With just hours to go until 2007 is ushered in here in the east, I am prepared to put my credibility on the line as a political seer and make the following prediction more than a year out from the Iowa caucuses.? I hereby predict that, at the end of the day, former North Carolina senator and former Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards will be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2008.
Why Edwards?
1) Iowa.? Over the last year, we’ve seen several polls of likely Iowa caucus-goers placing Edwards either on top or very close to victory in the state that will hold the nation’s first 2008 contest.? His strength there, despite losing in the national polls to Hillary, gives us some indication of what Democrats will do when actually exposed to the candidates and their campaigns on the ground.? Moreover, it tells us that Edwards is in a very good position to come out of the gate with a win in Iowa.
2) Nevada.? With Democrats moving Nevada’s caucus between Iowa and New Hampshire, and with the disproportionate influence that organized labor will have on the outcome in Nevada, it’s quite likely that the economically populist Edwards, fresh from a victory in Iowa, will also take Nevada.? That will mean back-to-back wins for Edwards in the first two Democratic contests of 2008.
3) South Carolina.? Hillary will likely curb Edwards’ mo’ in the Granite State, where her husband’s fiscally prudent, socially liberal record is far closer to the positions of most “live free or die” voters than the Middle American populism of Edwards.? But on the heels of New Hampshire is South Carolina, a primary that will be held in Edwards’ backyard.? If Edwards wins three of the first four primaries, and all Hillary has left is New Hampshire, it’s highly possible that Edwards will be in a good position to win the next few primaries — largely in the south and midwest — and will have already created a sense of inevitably about his nomination by the time Hillary country comes into play.
4) The Anti-Hillary.? It doesn’t take much time surfing the left side of the blogosphere to determine that there’s little love lost between Hillary and grassroots liberals.? The Left would prefer that Hillary not be the nominee, and strategic types within the Democratic establishment also fear that Nominee Hillary, with her inability to connect with voters, her polarizing manner, the baggage of dynasty, and her status as a northeastern liberal will ensure a third successive GOP victory in the general.? Edwards, with his southern pedigree and style will be seen as someone who can give Republicans a run for their money in the middle of the country.?
5)?The midterms. ?Edwards is the candidate who most resembles the type of Democrat who won red territory in 2006: fiscally populist, isolationist, and socially liberal but not a coastal elite type.? If Democrats want to continue their successes in the border states and along the Ohio River, Edwards becomes a far smarter pick than Hillary.
It is for these reasons that I believe John Edwards will be the 2008 Democratic nominee.? Our challenge, then, is to ensure that the candidate we select can beat him.
So says CBN:
“CBN News has been talking to operatives in the state of Michigan and the news is not good for Governor Romney. I’ve learned that there are at least four Republican Representatives from the Michigan State House that are seriously rethinking their support of Romney for President.
These are members of Romney’s steering committee in Michigan who are now having reservations about recent revelations about Romney’s past comments in regards to marriage, abortion and the Boy Scouts. There’s a good chance that they could jump ship. I know that one of them wrote to Romney’s office demanding specific answers to certain questions. If these members jump ship, the logical choice would be for them to back Senator Sam Brownback for President. Unlike Romney, Brownback has no past skeletons in his closet when it comes to these issues.
Romney has been under criticism lately because of a letter he wrote in 1994 when he was running for the U.S. Senate. In it, Romney thanks the Log Cabin Club of Massachusetts, a gay Republican group, for its support. He also calls for equality for gays and lesbians. In the letter, Romney also said he supported President Clinton’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding gays serving in the Armed Forces, describing it as “the first in a number of steps that will ultimately lead to gays and lesbians being able to serve openly and honestly in our nation’s military.” Romney has lately been positioning himself as the candidate for family value conservatives in 2008.
As for whether gays should be allowed to be leaders in the Boy, Romney said this in 1994 when running for the U.S. Senate, “I support the right of the Boy Scouts of America to decide what it wants to do on that issue.all people should be allowed to participate in the Boy Scouts regardless of their sexual orientation.”
What I’m being told from a well placed source on the ground is that the representatives who may leave Romney are really questioning the legitimacy of his conservative credentials. Romney has always said he has evolved on these issues over the years, but these folks in Michigan think it’s okay to evolve, but some of this seems to be major flip flop material, especially on the life issue where they point out how he’s gone from pro-choice in 1994, to pro-life in 2000, to pro-choice in 2002 and now back to pro-life.
Romney’s office will dispute this, but what they can’t dispute is a potential unraveling among their steering committee in Michigan. Michigan is crucial to Romney. He has significant family roots there and it’s one of the first four primary states. He needs to do well there.”
