Posted on 02/26/2007 7:08:07 AM PST by areafiftyone
When Rudolph Giuliani first ran for mayor of New York in 1989, he made a critical mistake. Assuming that he'd be running against the blue-collar, socially conservative Democrat Ed Koch, Giuliani cast himself as a liberal. Playing against his tough-guy image, he spent his first months on the campaign trail talking about the victims of homelessness and AIDS and drug abuse, causes that united elite liberals and poor minority voters while leaving the city's shrinking middle class cold. The prosecutor who brought down mob boss Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno and Wall Street renegade Ivan Boesky tried to reinvent himself as the original "compassionate conservative," and the ethnic Catholic who had once considered the priesthood flip-flopped on abortion and became an avowed pro-choicer.
Then fate intervened: David Dinkins defeated Koch in the Democratic primary, and Giuliani became, by necessity if not by design, the candidate of the unfashionable middle-class strivers living in the outer boroughs, voters who recognized something of themselves in Giuliani, a self-made Italian-American from Brooklyn. Thus was born the polarizing, hard-charging, and proudly uncompassionate Giuliani who, after losing to Dinkins in 1989, beat him in 1993 and went on to transform New York.
Almost two decades later, though, Giuliani seems at risk of following his 1989 playbook, selling himself as something he's not--this time, a George W. Bush Republican--in the hopes that his celebrity and high favorability ratings will allow him to win the GOP nomination without a fight. Or at least that seems to be the underlying logic of Giuliani's ultra-cautious noncampaign so far. With the exception of a handful of social issues where an explicit flip-flop would look too craven even by today's standards, Giuliani, a sui generis figure, is improbably presenting himself as the kind of unremarkable Bush conservative whose domestic agenda starts with tax cuts and ends with "comprehensive" immigration reform.
Which is too bad, because an orthodox, Grover Norquist-approved Republican candidate is precisely what the party doesn't need--and precisely what Giuliani wasn't during his two terms as mayor. His genius wasn't for cutting government ("down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub," as Norquist famously put it) but rather for reforming it and making it work for the working and middle-class taxpayers who elected him, rather than elite liberals who had run City Hall into the ground. He offered a municipal version of the reformism that governors like Wisconsin's Tommy Thompson (who passed on his welfare czar to Giuliani) and Michigan's John Engler pursued at the state level in the 1990s--a conservatism targeted explicitly to voters who wanted to keep the welfare state in place but didn't want the Democrats to run it.
This was the tradition that George W. Bush, another successful nineties governor, was supposed to revive in his 2000 campaign, after the Gingrich revolutionaries lost their way. But while Bush's instincts were sound, his insistence on "compassion" as the appropriate attitude toward the poor struck exactly the wrong note. It spoke to upper-middle class feelings of noblesse oblige, not to the aspirations of poor Americans with a drive to succeed. As Mickey Kaus argued when the Bush campaign theme was first unveiled in 1999, the language of compassion has an inegalitarian and even condescending edge. Worse, it effaces the all-important distinction between those who deserve public assistance and those who do not.
Giuliani, by contrast, has always been a "respect" conservative. Delivering safe streets to New Yorkers wasn't an act of magnanimity, but rather an obligation. And, as Giuliani made clear, citizens and public servants were expected to fulfill their obligations as well. Anyone who failed to abide by this basic contract, whether a petty thief or a police commander who failed to meet crime-reduction targets, would be held accountable.
As commonplace as this might sound, it's difficult to overstate how dramatic a break it was with the city's reigning political culture. As mayor, Giuliani stood almost alone against the tendency Fred Siegel dubbed "dependent individualism"--the noxious idea that individuals ought to be freed from obligations to family and community through the largesse of a generous welfare system. "Dependent individualism" fueled the rise of a new class of ethnic shakedown artists. Unlike the old patronage machines, which trafficked in corruption yet delivered tangible benefits and served as engines of political assimilation, self-appointed spokesmen for "the Community" like Al Sharpton demanded deference while offering nothing but bluster and veiled threats. Their chants of "no justice, no peace"--that is, threats of civil violence designed to intimidate authority--brought the Dinkins administration to its knees.
