Thinking Hard About Voting For Rudy Guiliani

I've never voted for Rudy Giuliani in my life. But I'm thinking hard about it now.

The rest of America may know Rudy as "America's Mayor" for his ceremonial performance post-9/11, but for New Yorkers who lived through the Dinkins years, Rudy Giuliani is more than a guy who stands tall when the skyscrapers fall. By the late '90s, people were beginning to say that New York City was ungovernable: Remember the court-driven interest group spending, the disorder, the bums taking over the parks and the playgrounds and the street corners, spiraling welfare costs, the crime, the small business disaster, the high taxes, rent control, the South Bronx? New York was a disaster area, a poster child for what liberalism hath wrought.

The glittering cosmopolitan New York City we now live in, the one seemingly every college student in America dreams about moving to, is largely Rudy's gift, forged in the face of intense, daily, nasty invective from those who at the time insisted that to demand order and civility in a large city was to be a fascist.

Even Rudy's 9/11 performance tends to be misdescribed. It was not that he "stood tall" or didn't emotionally collapse. George Bush came to New York City and made graceful speeches about how we will rebuild the hole in the ground that still remains. What stood out for us in that dark time was not that the mayor of New York insisted we would triumph over this adversity, but that he didn't try to spin us about how unimaginably bad this sort of adversity was. He didn't try to soft-pedal the uncertainty, the chaos, the suffering the city was going through, and that gave us the confidence to believe that reality, terrible as it was, could in fact be faced.

I never voted for Rudy when I lived in New York City for one simple reason: abortion. I don't look for purity in politicians, just for some small pro-life reason to vote for a guy: Medicaid funding, parental notification, partial birth abortion. Throw me the slightest lifeline, otherwise I assume he just doesn't want the vote of people like me. Rudy never did. So I never gave him my vote. And of course it doesn't help now to recall the way Rudy treated his second wife, nor do I particularly want to imagine the third Mrs. Giuliani as Laura Bush's successor.

So I could have sworn, even a few months ago, that I'd never vote for Rudy Giuliani, in spite of my deep respect for his considerable achievements as mayor. So why would I even think of changing my mind? Two things: national security, and Hillary Clinton's Supreme Court appointments.

When I ask myself, who of all the candidates in both parties do I most trust to keep me and my children safe? The answer is instantaneous, deeper than the level any particular policy debate can go: Rudy Giuliani. And when I look ahead on social issues like gay marriage, the greatest threat I see is that the Supreme Court with two or more appointments from Hillary Clinton, will decide that our Founding Fathers, in their wisdom, created a national constitutional right to whatever social liberals have decided is the latest civil rights battle. It's hard to see a state that George Bush won in which Rudy Giuliani will not beat Hillary Clinton. And he will put a whole slew of new blue states into play: Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, to name just three. (The latest Quinnipiac poll shows Giuliani in a dead heat with Clinton in Connecticut.) Which puts people like me, who care very deeply about marriage and life issues, in the position of thinking hard about Rudy.

- Rudy tossed Arafat out of a city sponsored celebrations saying, "I would rather not have someone who has been implicated in the murders of Americans there, if I have the discretion not to have him there”.

- Rudy did the same to Fidel Castro.

- When a Saudi prince donated millions to 9/11 relief efforts and later suggested that United States policy in the Middle East may have been partially responsible for the attacks, Rudy returned the money.

- Rudy refused to meet with racial arsonist Al Sharpton.

- Rudy as mayor was strong on law and order. Rudy said that "government exists above all to keep people safe in their homes and in the streets, not to redistribute income, run a welfare state, or perform social engineering". And Rudy backed this all up by going after both quality-of-life crimes and serious crimes. Total crime went down by some 64 percent during the Giuliani years, and murder went down 67 percent. Auto thefts went down on average about 80,000 per year.

- Rudy supported the police when the police had to enter and deal with Muslims at a mosque.

- Rudy closed down many porn shops across the city and specifically shutdown porn shops in residential neighborhoods.

- Rudy went after both low level and high level drug dealers for the first time in the cities history.

- Rudy had zero tolerance for quality of life crimes such as squeegee extortionists, graffiti vandals, panhandling and public urination.