As I’ve said before, Romney’s raison d’etre — his reason for being — is that he’s supposedly the only orthodox conservative in the GOP field who can potentially win the general election.? All of the other candidates in the field are either heterodox conservatives who deviate from the orthodoxy of movement conservatism on one or more issues (Rudy, McCain, Huckabee, Pataki, Hagel), or are seen as long-shots in the general for one or more reasons, such as fringe candidate status (Brownback, Tancredo) or a lack of gravitas and fundraising capacity (Hunter, Thompson, Gilmore).? Romney’s plan, and it was a good one, was to market himself as the all-around conservative in the race who also had the ability to raise lots of money, appeal to lots of people, and give whichever Democrat the other party anointed a real run for his or her money.? In that event, movement conservatives may have been willing to pass up the more electable candidates in the field (Rudy and McCain) and go long on a guy who could both win AND wouldn’t make them uncomfortable in any particular issue area.
But the whole calculus falls apart if Romney is proven to be yet another heterodox Republican, which seems to be the conclusion that conservatives are now coming to based on Mitt’s past statements about Reagan, the 1992 election, abortion, and gay rights.? If Romney is just another GOP contender whose views are not completely in line with GOP orthodoxy, what reason do movement conservatives have for selecting him to lead the party over equally the heterodox, but far more electable, Rudy or McCain?? It seems to me there is none.? Which is probably why Romney remains in single-digits, even in states where name recognition is controlled for, like Iowa and New Hampshire.
Rudy, McCain, and?Romney now considered frontrunners for GOP nod, sayeth CBS.
Finally catching up with what many of us here at R4′08 have been saying for months, the MSM is acknowledging?the winnowing of the GOP 2008 field down to three?men, even more than a year before the first votes are cast by caucus-goers in Iowa.
CBS News names Rudy, Romney, and McCain as the pool out of which the prospective nominee will be chosen, largely due to the?perception that only these three candidates, for different reasons, possess the ability to raise the 80 to 100 million dollars it will take to run a successful campaign in ‘08.? CBS refers to the trio as the “top tier” of the GOP field, while deeming everyone else, “long-shots.”
And, of course, the caveats:
“Yet, all three also have positions that raise alarms with the GOP’s vitally important conservative base:
_ Long viewed skeptically by conservatives for his renegade streak, McCain has further agitated them with his position on immigration and his involvement in avoiding a Senate showdown over Bush’s judicial nominees.
_ Romney insists that he opposes abortion and is a defender of traditional marriage. Yet, he voiced more liberal views when he ran as a moderate in his 2002 gubernatorial race and in a failed 1994 Senate bid. He’s drawn fire from leading conservatives for such inconsistencies.
_ Giuliani is a social moderate who supports gun control, same-sex civil unions and abortion rights, stands that run counter to the positions of the GOP’s right flank.
Those apparent deficiencies _ in the eyes of conservatives _ may leave a spot in the field for someone with less-shaky right-wing credentials, such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who the party’s base reveres. He says he’ll wait until fall to decide whether to seek the nomination.”
For the record, I don’t think Republicans will be screaming for a Newt candidacy in fall ‘07, if only because the man is still seen as such a lost cause as far as electability is concerned.? Note that I highly respect Newt and think that if he had been at the helm of the GOP for the past six years instead of its current leadership, we’d have closer to 250 seats in the House in January instead of just over 200.? But I just don’t think Republicans will go with someone who’s main downside seems to be electability given the likelihood that a Democratic win in the presidential race in ‘08 means a unified Democratic government.? It seems to me that the GOP field really is down to three?individuals, whether conservatives like it or not.?
Via AP:
Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee says if he runs for president he won’t be a Republican who will “scare the living daylights” out of independents and moderate Democrats.
“I think I would appeal to true conservatives for whom conservatism doesn’t mean they’re angry at everybody,” Huckabee said in an interview with The Associated Press. “My brand of conservatism is not an angry, hostile brand. It’s one that says `conservative’ means we want to conserve the best of our culture, society, principles and values and pass them on.”
“I would be the kind of Republican who doesn’t scare the living daylights out of people who are in the center or slightly to the left,” he said.
Interesting campaign theme to run in the Republican primaries…
San Diegan Congressman Duncan Hunter has released the first television ads of the 2008 presidential campaign.? In his two ads, which can be found on You Tube, he wraps his grip tighter around the national defense issue, talking about the unfairness and danger of the current trade system with China (see “Football” and “Submarine“).? The ads watch more like a homemade video from grandpa’s house than a slick political commercial, but few believe the Underdog is actually campaigning for the top of the ticket.? If anything, Hunter is angling for Veep or, more likely, Secretary of Defense in the next Republican administration.
