Posted on 10/10/2007 6:15:33 AM PDT by meandog
Rudy Giuliani Former New York City mayor Last Ranking: 1 Stars are aligning. It's not his nomination to lose, but there's a clear path to win for him. The latest NBC/WSJ poll shows that three out of four GOP voters care more about issues Giuliani can prove he's conservative on (terrorism, taxes and education/health care) than issues he struggles with re: conservatism (moral values and immigration).
Mitt Romney Former Massachusetts governor Last Ranking: 3 After languishing a bit for the last month, it seems Romney's camp has a plan for how to tackle Rudy: Ignore Thompson and try to make this a two-person race again.
Fred Thompson Former Tennessee senator Last Ranking: 2 If anyone is in need of a re-launch, it's Thompson.
John McCain Arizona senator Last Ranking: 5 His base (the media) seems desperate to deal him back in, but what's going to happen to McCain if he loses in Iowa to Paul and Huckabee?
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Kind of hard to fight against the MSM and the RINO's in your own party at the same time.
I will NEVER vote for Rudy. Period.
I agree. We do have a handful of worthy candidates for a change, much to the chagrin of the MSM. :)
Hildibeast loves you. Don’t you feel loved?
Bitch at them. Not us.
I will be able to answer -- and I will be able to tell my children -- that, yes, I did know about it. And I never once voted for someone who wanted to continue the practice.
It means a great deal to me.
I am not bitching at anyone. Just asking if you can feel the love! The GOP is imploding. I think I’ll go over to underground rodents and watch the Dem’s implode for a change. It’s got to be more entertaining that this.
And it's the GOP "leaderships" fault. For not adhering to their core principles, they are screwing us all.
In other words, more leftist dribble. Who cares?
"Buzz." Is that some new super-duper, new-fandangled, mega-scientific new rating method?
Vote for the best candidate and ignore what the leftists want you to do.
Rudy is a fraud.
Go look at the transcript of the debate. He dodged every question to offer up a redmeat, pre-scripted soundbite.
His 12 Commitments don’t represent what he believes (as evidenced by his record), but what some campaign adviser wrote for him so that you would drink the koolaid.
And WHY on earth would you believe Rudy would be ANY better than Bush on immigration? More koolaid, IMO.
“Hunter is at the bottom at least in part because the media wants him there.”
YUP.
And Rudy is #1 in part because of the same media.
Er, latest poll from Des Moines Register has Romney leading in Iowa at 30% and Thompson at 18%.
Good new - Rudy is in 4th place!
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,299977,00.html
“Laughing with the glee.”
Glad to hear, as long as you don’t cackle like Hillary. :-)
“My top 3 choices are Hunter, Thompson and Romney.”
Likewise.
And likewise I dislike excessive sniping and bashing of GOP candidates. Pointing out issues and concerns on a candidate is one thing, but some go out of their way to pick nits and attack other candidates personally.
“Would the existing party’s leaders alter it’s planks on issues like abortion and stem-cell research, or would a convention dominated by Giuliani supporters rewrite the party platform on such issues, or would he take the stage to accept the nomination promising to campaign against the party platform or to to promise somehow split the difference ... It’s just very, very hard for me to comprehend how this would work.”
Simple. Rudy only gets the nomination if the GOP primary voters let him by voting for him.
Those GOP primary voters are the ones who decide the fate of the party: Will we be a party of certain principles or a party that decides its core principle is “whoever can beat Hillary is good”?
I for one don’t recall any plank in the previous platforms that said the latter. It would indeed be a conundrum to try to reconcile the platform with the candidate, and neither would look good at the end of the process. But Rudy will not be to blame for this, the GOP primary voters would be.
And those pro-Rudy primary voters would have the responsibility of keeping the party alive after splitting it in two like that.
“To take just one example, I have a hard time imagining the actual mechanics of a Giuliani nomination.”
“Would there be a Republican party, as we understand it, left standing afterwards?”
Let me start by saying that so far I’m neutral for the 08 election. However I’ve been watching the races shape up, and as an impartial observer, here’s what I think is happening.