- Rudy launched a welfare revolution, removing illegal recipients, cutting the rolls by 20% the first year alone and dropping the welfare rolls by 600,000 over the course of his plan.

- Rudy launched a work requirement program for the remaining welfare recipients. The NY Times called it slavery.

- Rudy constantly spoke out against illegitimacy and fatherless families. One of many things that Rudy said on the subject was the following: " If you wanted a social program that would really save these kids, . I guess the social program would be called fatherhood.

" - Rudy objected to affirmative action. Rudy ended the cities set-aside program for minority contractors.

- Rudy rejected the idea of lowering the job requirement standards for minorities and woman. - Rudy said. "it was unfair to expect middle-class kids to work their way through college by holding down jobs and going to classes while exempting students on welfare from working

. " - Rudy reformed the public school system and forced out liberal chancellors who wouldn't install his reforms.

- Rudy tried to privatize 5 of the cities worst public schools.

- Rudy was for school vouchers Rudy said, "The whole notion of choice is really about more freedom for people, rather than being subjugated by a government system that says you have no choice about the education of your child,".

- Rudy fought against public money for an art display that defiled Christ and he fought against other obscene so-called works of art.

- Rudy played hardball with city unions winning concessions from city workers that other mayors had failed to do.

- Rudy strong armed state leaders to merge the cities Housing Police and Transit Police into the NYPD saving the city hundreds of millions. Rudy did this by threatening to fire every housing and transit officer and rehire each as a city cop if legislative leaders did not go along.

- Rudy did the same with the city’s garbageman, many of whom worked only half days because the department was so overstaffed with union jobs. Rudy won $300 million in savings from them by threatening to contract out trash collection to private companies.

- Rudy cut or killed 23 levies and taxes, saving taxpayers $9.8 billion during his terms.

- Rudy cut NYC's top income-tax rate by 20.6%.

- Local NYC taxes on a family of four dropped 23.7% during Rudy's term.

- Rudy cut the commercial-rent tax.

- Rudy cut sales taxes, including taxes on clothing.

- Rudy cut the marriage penalty on taxpaying couples.

- Rudy cut taxes on commercial rents everywhere outside of Manhattan’s major business districts, and various taxes on small businesses and self-employed New Yorkers.

- Rudy's expenditure growth averaged 2.9% annually, while local inflation between January 1994 and December 2001 averaged 3.6%.

- Rudy privatized municipal assets.

- Rudy sold WNYC radio for $20 million, WNYC-TV for $207 million, and NYC's share of the U.N. Plaza Hotel for $85 million.

- Rudy divested the City from the New York Coliseum adding $345 million to city coffers.

- Rudy let the private Central Park Conservancy manage Central Park.

- Rudy cut NYC's hotel tax from 6% to 5%. Consequently, hotel tax revenues increased from $135 million in Fiscal Year 1995 to $239 million in FY 2001.

- When asked if Rudy would raise taxes after 9/11 Rudy said that would be "a dumb, stupid, idiotic, and moronic thing to do.

" - A quote from Rudy on his economic philosophy: “City government should not and cannot create jobs through government planning. The best it can do, and what it has a responsibility to do, is to deal with its own finances first, to create a solid budgetary foundation that allows businesses to move the economy forward on the strength of their energy and ideas. After all, businesses are and have always been the backbone of New York City.

” - Construction permits increased by more than 50% in the city per year during Rudy's terms.

- Tourism increased 50% in the city per year during Rudy's terms.

- City jobs increased by 430,000 to an all time high of 3.72 million during Rudy's terms.

- City personal income increased 50% during Rudy's terms.

- The percentage income that city residence paid in taxes declined from 8.8 to 7.3 percent during Rudy's terms.

- Unemployment in the city went form 10.3% to 5.1% during Rudy's terms.

- Rudy was an outstanding leader during the 9/11 crisis.

- Rudy has been a strong supporting in our WOT including supporting the mission in Iraq.

- Rudy was chosen by Ronald Reagan in 1981 as an Associate Attorney General placing him in the third highest position in the Reagan's DOJ.

- In 1983, Rudy was appointed by Reagan to be U.S. Attorney for the SD of NY. In that position, Rudy amassed 4,152 convictions including the heads of NY's so-called "Five Families". Rudy also prosecuted terrorists and illegal immigrants.

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