(Hat tip to Oval Office 2008)
Within the past week, two polls were released that tell almost entirely different stories. The Research 2000 group released two very shocking results from Iowa and New Hampshire that threw a lot of our assumptions about the make-up of of the 2008 primaries into the air. Obama was not only tied with Edwards in Iowa, but came within one point of Hillary in New Hampshire. Hillary, meanwhile, was marooned at 4th place in Iowa with 10%. Yesterday, the American Research Group released a four state poll (IA, NH, NV and SC) that showed Hillary the strong favorite in everyone of those states. Such a strong favorite that she is beating Edwards in South Carolina, which is a state that Edwards won over Kerry by 15 points in 2004. Not only that, but Hillary destroys Edwards in Nevada where he only gets 8% (huh?). Among Republicans, the ARG poll has Rudy leading McCain in Iowa by 5 and then McCain ahead in NH and SC by 4 and 7 respectively (polling Republicans in Nevada is somewhat moot because unlike the Dems, the GOP primary for that state won’t be held until April 26th and by that time, the nominee will already be sown up).
The question is, which of these polls are right and how could they get such different results? If we assume that the ARG poll is more realistic, that means that Hillary is in a much more comfortable position than I expected and so is McCain. The big losers of the ARG poll have to be Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Romney doesn’t even break 10% in any of the 4 states and he is tied with Chuck Hagel (!) in Iowa, is somehow at 5% in South Carolina despite spending the a lot of time in the state this past year, and only hits 9% in NH where he has higher name ID than any other primary state besides Michigan (but even his support among conservatives there is slipping fast). Ouch. As for the Research 2000 polls, they seem to be an outlier and before last week I had never heard of them and I’m an avid 2008 poll watcher…
There are some books that have come out recently and are coming out next year that may help voters learn more about 2008 Republican candidates for President.
Speaker Newt Gingrich has a recent book he has released: Rediscovering God in America: Reflections on the Role of Faith in Our Nation’s History and Future.
Biographers Deborah Hart Strober and Gerald S. Strober have written another account of the life of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani that comes out later next month: Giuliani: Flawed or Flawless? The Oral Biography.
Charlyne Berens has written a new biography of United States Senator Chuck Hagel that also addresses his prospects for President in 2008: Chuck Hagel: Moving Forward.
Governor Mike Huckabee pens a campaign manifesto that comes out next week: From Hope to Higher Ground: 12 Stops to Restoring America’s Greatness.
Senator John McCain will be coming out with a new book next August: Hard Call: Great Decisions and the Extraordinary People Who Made Them.
New York conservative activist George J. Marlin has written a recent book that is critical of the gubernatorial tenure of George Pataki: Squandered Opportunities: New York’s Pataki Years.
Nationally syndicated author and radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt looks at the life and presidential prospects of Governor Mitt Romney in a book due out in early 2007: A Mormon in the White House?: 10 Things Every Conservative Should Know About Mitt Romney.
It will be interesting to see what, if any, additional insights we can obtain about these candidates from the books they and others are and will be releasing.
The ‘Giuliani is too liberal to win the nomination’ meme continues to plague both the MSM and conservative media but we have seen, in recent weeks, some modest re-evaluation of this conventional wisdom.
In this week’s Evans & Novak political report, Bob Novak takes note of Californian Bill Simon’s efforts on behalf of the Mayor.? Simon has impeccable conservative credentials and his support may be a?harbinger of other conservatives’ willingness to give Giuliani a hearing.?
Giuliani: California conservative Republican Bill Simon, the party’s nominee for governor in 2002, has begun building a network of support in the Golden State for the prospective presidential campaign of his old boss, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R). Simon, son of the late secretary of the Treasury William Simon, was Republican nominee for governor of California in 2002. He was a prosecutor working for Giuliani, then U.S. attorney in New York City, in 1986-88.
Simon has been arranging get-acquainted meetings for Giuliani with prominent California conservatives to show them he is not all that liberal and really is a Republican.
We are still under continuous attacks from a Russian spammer here at R4′08. Hopefully, we will have the comments back up? and running very shortly. Thank you for your continued patience.
Thats what blogger Shel over at Naked Conversations insider contact is telling him:
Years ago, I was deeply involved in politics and government, but I’ll save those tales from the crypt for another day. Now, I’m pretty happy that I am far from that maddening crowd. But I spoke to my one good friend who remains very close to the center of it, at least on the Democratic Party side where he rubs elbows with people who consider themselves to be powerful insiders.
