Free Republic

Some social conservatives even dismiss his achievement in reviving New York before 9/11. An August story on the Web site Right Wing News, for instance, claims that Mr. Giuliani governed Gotham from "left of center." Similarly, conservatives have been feeding the press a misleading collection of quotations by and about Mr. Giuliani, on tax policy and school choice issues, assembled to make him look like a liberal. Mr. Giuliani may be the most conservative candidate on a wide range of issues. Far from being a liberal, he ran New York with a conservative's priorities. Government exists above all to keep...

One of the early -- and quite amazing -- sidelights of the race for the Republican nomination for President in ’08 is how so many prominent conservatives are lining up behind Rudy Giuliani, who has perhaps the slimmest conservative credentials of any of the major GOP hopefuls. The Republican Party has had a strong pro-life plank in its national platform since 1980, but the former New York mayor still characterizes himself as “pro-choice” and has never reversed his oft-stated 1990s opposition to a ban on partial-birth abortion. When I questioned him during the recent California Republican convention about his support...