Because Sharpton had no respect for public order, Giuliani had no respect for Sharpton and all those who mimicked Sharpton's contemptuous disregard for authority. Instead, he insisted on subjecting all comers to a single standard, even if it meant taking a political hit. An emblematic moment came in July 1999 when Giuliani, increasingly
It's difficult to imagine a "compassionate conservative" saying anything like this. And such impolitic honesty helps explain why Giuliani spent much of his second term as an unpopular figure--in spite of plunging crime rates and welfare rolls, and New York's economic comeback--before 9/11 transformed him into "America's mayor." Once Giuliani tamed the ungovernable city, he suddenly seemed too tough and hard-edged even for New York.
But after the drift and incompetence of the Bush years, it's easy to see how "respect conservatism" could be presented as a tonic for what ails the country, and as a way for the Giuliani campaign to distinguish its candidate from the incumbent. (One can only imagine how Hizzoner would have reacted to the Abramoff or Enron scandals, or Hurricane Katrina, or the mismanagement of the Iraq war.) A Giuliani domestic agenda that builds on his reputation for tough-minded competence could translate into policies that unite conservatives and independent voters.
On immigration, for instance, a "respect conservatism" might marry Giuliani's avowed support for earned legalization to what Hudson fellow John Fonte has called "civic conservatism," which emphasizes assimilation and civic education and rejects multiculturalism and multilingualism. Instead of Bush-style compassion for new arrivals, civic conservatism would offer them a fair shake--the opportunity to become Americans, but only if they're willing to embrace America's common culture and language.
Moreover, Giuliani could cast any immigration reform as part of a broader effort to reform homeland security, which has become something of a punchline during the Bush years. The national infrastructure--electricity grids, ports, railroads, and highways--presents an inviting target, and the uncertain state of the war on terror makes it likely that many Americans will be looking for a candidate who promises to shore up defenses at home. Giuliani's past makes this a natural campaign issue for him: As a foe of lawbreakers and a tamer of bureaucracies, he's perfectly positioned to make the case for, say, a new push for border security that reduces the threat posed by immigrant gangs, or a reorganization of the Department of Homeland Security to ensure that a Katrina-style debacle never happens again, or a broader plan to shore up infrastructure by strengthening and decentralizing the networks that sustain industrial civilization.
Meanwhile, because "respect conservatism" is premised on treating all people as equals, Giuliani the candidate would be a natural spokesman for a renewed attack on racial preferences, a still potent issue that President Bush abandoned, finding it ill-suited to his "compassion" agenda. But attacking preferences and offering nothing in their place is a narrow strategy that's unlikely to inspire voters, particularly younger voters deeply invested in the dramatic gains made by women and minorities in recent years. By proposing a grand bargain that replaces preferences with either class-based affirmative action or wage subsidies designed to expand the middle class, Giuliani could take the fight to liberalism: Why do you want to divide the disadvantaged by race, he could ask, when you can include them in a flourishing economy?
Then there's the economy, where Democratic populists have adopted a political rhetoric that poormouths America and paints middle class families as victims. Like President Bush's language of compassion, there's a condescending message behind all this economic fear-mongering, and it offers an opening for a "respect conservative" to acknowledge working-class struggles but emphasize the importance of civic and personal responsibility, both in the boardroom and the bedroom. The Rudy Giuliani who took down Ivan Boesky could be an ideal critic of corporate irresponsibility, for instance, and the mayor who once scolded Margarita Rosario for raising her son to be a criminal might be the right man to take on the relationship between economic insecurity and America's epidemic of fatherlessness.
