Guilliani Getting Serious?

[no1tovote4]

Then he can totally count the Evangelical vote as ill-relevant and it will fall into another candidate’s column of support. The Bible Thumpers have been ignored once too often.

Ignored by whom? Bush? Never. It is the only section of his positions that I would consider conservative at all...

 

[no1tovote4]

Online video chats make me laugh. They could be entirely staged and you would never know. They may not even be "live" and you still wouldn't be able to tell. Unless the person is answering all of your questions directly, and even then they may have videos prepared for specific questions.

This would work particularly well for Hillary, who can be seen as septic in response at times, they can make several response videos and take the one that seems most "friendly".

I distrust such forms of campaigning that allow the candidate to avoid actual interaction.

 

[Darwins Friend]

Ignored by whom? Bush? Never. It is the only section of his positions that I would consider conservative at all...

http://www.baltimoresun.com/feature...ry?coll=bal-artslife-books&ctrack=1&cset=true

When God isn't being used to invade countries or foment insurgencies, God is being manipulated mercilessly for political ends. In Tempting Faith, David Kuo, former special assistant to Bush and deputy director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, asserts that Bush and his cohort were using people of faith like himself to further their own agenda with a predominantly evangelical political base.

Kuo claims that Bush's famous compassionate conservatism was a ruse - that the promises he made to his evangelical constituency were not only never kept, but were made solely for political purposes. What's more, writes Kuo, the Bush team wooed Christian voters, but never took them seriously, making jokes about them and their leaders.

 

[90K]

Good liberal home town paper the baltimore sun.

 

[Darwins Friend]

Good liberal home town paper the baltimore sun.

Yep - and I’m sure they’d think nothing of altering a direct quote from the author……

 

[90K]

Yep - and I’m sure they’d think nothing of altering a direct quote from the author……

Wouldn't have it any other way

 

[glockmail]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservative

Apparently I missed that memo.

 

[Annie]

http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_1_rudy_giuliani.html

City Journal
Yes, Rudy Giuliani Is a Conservative
And an electable one, at that.
Steven Malanga
Winter 2007

Not since Teddy Roosevelt took on Tammany Hall a century ago has a New York politician closely linked to urban reform looked like presidential timber. But today ex–New York mayor Rudy Giuliani sits at or near the top of virtually every poll of potential 2008 presidential candidates. Already, Giuliani’s popularity has set off a “stop Rudy” movement among cultural conservatives, who object to his three marriages and his support for abortion rights, gay unions, and curbs on gun ownership. Some social conservatives even dismiss his achievement in reviving New York before 9/11. An August story on the website Right Wing News, for instance, claims that Giuliani governed Gotham from “left of center.” Similarly, conservatives have been feeding the press a misleading collection of quotations by and about Giuliani, on tax policy and school choice issues, assembled to make him look like a liberal.

But in a GOP presidential field in which cultural and religious conservatives may find something to object to in every candidate who could really get nominated (and, more important, elected), 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 people safe in their homes and in the streets, he said, not to redistribute income, run a welfare state, or perform social engineering. The private economy, not government, creates opportunity, he argued; government should just deliver basic services well and then get out of the private sector’s way. He denied that cities and their citizens were victims of vast forces outside their control, and he urged New Yorkers to take personal responsibility for their lives. “Over the last century, millions of people from all over the world have come to New York City,” Giuliani once observed. “They didn’t come here to be taken care of and to be dependent on city government. They came here for the freedom to take care of themselves.” It was that spirit of opportunity and can-do-ism that Giuliani tried to re-instill in New York and that he himself exemplified not only in the hours and weeks after 9/11 but in his heroic and successful effort to bring a dying city back to life....

 

[Annie]

He answers the questions in a way we can understand:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110009679

Pelosi Wants Our Job
"The House of Representatives today plans to pass a nonbinding resolution supporting U.S. soldiers in Iraq but opposing the president's plan to send more combat troops to the war zone," the Los Angeles Times reports:

The vote caps an historic week of debate, in which Democrats and some Republicans have inveighed against the cost in lives and dollars of President Bush's war in Iraq.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said in an interview Thursday that the House is reflecting the will of the American people, 70% of whom oppose the war.

Until now, she added, "the president has had a blank check--no accountability, no responsibility. The days of the blank check are over."
​

And the days of the nonbinding resolution have only just begun!

In an interview with Larry King the other night, Rudy Giuliani offered some trenchant comments on all this nonsense:

Giuliani: We have a right of free speech in this country and we elect people to make decisions.

Here's what I would prefer to see them do, though, if you ask me what's my view on that. The non-binding resolution thing gets me more than are you for it or against it. I have tremendous respect for the people who feel that we either made a mistake going to war, who voted against the war, who now have come to the conclusion, changed their minds--they have every right to that--that it's wrong. You should, in a dynamic situation, keep questioning.

What I don't like is the idea of a non-binding resolution.

King: Because?

Giuliani: Because there's no decision.

King: But it's a--making a--it's a statement.

Giuliani: Yes, but that's what you do. That's what Tim Russert does. That's what Rush Limbaugh does. That's what you guys do, you make comments. We pay them to make decisions, not just to make comments. We pay them to decide. . . . And maybe it's because I, you know, I ran a government and I tend to be a decisive person. I like decisions. And I think one of the things wrong with Washington is they don't want to make tough decisions anymore.
​

In fairness to our friends in Congress, what Giuliani is describing here is partly just the nature of the institution. A body made up of 535 people can't possibly be "decisive" in the way that one man can. Even if every member of Congress were as decisive as Giuliani, they would still have to compromise in order to get anything done.

But the character of the institution does reflect itself in the character of the individuals in it, either because they learn to adjust or because the most successful lawmakers are those who master the art of compromise.

Being president calls for a different set of skills and strengths than being in Congress, and this may be why America has elected only three sitting congressmen as president (Rep. James Garfield and Sens. Warren Harding and John F. Kennedy). It's also why we're skeptical of all the senators seeking the White House this time around, and why in our estimation Giuliani has the best shot at being the next president.