This is pure b.x. Here’s the real record—most of it conservative. He used Reaganomics to put NYC in the black for the first time in fifty years. He saved hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars by reorganizing the police force and transit authority and trash collection agencies. He cut taxes and levies over and over, saving billions for taxpayers. He cut NYC’s top income-tax rate by 20.6%. Local city taxes on a family of four dropped 23.7%. He cut the commercial-rent tax. He cut sales taxes, including taxes on clothing. He cut the marriage penalty tax. He cut taxes on commercial rents and on small businesses and self-employed New Yorkers. He privatized municipal assets, selling city-owned radio and television stations and divested the City from the New York Coliseum adding $345 million to erase the City’s red ink. He cut NYC’s hotel tax from 6% to 5%. Tourism increased 50% in the city per year during Rudy’s tenure. Personal income increased 50%. Unemployment in the city went form 10.3% to 5.1%.
And that was only his conservative fiscal policy. He also reduced crime in NYC by 64%, the murder rate alone by 67%. He fired thousands of dead wood bureaucrats and used the money saved to put more cops on the beat. He shut down porn shops throughout the downtown tourist areas and kicked them out of residential neighborhoods. He went after drug lords—something unheard of in NYC. He also went after the welfare cheats, removing illegal recipients, cutting the outlay for welfare by 20%. Over 600,000 recipients were dropped from the roles. At the same time he began a work requirement program for remaining recipients. He ended the set-aside program for minority contractors, refused to meet with Al Sharpton, and otherwise refused to be cowed by racial politics. He refused to lower job requirements for minorities and women. He pushed to reform the city’s schools and supported school vouchers—another view that went against the liberal grain. Ditto his fight against using public money for anti-religious art displays. How is any of this liberal?
In all of this he was fought by the liberal media, beginning with the NYTimes. But he fought back and won, turning around a dying city with a population bigger than most states. Nor was he just successful as mayor. He was famous as a U.S. Attorney in the Reagan administration long before he became mayor, amassing more than 4,000 convictions, with only 25 reversals. He was constantly on the evening news for spectacular achievments: he broke the back of NY’s organized crime, for instance, bringing the five family heads of NY’s notorious Mob to trial and sending them away for long prison terms—at great risk to his own life. He went after Wall Street white collar criminals like insider trader Ivan Boesky and junk bond dealer Michael Milkin. And he destroyed NY’s notorious political machine, sending some of its most corrupt politicians to prison. He also prosecuted terrorists and illegal immigrants. All this was before his coolheaded leadership on 9/11 won the admiration of most Americans.
Sure he espoused liberal social causes like abortion and gun-control. But he was mayor of the most liberal city in America, not South Bend, IN—and even in this, his positions are not as extreme as the Rudy-bashers like to intimate. On abortion he has publicly promised he would appoint strict constructionists as judges—and strict constructionists like Ted Olson on backing him. That’s a huge concession and would effectively cancel out the effects of any personal liberal position he might hold. Personally, I’d trust him on this issue far more than I’d ever trust McCain or Thompson. And his position on gay rights and on gun control is to keep the federal government out of these issues and leave them to the local governments. Again, fine by me. On immigration, his view is the same as President Bush’s—he’s for a guest worker program. Nothing especially alarming about that—many good conservatives hold this view.
Why do Rudy boosters continue to push this as a talking point?
Rudy himself destroyed it a couple of weeks ago when he said his interpretation of strict constructionism would allow a judge to uphold Roe as precedent.
Whatever else Rudy has done, he is morally bankrupt. I will not vote for him under any circumstance.
He promised to be faithful to his wives in public, too.