudy Giuliani in the primaries and I am not sure I could do it in the general election. My presidential vote just might stay at home (the Republic will survive!).
Why?
First, New York City is not the United States . . . as shocking as this news might be to my friends who live in the Big Apple. The brash and by-the-throat style that worked well in the tabloid consuming subways is not the proper style for the White House . . .
In ancient times, when Rome was in a mess, they would call in a strong man . . . a Roman dictator to straighten out the problems before sending him home. New York City was rotting in the 1970’s and it need someone like Rudy Giuliani, a Roman patrician and strong man, to save it. America is not so badly off . . . the economy is sound and the War is still winnable.
Giuliani is an ambitious man, all men who run for the Presidency are ambitious men, but his is the sort of raw ambition that does not sit well with me so close to power in war time. He wants to be president too openly . . . to much. Rudy Giuliani does not have the personality to lead the whole nation. I don’t think he would wear well and bluntly I fear such ambition untempered by any ideology or religion so close to power.
Second, Rudy Giuliani has a philosophy in his personal life that is antithetical to the American tradition. Giuliani has secular-elite morality . . . more libertine than conservative. Can traditionalists trust his basic impulses?
What do I mean? Nobody can anticipate the challenges a President will face . . . remember 9/11 and George Bush. Gay marriage was not the issue it became in 2000. How will a man react to new challenges? His personal life philosophy is a good measure.
Rudy Giuliani’s personal life indicates that in any new challenge his deepest predispositions will be hostile to traditionalists.
When he does not need our votes, he will forget us utterly. He has no friends in our camp or memories that can stir him to sympathy with our point of view.
A comparison with another blue-state Republican might help make what I am saying plain.
Mitt Romney is a Republican who has often taken “wrong positions” on important issues. . . changed his mind . . . and grown as all statesmen do. I don’t agree with him on all the “issues.” This I know about Romney: he has friends who are very conservative, family who is very conservative, and is a traditionalist in his religious view of the world. His deepest and first impulse will be to understand the American tradition . . . not to innovate.
Given the quick changes that happen in American politics, a man’s fundamental view of the world (secular/progressive or traditionalist/Burkean) is more important to me than the way he answers issues.
Romney disappointed “liberal Republicans” in Massachusetts by governing as a conservative . . . he did not mean to deceive in his answers to the overly tight questions of a campaign . . . it is just the actual demands of office are never like the neat check boxes of campaign position lists. (”Are you for legal abortion?” told us nothing of what Romney would do about stem cells.)
I don’t trust Giuliani to be our friend when the new issues arise . . . as they surely will.
Finally, Giuliani is on the side of what the blessed Pope John Paul the Great called the “culture of death.” As a secularist (whatever his claimed religion), he views life and death as in the hands of men. Instead of our right to life being secured by God as our Declaration of Independence says, he would negotiate it or leave it to the whims of Courts. Rudy Giuliani will not even pretend to be in favor of traditional American views on the sanctity of life . . . and if a politician will not even pander on an issue, you know he means it . . . really means it.
Rudy Giuliani would be the first open culture-of-death candidate to receive the Republican nomination since the Reagan Revolution. He would shatter the pro-life Republican presidential monolith that provided key margins in so many states.
Against another pro-culture-of-death candidate (like Hilary!) perhaps Rudy Giuliani would get my vote as the lesser of two evils, but without enthusiasm and with little support.
Or I might stay at home, waste my vote on a protest candidate, and wait for better days.
The fact that a Republican such as I (in a family Republican since Lincoln) would consider this . . . is a bad sign.
The realistic candidates for President on the Republican side at the moment are Giuliani, McCain, and Romney. Only these three have the money, broad support, and chance of winning to make it all the way . . . unless someone else shows up or one of them falters there is simply not room in the media mind for more than three candidates.
McCain is faltering . . . aging before our eyes and struggling to raise money. I know of nobody who wants him . . . and his polling may simply be name recognition. I think him the most likely to vanish in a puff of smoke.
