No, Rudy Giuliani is my second choice, behind Fred Thompson. The most important issues to me are lowering taxes, cutting spending, decreasing regulation, nominating strict constructionists to the Supreme Court and having a strong national defense, including winning in Iraq. On those issues, of the 5 leading candidates, Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani are the most conservative and thus my favorites. While I know that some would expect Rudy to be liberal in appointing judges because he is pro-choice, I believe he’s likely to be the strongest on judges given the role that Theodore Olson has played in supporting Rudy (not surprising considering his wife died on 9/11).
My tiebreaker between Thompson and Giuliani is gun control, which Thompson (and I) oppose and which Giuliani has supported in the past, even if he’s improved his position somewhat of late.
The most liberal candidate in my view of the leading 5 is easily Mike Huckabee with his past support of tax increases, rapid spending increases in Arkansas, support for increased regulation such as the national smoking ban and his bizarre liberal comments about Bush’s foreign policy.
The next most liberal is easily John McCain, based upon his opposition to the Bush tax cuts (with nice class warfare arguments justifying the position), and his support for more spending, more regulation, and higher taxes to go along with his environmental agenda. I also believe, given that he was largely responsible for blocking Republicans from getting rid of the filibuster on judicial nominees, that he will likely appoint “moderates” to be judges so as to avoid the embarrassment of having his own nominees filibustered.
"Even with the tax cuts of the last several years, New York remains by far the most heavily taxed big city in the country.""The scope of government was not reduced at all. ..... 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. ..... the city instead failed to reduce spending."
Rudy borrowed his way through his administration, incurring massive debt servicing costs and leaving the city with a huge deficit. And that was during the dot-com boom when Wall Street, and its tax-paying businesses, was flush with cash and the economy was booming.
As to “strict constructionist,” that term was first thrown around in Presidential campaigns by Nixon. Nixon gave us Harry Andrew Blackmun, a “strict constructionist”. Harry Blackmun gaves us Roe v. Wade, the so-called “right to privacy” in relation to homosexual sodomy, denied reverse discrimination in his zeal for affirmative action, and offered some of the most destructive interpretations that have enabled the environmentalists. Rudy and his supporters can throw out the term “strict constructionist” as much as they want. From a man who thinks women have a “right” to abortion (paid for by taxpayers) and that “you’ve got to regulate consistent with the Second Amendment,” it is simply NOT believable that Rudy will appoint justices with a conservative bent. His record clearly shows that he preferred liberal justices--that is what he appointed, overwhelmingly, as during his term as NYC Mayor.
As to his other appointments--have you looked at how many of them went to jail or are under indictment for public corruption and various salacious acts? Kerik, Harding, Roberts, Russi, Gelormino, Carbonetti, Serra, Patrick... READ UP! The man has serious flaws in judgment and should be kept from ANY position of power, IMO.
http://www.gothamgazette.com/article//20030113/202/129
“Unfortunately, when the boom ended and the economic cycle turned south, we were left with a tax structure that provided $3 billion less in revenue every fiscal year than it did at the beginning of the ‘90s, but with an expense burden almost 70 percent greater than existed back then. Let me repeat those numbers. Our annual tax revenues are $3 billion less per year, our expense our 70 percent more over the decade. And the attacks of 9/11 just exacerbated that problem.”
— Mayor Michael Bloomberg, December 7, 2002