He tells me that these Party elite believe that John Edwards will win the Democratic nomination. They believe he has the right message in his “Two Americas.” They think he is primary savvy because of his experiences four years ago. These insiders believe that all Barack Obama is up to is making a dry run, so that he will be in the right position four or eight years from now. They also think Hillary Clinton is already too controversial and will implode long before the democratic nominating convention.
Well, I’m not too sure about the message myself… But I know that an early primary schedule that features Iowa, Nevada, and South Carolina is quite beneficial to the former Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee.
In 1976, President Gerald Ford lost the electoral college, and the presidency, to an interesting southern governor by a few thousand votes in a couple of states. Indeed, had just over 12,000 votes in Ohio and Mississippi been reversed, Ford would have remained president, finally with the imprimatur of the American people. But the midwestern ticket that Ford built — a Michigan/Kansas ticket that reflected the geographic base of the ’70s GOP — just couldn’t herd the requisite cats to attain a majority, especially when faced with the Reaganite insurrection in the west that likely depressed Ford votes in the general, as well as Dubya-style cultural connection between Jimmy Carter and voters south of the Ohio River. The fact that Ford was able to come so close to victory despite being attacked on so many fronts, from pardon to Poland to a historic primary, remains a testament to my home state’s only president, whose characteristically midwestern demeanor will probably ensure that he is forever shortchanged by history.
But what if history had worked out just a tad differently, and Ford had ended up besting Carter in 1976? How would such an occurrence have impacted the past three decades? One likely consequence seems to be the absence of a Reagan presidency. A Ford victory would have put Vice President Dole a heartbeat away from the presidency, and would have given Dole an heir apparent status that may have trumped Reagan’s claim to the throne. Moreover, much of the rationale for Reagan’s candidacy would’ve been squashed had Ford beaten Carter, proving that he and his allies could trump the Democrats and that there was no need for a different kind of Republican.
Taking this alternate timeline a few steps further, by 1980, the country would have experienced a dozen years of GOP rule and would probably have been ready to turn the White House over to the Democrats. It isn’t hard to imagine Dole winning the GOP nomination and losing the general to whichever Democrat the other party decided to put up. Because the Democratic nomination is such a crapshoot, it’s hard to say who this would have ended up being. Considering that Ted Kennedy took on Carter in ‘80, it’s reasonable to suspect the Massachusetts senator would’ve also run in a Carter-free world, and may have been able to steamroll his way to the nomination under such circumstances. In other words, a Ford victory in 1976 could’ve easily led to the Oath of Office being taken by Ted Kennedy instead of Ronald Reagan in January of 1981.
To be sure, I don’t think Kennedy would’ve been president, even under such circumstances. I do think, though, that a Ford win probably would’ve ensured that Reagan never became president and would probably have yielded a 1980s America led by either a moderate-conservative like Bob Dole or a dark horse Democratic governor or senator that has long been dispatched to the history books. Needless to say, I think this would’ve been horrible for the nation. It was Reagan who reversed the trend towards European-style tax rates. It was Reagan who effected a sea change in the way we dealt with Communism, seeking to destroy it rather than co-exist with it. It was Reagan who de-centralized, de-regulated, and who ensured that America remained a shining city on a hill, fueled by individualism and dynamism, instead of retreating into a Western European nanny state mentality.
Given all that, as much as I think President Ford will never be given his due by history, I have to conclude that the 1976 election results were a necessary evil. Without Ford’s loss, there would likely have been no Reagan victory. And a world without Reagan is one that I don’t wish to even begin to contemplate.
Of course, this is all academic at this point. History is what it is, and now both former presidents have slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.
Rest in peace, President Ford.
I have steadfastly refused to publish an American Research Group poll until they included all of the major candidates in their polling. Well, that time has arrived. These results are truly amazing…
American Research Group, 600 Likely Iowa Republican Caucus Goers, Dec 19th-23, 2006:
Rudy Giuliani 29%
John McCain 24%
Newt Gingrich 19%
Chuck Hagel 7%
Mitt Romney 7%
Sam Brownback 1%
Mike Huckabee 1%
George Pataki -
Duncan Hunter -
Tommy Thompson -
Jim Gilmore -
Undecided 12%
Yes, you read that correctly. Rudy Giuliani is up by 5 pts. on John McCain and Mitt Romney is tied with Chuck Hagel (of course, the margin of error is 4 pts.)
