Free Republic

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani ventured to conservative South Carolina yesterday hoping to talk about terrorism and the economy, but instead got hit at every stop with another topic - abortion. A day after the former mayor said he supports public funding of abortion - sparking a firestorm among conservatives - local media here forced him to elaborate on the issue at events intended to underscore new endorsements. And although Giuliani, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, did not waiver from his central belief that abortion is a woman's right, he responded with some of his most...

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (CNN) -- Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani told CNN Wednesday he supports public funding for some abortions, a position he advocated as mayor and one that will likely put the GOP presidential candidate at odds with social conservatives in his party. "Ultimately, it's a constitutional right, and therefore if it's a constitutional right, ultimately, even if you do it on a state by state basis, you have to make sure people are protected," Giuliani said in an interview with CNN's Dana Bash in Florida's capital city. A video clip of the then-mayoral candidate issuing a similar...

Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (R), who has formed a presidential exploratory committee, on Wednesday said he favors government funding for some abortions but added in a statement that he "will not seek to change current law," Long Island Newsday reports (Gordon, Long Island Newsday, 4/4). "Ultimately, [abortion is] a constitutional right, and therefore, if it's a constitutional right, ... you have to make sure people are protected," Giuliani said in an interview with Dana Bash of CNN (Saltonstall, New York Daily News, 4/5). Giuliani's campaign later issued a statement that he will not seek to change the...

It appears that Rudy Giuliani, intelligent man that he is, understands the damage he did to his efforts to connect with conservatives in his CNN interview yesterday. As Kathryn Jean Lopez posted at The Corner, Giuliani has started to climb down from his support of funding abortions with tax dollars: MAYOR GIULIANI: "What I said yesterday is what I've been saying throughout, I think in the last number of months publicly and privately for quite some time, which is I'm against abortion, I hate it, I wish there never was an abortion and I would council a woman have an...

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani on Thursday defended his record favoring the use of public money for abortions, saying he wouldn't try to undo a Supreme Court ruling allowing the procedures. "Ultimately I believe it's an individual right and a woman should make that choice," the former New York mayor said during a Statehouse news conference where he picked up three endorsements. Support for abortion rights is unpopular with conservatives who dominate the GOP in South Carolina, an early voting state. "I tell people what I think. I tell them (to) evaluate me as I am and...

Rudy Giuliani, NO Fiscal Conservative By George Marlin Wednesday, April 4, 2007 When Steve Forbes was seeking the Republican presidential nomination in 1996, then Mayor Rudy Giuliani ridiculed his proposal to scrap the federal income tax code and replace it with a simple flat-tax. Giuliani called Forbes plan a "mistake" and said if implemented "would really be a disaster." Despite these smears, Steve Forbes now believes Rudy embraces the flat-tax concept and endorsed him for president claiming he "will inspire the next generation of the Reagan Revolution." Apparently Forbes forgot that when running for mayor, Rudy Giuliani showcased his liberal...

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (CNN) -- Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani told CNN Wednesday he supports public funding for some abortions, a position he advocated as mayor and one that will likely put the GOP presidential candidate at odds with social conservatives in his party. "Ultimately, it's a constitutional right, and therefore if it's a constitutional right, ultimately, even if you do it on a state by state basis, you have to make sure people are protected," Giuliani said in an interview with CNN's Dana Bash in Florida's capital city. A video clip of the then-mayoral candidate issuing a similar...

Rudolph W. Giuliani, whose 1989 campaign for mayor at times became bogged down in questions about his commitment to abortion rights, sought yesterday to remove the issue from his 1993 campaign by emphatically endorsing a woman's right to choose abortion without limitations. Mr. Giuliani, the Republican-Liberal candidate, made his statement at a breakfast meeting organized by his wife, Donna Hanover Giuliani, who as a television news anchor was always Donna Hanover but like another political wife is now asking for an appellation evolution. Mr. Giuliani, who is challenging Mayor David N. Dinkins, a longtime supporter of abortion rights, addressed more...

Will Rudolph Giuliani be a heavyweight presidential contender in 2008? Some of his enemies evidently think so. They have already begun to raise the alarm. One early entry is "Giuliani Time," a newly released documentary film that aims to land a pre-emptive blow. The title gives the game away even before the start. "It's Giuliani time" is the phrase said to have been uttered by a New York City policeman as he sodomized Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant, with a broomstick in a Brooklyn precinct house in 1997. ...Within the film itself, the director Kevin Keating has lined up a...

... In his first campaign for public office, Thompson was elected by the people of Tennessee in 1994 to the remaining two years of an unexpired Senate term. When he was returned for a full term in 1996, he received more votes than any previous candidate for any office in Tennessee history. He won two elections in two years by more than twenty points each. Senator Thompson retired from the Senate in 2002, having served as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, and a member of the Senate committee on Finance. In his time in the Senate, Thompson...

