I am not saying executive experience is sufficient. (clinton and Carter are perfect counterexamples)
I am saying it is necessary. (BTW, George would tell you being a GENERAL isn’t chopped liver in that department.)
Executive experience is necessary, especially in these perilous times.
Especially after Bush.
We need experience and we need proven success.
The voters will demand it.
Fred Thompson is a nice enough guy with great stage presence.
He suggests experience and exudes what seems like gravitas, but does he really have either?
And he is no conservative. A true conservative would NEVER ever gut the amendment from which all of our liberties flow.
The issue isn’t Rudy’s conservatism, (which, according to you, is nonexistent). It is Fred’s.
If you are going to reject Rudy and select someone with inferior credentials based on his ideology, you had better be sure his ideology and the ideology you are desperately seeking are actually one and the same.
50+ million butchered babies vs. Campaign Finance Reform. That one's a no brainer: each murdered baby is infinitely more important than all the nervous Nellyism over Campaign Finance Reform.
Sorry, if I have to choose one or the other it is gonna be Campaign Finance Reform every time. That a bunch of Washington, DC, issue group bureaucrats have to go hysterical in the mail six weeks earlier to augment the plush offices, the First Class air fares, the restaurant luxuries beyond the imagination of Roman emperors, limousine living, et al., by scaring the wits (and bank balances) out of blue-haired old widows that THE CAUSE is jeopardized by (whomever) unless that cash comes in fast and large, as the PAC in question produces absolutely no discernible results other than luxuries for the operators and poverty for the contributors. AND, to top it off, the Swift Boat Veterans (may God bless them) and George Soros (may he go straight to Philadelphia) seem not deterred in their effectiveness in the slightest despite the purported death of interest group luxur...(whoops!) freedom of "speech."
I was a state chairman for Reagan when he bucked Ford and I have never regretted any presidential enthusiasm of my lengthening life as a voter, starting with Nixon 1968.
As to the allegedly all important experience issue (while complaining that you want citizen politicians and not the establishment DC kind), Reagan had a handle on it. He publicly recognized his own lack of universal knowledge and said that the art of executive governance was best practiced by appointing those with such knowledge and backing them up unless and until they failed in which case, without personal rancor, they would resign or be fired and replaced. They were told before hiring that no firing would be personal. He was right.
Zachary Taylor was a general but not a particularly notable president. And Garfield, and Grant, and Benjamin Harrison and Dwight David Eisenhower. Andy Jackson would have been a great president even if he had been a mere private.
Fred Thompson (check the current FR poll of FDT vs. RG) is a LOT more conservative than Rudy ever was or will be. Gun grabbing, babykilling and lavender "marriage" are simply NOT the stuff of which conservatives are made. Rockefeller style Republicans want to have the country run by a group of politicos of whatever party whose ideologies, if any, produce calcification in policies. The important thing for them is who gets the contracts and who gets the jobs. It is all about money. No soul. No thrill. No despair. Nothing but money, boring money. After 50+ million dead, ending abortion is a cause worth fighting for. So is an end to the Islamofascisti being able to breathe. Bernie Kerik might have helped Giuliani with the second of these but he looks like he won't be available (which I genuinely regret). Rudy has New York Chutzpah which is a good thing. Fred Thompson can do as well. Fred Thompson fought against Red China trade. Fred Thompson is credible on social issues as Rudy is not and on judges and on the things that social conservatives most care about. There is plenty of available military command talent available to any GOP president. Rudy simply has no presidential level advantages, is NOT a conservative, is particularly not a SOCIAL conservative. Why buy a pig in a poke when Fred Thompson is a proven conservative and will be available after the Law and Order episodes have run?
For an unconventional politician, Fred Thompson has had three careers: actor and lawyer and US Senator. His experience as a lawyer is probably even better than Rudy's. Rudy spent much of his time fighting the Mafia. Congratulations to Rudy but his work put the Russians, the Rastamen, the Dominican gangs, and other elements far worse than the Mafia in charge of the drug trade and the streets. Fred Thompson cleaned out a gang of political criminals in Tennessee headed up by a governor whom he drove from office and into prison n what used to be Demonratic Tennessee. He served as counsel to the Republican minority on the Senate Watergate Committee. He has the presence and track record of a good actor.
Rudy has succeeded in three things: US attorney, cut street crime in NYC significantly and calmed the city after 9/11. One hopes that the third of these will not need repeating, that the second is not a presidential task, and that his experience as US Attorney is no better than Fred Thompson's experience in several government lawyer capacities and probably less. Gravitas and stage presence are in the eye of the beholder and Fred has both in spades. Fred does not do "gay" "rights" fundraisers much less in drag, nor NARAL dinners, nor grab guns.
Ideological reliability of a social issue sort IS the credential. Fred has it as Rudy does not. We can keep going back and forth but you are not going to convince conservatives or social conservatives that Rudy is either.
Only those who are social conservatives can decide for themselves whether Rudy is one of us. I have decided he is not. I am not alone if you check the FR poll now running. I can reject and so can anyone Rudy because I do not like my candidates photographed (or otherwise) wearing fake beauty marks, garish powder and rouge makeup and ballerina clothing at "gay" fundraisers whle suporting abortion and federal funding of same while lying to us that he will support what he calls "strict constructionists" to the SCOTUS and other fedcourts.
I am more tolerant of Rudy than most because, if he keeps his liberal nose out of social issues, judges, guns, etc., keeps his nose to the grindstone and uses RICO against the Islamofascisti as he once used it against the Mafia, I can see him as an effectve Attorney General. That is the best offer he is going to get next year. The national GOP is not Manhattan liberal and never will be.
Actually, that would be the 2nd Amendment, and Rudy's got some problems there.