If he fades, then who? Nobody has the money to fill the gap . . . or the charisma. I challenge anyone to name an electable Republican with money raising prowess who in now in the race outside of the Big Three.
Newt? Get real. Democrats might as well nominate Ted Kennedy.
Newt may be popular with some Republicans, but my wife turns off the television any time he appears. She really, really dislikes him. If you cannot carry Hope’s vote, then you cannot win!
Giuliani has much dirty linen, but the media likes his kind of secret and will protect him (as it can) the way it protected Clinton. He will be a player to the end.
Romney? He is far and away the best of the three . . . and it may be coming down to voting for the traditionalist of the heart who swears he has learned some things over time over two men (Giuliani and McCain) who lack the temperament to be in the White House.
If we leave with the job unfinished it will be called a surrender by those who remain to terrorize the middle east. So yes, it will be a surrender. Do you think the terrorists will say that America left voluntarily or that we left "with honor"? Not a chance. If we leave then we will have surrendered in our enemy's eyes.
So anything short of an objective victory will be a defeat. Any pullout that leaves Iraq in an unstable position will be a surrender.
This is what the democrats want. Their constant attempts to undermine our troops in Iraq is nothing short of treason.
"Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it Treason." John Harrington
In my 15 years of political activism, I have never seen so many "conservatives" throw away their principles to vote for a man who is ideologically the mirror of the DLC Clinton/Lieberman Democrats. The fact that he is "popular" among the sheeple because of his 9/11 celebrity is not a good reason to throw our brains into the filthy river of Noo Yawk cosmopolitan RINOism.
Back in the day, conservatives openly mocked an otherwise liberal "law and order" Republican from New York City. They even denied him the nomination in 1964. Oh, how times have changed...
I agree that a precipitous withdrawal would be disastrous (however, I also think the way this war has been handled - on the cheap - has also been disastrous.)
Any pullout that leaves Iraq in an unstable position will be a surrender.
Disagree with that. It may be unwise, and it may have horrific geopolitical implications in a region integral to our national (specifically economic) interests. But that does not mean that those who wish to withdraw intend to "surrender." That's a buzzword intended only to polarize.
Their constant attempts to undermine our troops in Iraq is nothing short of treason.
Another buzzword intended to polarize. The Democratic party opposes the surge because they consider it unwise. That is being responsible (at least from their perspective), not being treasonous.
You say, "I'd prefer an enemy in my face with allies at my side, then getting stabbed in the back by a 'friend.'
"Honestly, our Republic would be safer under 4 terrible years of Hillary than with Rudy at the helm."
I don't agree with you.
Yet.
But I'm coming around.
That may be true, but a tactical retreat means that you are going to regroup and then go back in twice as hard. Are the democrats calling for that? No!
The democrats are not talking about a "tactical retreat", they are talking about giving up and going home. Those are the same terms that Robert E. Lee was given at Appomattox. He agreed to give up and go home. Now, would you call that a "tactical retreat" or a "surrender?"
History is right.
Not necessarily. It means, if you can't win, you don't bang your head against the wall.
So what you are saying is that we "can't win"?
That means we have lost. That means that our troops are incapable of getting the job done and thus we must surrender and go home.
Why on earth are you joining an Army that you think cannot win a war?
We have fought much harder battles and much harder wars and we have won them. We lost 3000 troops in one day in WWII, yet we had the resolve to fight until the other side had lost the will to fight. That is what war is all about. You keep fighting until one side or the other loses their will to fight. Then it is over.
What you are saying essentially is that we do not have the will to fight. If that is true, then we have truly lost not only the war, but the Republic. It is only a matter of time before the chaos that reigns in the Middle East and is creeping into Europe hits our shores. We do not have the will to overcome it, so we will be overcome by it.
RIP America.
Actually, the Democrats are calling for withdrawing to the periphery and intervening only if absolutely necessary.
