'So when they say, "If you don't agree with us on this issue, even if you're a fiscal conservative, you're not a conservative" that's rather arrogant of them. '
Actually, Rudy is not a fiscal conservative either. Its just empty words. His borrowing left his successor with a $4.5 billion budget deficit only eighteen months after Rudy sat on a $3 billion surplus. Then he added 25,000 employees to the city's payroll, many of them patronage hires, after promising to cut the work force as a candidate of fiscal conservatism. On the day he left office, the head count of city workers was the highest in history.
Now *that* is how to debate against Rudy, if you can make that charge stick.
I've read other stats that seem to disagree with your post, but I'll let one of the Rudy folks duel. Me, I'm willing to go Rudy as a fall-back plan, in the General, but I'm still a Newt man, until things are settled.
But this "Rudy is a liberal cuz of guns/gays/abortion" line is killing ya'll. You mean he's not a "social" conservative. That doesn't mean isn't politically conservative.