Such an agenda, not incidentally, would offer a sharp contrast not only with President Bush, but with John McCain, Giuliani's principal rival for the nomination. Where McCain tends to embrace the elite media's pet causes, from campaign finance reform to the patient's bill of rights, a Giuliani "respect conservatism" would be proudly anti-elitist, emphasizing issues that resonate with working and middle class Americans. It would be pitched not to the media, but to the voters who made Rudy mayor--and who might make him president as well.
Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam are writing a book on Sam's Club Republicans.
Reagan bashers get put on my ignore list.
It's no way to make points for your candidate.
it just doesn't sell.
This guy is trying to cover up Rudy's liberalism by saying he only did it to win elections, as if that makes him any better! It makes him a typical rule by poll politician, something we do not need. Besides that he is a real, died in the wool liberal with an R after his name. We don't need this piece of crap in the whitehouse.
You can repeat that as often as you like. It is absurd to think that quote means anything. Unless of course you believe that, in 2000 when Clinton was running for Senate, she was telling the truth about her policies.
Which itself would be absurd.
He said he WOULD pay for his daughter to abort a child.
He would make it possible for the limbs to be ripped off his own grandchild. Think about that for a minute.
You said that a person could NOT be "pro-life" if they voted for a person who was "pro-choice".
That was an absurd claim, as my response illustrated.
The argument the "pro-life" Rudy supporters advance are of two veins:
1) The issue of abortion is not as important to them as issues for which Rudy is in agreement with them;
2) The presidency has little effect on abortion, and in those areas where it does Rudy has said he would act in accordance to the beliefs of the pro-life people, for example in appointing judges.
You can disagree with those positions, and argue them, without stooping to calling your opponents character and veracity into question.
Unless you are running for President, I doubt ANY candidate is exactly like you in positions. But you will support SOME candidate, and in doing so you will justify doing so notwithstanding their disagreement with you on those issues. And your justification will likely be one of the two listed above.
And someone for whom THAT issue is the be-all and end-all of politics will want to call YOUR parentage into question for selling out your principle on that issue.
So you are saying that Giuliani was too stupid to know that she was lying?
I'm really enjoying watching everyone pretend they don't know the difference between fiscal conservatives and law and order conservatives like Rudy, who has had his accomplishments in NYC with regard to taxes and urban/government policies called the greatest achievements of the 20th century, and social conservatives.
Blah blah blah....
Giuliani is a NARAL candidate. Live with it.
I voted for Reagan twice. It's not bashing to state the record. Nobody is pure. Setting up some false image of a person doesn't honor their memory, it dishonors them.
He said he would advise her against it. Then, if she decided to go forward, he would pay for it. He did not say he would be "happy" about it.
Think about bearing false witness for a minute.
Sadly, the babies cannot.
As long as the laws weren't illegal immigration laws, the violation of which he shamelessly flaunted.
Unlike Alan Keyes who was a NOWHERE candidate.
No, he was saying that for a lot of things that mattered in a New York Senate race, his actual positions weren't much different than the positions she CLAIMED to support.
When our now-Governor Tim Kaine was running as a democrat for Governor, I agreed with MOST of what he said. Because he ran as a conservative, and lied about his positions to sell himself to conservatives.
Frankly, half of what the government does is supported to some degree or another by both parties. It's not hard to agree with opponents on "most" policy. It's really a meaningless phrase. Spiff's table is more useful than a pithy quote.
Gee, I simply can't refute your "blah blah blah".
Amen.
You know that Jim Webb is probably more conservative than Rudy is......
Your blah blah blah post isn't worth refuting. Rooty supporters are impervious to reason and argements based on principle anyhow.
Well, unlike you, Alan Keyes doesn't support baby killer, gun grabbing candidates.
This is why I don't read posts that start with 'well Reagan did...."
Reagan was an advocate, a leader of a movemnet, a movement that's probably dead. As a politician did he compromise? Heck ya! As the leader of a movement did he? No.
We've been without elected conservative leadership since 1989, unless you count Newt from 1995 - 1999.
And no I will not mold conservatism into something that fits the candidate. That would be backwards.
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