NYT HIT ON RUDY PLANNED FOR FRIDAY, NEWSROOM SOURCES TELL DRUDGE, TOP 3RD OF PAPER: Giuliani told grand jury that his former chief investigator remembered having briefed him on some aspects of Bernard Kerik's relationship with a company suspected of ties to organized crime before Kerik's appointment as New York City police commissioner ... MORE...

Sean Hannity Interview, 2007: HANNITY: Let me move on. And the issue of guns has come up a lot. When people talk about Mayor Giuliani, New York City had some of the toughest gun laws in the entire country. Do you support the right of people to carry handguns? GIULIANI: I understand the Second Amendment. I support it. People have the right to bear arms. When I was mayor of New York, I took over at a very, very difficult time. We were averaging about 2,000 murders a year, 10,000... HANNITY: You inherited those laws, the gun laws in New...

Who’s shifting to support the actor? The most recent USA Today/Gallup poll shows a huge drop in support for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney while a relatively politically untested former senator who is best known as a television actor has moved into third place in the Republican Party’s nominating race for the presidency. The New York Sun’s online editor Ryan Sager, who somewhat predicted this shift last week, says that social conservatives within the party are looking for an alternative to Romney. This is where Law & Order star and former senator Fred Thompson comes in, although he’s yet to...

Here's a heads up for the Giuliani campaign. It's coming. It's coming very soon. Beware. Run for your lives! As I write this, there is plotting going among grassroots religious conservatives in New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina and many other states. They want to take down Rudy and they plan to do everything in their power to do it. I received this email from an influential Republican activist who, lets just say, has an extensive mailing list among the conservative grassroots network. Here's what he told me: "If Rudy Giuliani is put up for President by the Stupid Party, I...

BATON ROUGE, La. -- U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany endorsed Rudy Giuliani in the 2008 presidential race on Monday, joining U.S. Sen. David Vitter among Louisiana Republicans backing the former New York City mayor. Boustany, R-Lafayette, cited the New York Republican's position on national security, "protecting our families," low taxes and government efficiency as issues that qualify him for the presidency, according to a news release from the Giuliani campaign. A Boustany spokesman confirmed the endorsement. Vitter, R-Metairie, is Giuliani's regional campaign chairman for the South.

Introduction Rudy Giuliani has been barnstorming the nation, proclaiming himself a conservative and saying his hero is Ronald Reagan. Recent opinion polls suggest his campaign is striking a chord with the GOP?s rank and file, and New York?s neo-conservatives have taken the lead in promoting the former Mayor as the savior of the Republican Party, and heaven knows the GOP needs saving. But those polls also indicate that most Republicans around the country don?t really know where Mr. Giuliani stands on key issues, and those who do know are glossing over some very striking philosophical flaws?at least from a truly...

Can America's mayor win support from enough social conservatives to win the Republican nomination? Maybe not, but social conservatives should think long and hard before they decide to pass on Giuliani. This may be difficult advice to credit. Giuliani is thoroughly alienated from the dominant concerns of the social right. Mayor Giuliani delivered what they needed most. He reclaimed New York City from the toxic leftism of his predecessors but in the process identified himself with the moral elements of their leftism. social conservatives are concerned about social rot and Giuliani is one of the very few executives in the...

Can America's mayor win support from social conservatives to win the Republican nomination? The bundle of social issues that provoke so much vitriol in our politics arise out of an effort to reverse society's moral decay. Giuliani's career in electoral politics began in New York City when moral decay was far enough advanced to be immune from direct attack and eclipsed by other more immediate concerns. Mayor Giuliani delivered what they needed most. He reclaimed NYC from the toxic leftism of his predecessors... social conservatives are concerned about social rot and Giuliani is one of the very few executives in...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Plenty of people and politicians have skeletons in their closets. In the case of presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani, that closet is a walk-in. The former Republican mayor of New York City won widespread praise for his handling of the Sept. 11 attacks, and it is largely that collective memory that accounts for his current popularity in polls and makes him the early front-runner for his party's nomination. Yet as most New Yorkers could tell you, there are plenty of episodes in Giuliani's past that could come back to haunt him - scenes that played like a booming,...

The same Beltway experts who declared Sen. John McCain of Arizona the GOP front-runner, even as he under-polled fellow presidential contender Rudolph Giuliani, now parrot equally dodgy concepts. When Republicans meet "the real Rudy," they will abandon New York's former mayor like cattle fleeing a burning barn. Then, the wobbly Washington wisdom continues, Giuliani's three marriages, and his less-than-solidly-right-wing views on gays, guns and gametes will torpedo his buoyant presidential hopes. These seers now detect unhappiness with the GOP aspirants. They cite a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll in which 26 percent of Republican primary voters were dissatisfied with...