Rudy must be stopped

In case you hadn't noticed, Rudy Giuliani is leading all the polls in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

This is scary to me.Given the likelihood of Hillary Clinton winning the Democratic nomination, Americans like me would have no choice. We'd be completely disfranchised from the presidential election. We would be morally prevented from voting for either major party candidate.

My objections to Rudy are hardly confined to the issue of abortion. In fact, besides our shared passion for the New York Yankees, I can think of precious little on which I agree with Giuliani. But let's examine his extreme position in favor of killing unborn babies for any and every reason imaginable.

Giuliani began his campaign for the presidency by attempting to moderate his position on the life issue. He told nationally syndicated radio host Sean Hannity he favored parental consent laws, he opposed public funding of abortion, he opposed partial-birth abortion, he favored the appointment of strict constructionists to the U.S. Supreme Court.

All of this was meant to tickle the ears of soft-headed Republicans. It was meant to portray Giuliani as something other than an extremist, a zealot, the same so-called "Republican" who refused to support a moderate Republican candidate for governor of New York in favor of Mario Cuomo.

Giuliani even suggested his positions on the abortion issue had been consistent all along – that he was not modifying his stances in an effort to attract pro-life voters.

But, in this age of the Internet, there is just no hiding past positions on issues.

While saying he is personally opposed to abortion and thinks we should discourage it, he advocates every imaginable incentive for women to have them – discouraging laws requiring women to see ultra-sound images of their in utero babies before crushing their skulls, discouraging any cut in taxpayer funding of abortions and describing this hideous, abominable procedure as a "constitutional right."

I don't believe Rudy Giuliani is really personally opposed to abortion. I don't think he cares a whit about unborn babies. And, even if I am misjudging his heart, it really doesn't matter what he thinks. What matters is what he does, how he acts.

What would you think of someone who said he personally opposed slavery, would never own a slave himself, but fought fervently for the right of others to own slaves.

Would you believe that person is really opposed to slavery? Would you care that he was "personally opposed"? Would you grasp that this person was trying to have it both ways on one of the most crucial moral issues men can possibly ever face?

Here's what Giuliani said in 2000 on he subject of banning partial-birth abortions: "I would vote to preserve the option for women."

I believe that was the real Giuliani. That was a reflection of his heart and mind on this issue. He would preserve the option for women to kill their babies even at the very moment of delivery – when the child is "viable" in every sense of the word. This is a position even more extreme than the one taken by the muddled thinkers who gave us Roe v. Wade.

This is why I can never, under any circumstances, cast a vote for Rudy Giuliani as president, no matter whom he is running against.

He's unfit. He's immoral. He's got no standard of right and wrong guiding him. His positions are indecent, disgusting and abominable.

If he can't be trusted on a relatively simple issue of life and death, he can't be trusted on anything in my book.

We still have time to ensure that we have a real presidential contest in 2008. We still have time to ensure that Republicans offer us an alternative to Hillary Clinton in 2008. We still have time to find an alternative to Rudy Giuliani in 2008.

Let's get busy. We've got our work cut out for us. It's time to jump off this Giuliani bandwagon.

Take the pledge with me: "Under no circumstances will I cast a vote for Rudy Giuliani as president, no matter whom he is running against."

Most FReepers are social conservatives

To varying degrees, some moderately so, some radically so.

If you look at the polls you’ll see that most FReepers oppose Rudy Giuliani`s candidacy.

For most FR polls, of the 200k Freepers, less than 5% "vote" in these polls, hardly a referendum for anyone. I'd suggest a look at the scientific polls to see who is in front and who is not.

I don’t see any religious extremism on FR.

Not only religious, but several other areas are covered by extremists and radicals here on FR.

I see good old fashioned constitutional conservatism being promoted.

Trying to run off all the "trolls" who don't care for one's 1% candidate is hardly the conservative approach. I'm always amused at the social right every time they scream about moving to another party or not voting if they don't get their way. Truth is, they have nowhere else to go. In the end, they'll be there.

>>>>> .... peasants with pitchforks ....

LOL

At one time I too thought Rudy was a fiscal conservative. Until I did some of my own research. On issues of spending neither Bush or Rudy can be considered fiscal conservatives, both are fiscally liberal spending the taxpayers money. Read on and get informed.

From the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research:

"Even with the tax cuts of the last several years, New York remains by far the most heavily taxed big city in the country."

TAXES: Giuliani did cut the marginal city income tax rates, reducing taxes by some $2.0-billion from 1996-2001, but those cuts only offset the $1.8-billion increase in city income tax rates put in place by Mayor Dinkins a few years earlier. In the end, income taxes were actually cut by a modest $200-million. Freezing the 12.5% surcharge on high wage earners was good, but Giuliani didn't attempt to abolish that surcharge. Nor did Giuliani attempt to make serious permanent changes to the city income tax code. The primary reason Rudy and the City Council agreed to cut taxes, was to make NYCity more appealing to new businesses thinking about locating/relocating to the Big Apple. A smart move, however, when Rudy left office he left NYCity straddled with some of the highest income taxes, property taxes and utility rates in the entire nation.

GOVERNMENT SPENDING: Spending under Rudy`s reign as Mayor went up 35.6%, compared to the inflation rate of 22.2%. Rudy left NYCity with a projected, pre-9/11 deficit of $2.0 billion and an increased debt total of $42-billion. Second largest debt after the federal government. Giuliani also added 15,000 new teachers to the city employment rolls. Increasing the membership of two major liberal organizations, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).

"The scope of government was not reduced at all. The mayor abandoned his most visible initiative in this sphere—the proposed sale of the city hospital system—after a struggle with the unions and defeats in the courts. He did cut costs in social services; even before the new federal welfare reforms took effect in 1997, the city had begun to significantly reduce caseloads. But money saved on social services has only helped to subsidize big increases in other categories. Today the array of social services sponsored and partially funded by the city—from day care to virtually guaranteed housing—is as wide as ever.

"In the final analysis, Mayor Giuliani sought to make the city deliver services more efficiently—not to make the city deliver fewer services. Gains in efficiency were offset, however, by a spike in the costs of outsourced contracts (see point 2 below). Thus, in two areas where inroads might have been made, the city instead failed to reduce spending."

"1. Personnel Increases. In 1995–96, the city entered into a series of collective bargaining agreements with its public-employee unions. In addition to granting pay increases that ended up roughly equaling inflation, the city promised not to lay off any workers for the life of the contracts. These agreements were expected to add $2.2 billion to the budget by fiscal 2001. But that estimate didn’t reckon with renewed growth in the number of city employees. After dipping in Giuliani’s first two years, the full-time headcount rose from 235,069, in June 1996 to over 253,000 by November 2000. Thanks largely to this growth in the workforce, the total increase in personnel service costs since 1995 has been $4 billion.

2. "Outsourced Services. The failure to shrink the scope of city government made it all the more imperative that Mayor Giuliani vastly increase its efficiency. In the attempt to increase productivity, the mayor farmed out some city services to private contractors. But as the number of outsourced contracts doubled under Giuliani, contractual expenses also nearly doubled—from $3 billion to $5.8 billion. While it may be argued that the city saved money by outsourcing these services, the net savings turned out to be marginal at best. In practice, outsourcing proved to be more of a bargaining chip in negotiations with unions than a serious means of pruning expenses."

Hard evidence that Rudy Giuliani was NO fiscal conservative. Another run-of-the-mill NYCity liberal.

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