There are roads which must not be followed, armies which must be not attacked, towns which must be besieged, positions which must not be contested, commands of the sovereign which must not be obeyed.There are five dangerous faults which may affect a general:
(1) Recklessness, which leads to destruction;
(2) cowardice, which leads to capture;
(3) a hasty temper, which can be provoked by insults;
(4) a delicacy of honor which is sensitive to shame;
(5) over-solicitude for his men, which exposes him to worry and trouble.- Sun Tzu, The Art of War at 8.3, 8.12
I said if you can't win. I didn't say we couldn't.
SecDef Gates said the war is winnable, but that we are not now winning. I am taking him at his word.
Do you think the democrats want us to succeed? I don't. They want us to fail. Power is more important to them than victory.
They oppose the troop increase for no other reason than that it was implemented by GWB. If GWB decided to follow the suggestions of Pelosi and Murtha, both Pelosi and Murtha would call him a coward.
They don't care what happens in Iraq as long as it makes GWB look bad. In my book that is treason. They have put their own self-interest above the interests of our troops and our nation's security. They are willing to lose this war as long as it gives them more power. If that isn't treason, then there is no such thing as treason.
I have never subscribed to the much ballyhooed notion that the Republican Party is about to return to a policy consistent with Rockefeller Republicanism of 30-40 years ago.
>>>>The fact that he is "popular" among the sheeple because of his 9/11 celebrity is not a good reason to throw our brains into the filthy river of Noo Yawk cosmopolitan RINOism.
lol Okay. Okay.
YeehAAA!
Murtha called for the troops to be redeployed in Okinawa. That's a mere 8000 miles from the battlefield.
Should we be taking military advice from someone with that much military savvy?
I am much less willing to ascribe motivations than you are - particularly ones like "treason."
You know, and I say this quite in a respectful manner, I am really sick and tired of people who equate electing a liberal who has an "R" after his name because they live in fear of Hillary as an alternative.
It is in fact death by a thousand cuts. Rudy is not a conservative, repeat, HE IS NOT A CONSERVATIVE. If we who call ourselves conservatives allow someone like Rudy to greater office, what we understand as conservatism is all but dead and buried.
So, if Hillary is elected, perhaps those that cower in fear will find the spine to stand up and reclaim our country, or maybe the rest of us will have to carry the water yet again. Maybe some of us will find a reason to seek out him/her who will stand for the real America due to the stark difference, maybe it will spark a new movement toward the way thing ought to be. Whatever, but as for me, I will stand on what I believe, and I will not let fear of the bugaboo Hillary make me vote for someone like Rudy who is simply a watered down version of that which you so fear.
You don't have to be motivated to be a traitor to commit treason. All you have to do is to give aid and comfort to the enemy. Intent is not required. It is the result that makes the crime. Tokyo Rose was convicted of treason and her crimes, IMHO were no worse than those of Pelosi and Murtha and the Democrat leadership.
Treason has a constitutional definition of giving aid and comfort to the enemy. What the democrats have been doing and what the media does constantly is to give aid and comfort to the enemy.
Now we can redefine "enemy" so that no one can be convicted of treason or we can redefine "aid and comfort" so that no one can be convicted of treason. That is, unofrtunately, what we have done and that is why treason is so rampant and yet at the same time it does not exist.
Though none dare call it treason, I will. It is.
Gee! That line of reasoning sure worked well during the 2006 elections ... not.
Better to be an idiot than insane which is what you seem to be by believing that doing the same thing time after time will result in a different result.
Wrong. Intent is a necessary element to the crime of treason, Tomoya Kawakita v. US, 343 U.S. 717 (1952); Cramer v. U.S., 325 U.S. 1 (1945). In fact, in treason the intent to betray is more significant than the character of the act, Chandler v. U.S., 171 F.2d 921 (1st Cir. 1948).
Why am I on your ping list? Please take me off of it. I don't agree with you regarding this matter and you will note that I don't ping you to articles that are extremely favorable to Rudy and I expect you to extend me the same courtesy by not pinging me to things you think are damaging regarding Rudy.
Getting desperate are we?
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