I think that the moderate or liberal wing of the GOP is trying to separate the values voters from the party. I also think the reason for this is simply long term pragmatic political strategy. The states that are solidly made up of values voters are the southern states and the western mountain states. (I’m not saying that there aren’t plenty of values voters in other states, so this isn’t flame-bait) just that the southern and western states are majority values voters.
With the immigration of retiring baby boomers from the northeast and the west coast to the southern and western states (VA, CO, and to some extent ID, and NC)
The Republicans from the west coast, and north east seem to be more socially moderate/liberal. They mostly seem to care about tax cuts, education, and healthcare. Not God, guns, and gays. Take VA. Jim Webb ran as a conservative democrat, by the time his first term is up there will have been 6 more years worth of socially liberal/fiscal conservatives that have moved into VA. The same goes for the other “border states” that are turning more and more purple as more people move into them from back east or out west.
The bedrock red areas are getting smaller geographically.
If the moderate/liberal wing of the GOP can separate the values voters, they will be in a much better position over the next 15-20 years to re-take the re-aligned southern states, with major gains in the midwest, west coast, and northeast. It’s just my opinion, but it’s my belief that the national leadership of the GOP doesn’t really plan on winning this year anyway, so why not run Rudy? He appeals to the moderate/liberal Republicans, and has the added plus of further alienating the values voters, who the moderates want to purge anyway. I think the GOP is willing to gamble that with moderate/liberal candidates, they can more than make up for the votes they lose if the values voters walk.(I also think, and again it’s just my opinion, that the moderate/liberal Republicans see the values voters as something of an embarrassment, like a nutty aunt living in the attic. The Foley, Vitter, Graig episodes didn’t help).
It’s also my belief that this strategy started a long time ago, and hit critical mass after Karl Rove leveraged the values voters. Both wins were squeakers, and with the red states getting more purple, the alliance isn’t looking to remain viable for much longer. I know someone will bring up the point that the alliance would have worked, had the GOP really held up their end of the bargain, but the leadership had to have known from day one that it would be impossible to deliver on most of the values voters expectations, so instead they built the alliance and bucked the tiger till it throwed and ate em, and now they’ll regroup...form a new alliance with moderate Republicans and Conservative Democrats and start over. I believe we are witnessing the first steps of this sea change.
Ok those are my observations. This wasn’t meant to get any one group POd, just something to consider.
I agree. Social issues will have very little play in the election. Health care and the economy will be the big players. People have become complacent about terrorism and the war in Iraq is a back-burner issue as most Americans don't have a loved-one over there fighting it.
On election day, the presidency will be decided by swing voters --people that won't make a decision on who they'll vote for until they step into the voting booth and these people don't really have strong opinions on anything.
Don’t forget that if Hunter can hang in there as other low-polling candidates drop out, his percentage of exposure will go up and it will become progressively harder for the media to ignore him. That durability will prompt more voters to actually take a look at him, his stands, his record, and his expertise.
Also, much closer than this to the ‘92 election, a certain Democrat was tagged as a “political corpse” by the major media. The corpse went on to spend 8 years in the White House.
Do not make the mistake of presuming that today’s snapshot is a picture of the race a few months from now.
What's that rap, rap, rapping
On that coffin lid tapping
Just the final nail being driven more
On the GOP party's door
Conservatives tossed out in the cold
The soul of the GOP to liberals sold
For 30 silver illegal votes in a bag
While conservatives weep, the liberals brag.
GOP, we conservatives knew you well.
Remember we warned you, when you wake in political hell.
That’s exactly the way I see it. The day the Republican party condones the murder of innocent life in the womb is the day the Republican party dies.
I owe you one for some timely guidance last year. Thanks for being there.
No concept of how they looked, and would look, to OTHERS - meaning all the various groups involved in the voting public.
The only person yesterday who would appeal to young voters was Mitt Romney. He has charisma, good looks, and after you listen to him, you feel better instead of worse (as with most politicians including Hillary).
Being a person of serious religious belief, who has lived according to these beliefs, has seemingly given him this optimism and this ability to make others feel good. Romney is going to do alright.
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