American Research Group, 600 Likely Nevada Republican Caucus Goers, Dec. 19th-23, 2006:
Rudy Giuliani 31%
John McCain 25%
Newt Gingrich 22%
Mitt Romney 4%
Sam Brownback -
Jim Gilmore -
Chuck Hagel -
Mike Huckabee -
Duncan Hunter -
George Pataki -
Tommy Thompson -
Undecided 18%
American Research Group, 600 Likely New Hampshire Republican Primary Voters (79% GOP-21% Independent), Dec 19th-23, 2006:
John McCain 29%
Rudy Giuliani 25%
Newt Gingrich 14%
Mitt Romney 9%
Chuck Hagel 2%
George Pataki 2%
Jim Gilmore 1%
Mike Huckabee 1%
Sam Brownback -
Duncan Hunter -
Tommy Thompson -
Undecided 17%
And now for the big one…
American Research Group, 600 Likely South Carolina Republican Primary Voters, Dec.19th-23, 2006:
John McCain 35%
Rudy Giuliani 28%
Newt Gingrich 15%
Mitt Romney 5%
Mike Huckabee 1%
Jim Gilmore -
Chuck Hagel -
Duncan Hunter-
George Pataki -
Tommy Thompson -
Undecided 16%
The margin of error for all of these polls is 4%. So basically we have Rudy ahead of McCain above the margin of error in Iowa and Nevada. Within the margin of error with McCain in New Hampshire, and down by 7% in SC. This is the 3rd poll of likely Iowa Republican Caucus goers that shows Rudy leading in Iowa.
Via Hotline:
Polidata’s Clark Bensen also observes that Florida (currently with 25 seats) is now poised to replace New York (29 seats) as the third most populous state – and that both states might end up with 27-member delegations when the dust settles after reapportionment.
Sixty years ago, no one would have believed that Florida and New York might one day have House delegations of equal size. In the 1940s, the New York delegation was a 45-member congressional powerhouse while Florida was a puny 6-seat weakling. But between 1942 and 2002, Florida gained 19 seats while New York lost 16.
Much of Florida’s surge in congressional clout has been carved directly out of New York’s hide; out-migration from New York to Florida has been a prime contributor to Florida’s growth. The 2000 Census revealed that, between 1995 and 2000 alone, 308,000 people moved from New York to Florida – the largest state-to-state flow in the U.S. At last count, nearly 1.5 million Floridians were born in New York, including five members from Florida’s current House delegation. Two are Democrats born in Queens: Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Robert Wexler. The three Republicans were born outside New York City: Ginny Brown-Waite was born in Albany, John Mica in Binghamton and Dave Weldon in Amityville.
Discount Hillary’s chances of winning Florida at your peril.
Newsweek has perhaps the most interesting account of the Ford Presidency.
Just call him Rudolph the front-running underdog
The oddest thing about the conventional wisdom may be its almost bulletproof imperviousness to the facts. An excellent example of this phenomenon is Arizona Senator John McCain’s oft-trumpeted status as frontrunner for the 2008 Republican nomination. Conversely, the cognoscenti titter at former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani as terminally liberal.
“McCain and Sen. [Hillary] Clinton are the ones to beat for their parties’ nominations,” political analyst Craig Crawford recently wrote. ” While former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was once thought to be a threat to McCain, his star has faded since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. [Massachusetts governor Mitt] Romney now seems to be the early favorite for the anybody-but-McCain vote.”
I appeared on CNBC’s Kudlow & Co. on November 22 with Crawford, NR’s Ramesh Ponnuru, and Tulane University professor Marc Lamont Hill. All three crowned McCain the frontrunner. “In fact,” Professor Hill explained, “if Rudy Giuliani and John McCain are the two finalists, so to speak, then McCain should start writing his acceptance speech right now, because there’s no way Giuliani can win this.”
But wait. Apart from the oft-reverberating echoes of what “everybody knows,” what evidence is there that McCain is the frontrunner? Au contraire, countervailing evidence has piled as high as the Grand Canyon is deep.
A new Quinnipiac University survey is just the latest in an almost unanimous array of polls that shows Giuliani, not McCain, heading the GOP’s 2008 parade.
The November 27 “Feeling Thermometer” from the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute asked 1,623 registered voters to rate the warmth of national leaders from 0 -100. “The higher the number, the warmer or more favorable you feel toward that person, the lower the number, the colder or less favorable.”
Among 20 top American leaders, Rudy Giuliani is rated No. 1 with a “temperature” of 64.2. McCain is third at 57.7. Among other key Republicans, Condoleezza Rice is fourth (56.1), Romney 13th (45.9), President George W. Bush 15th (43.8), and Newt Gingrich is 17th (42).
Among Democrats rated in the overall study (whose error margin is +/- 2.4 percent), Illinois senator Barack Obama is second (58.8). Hillary Clinton is 9th (49), and Massachusetts senator John Kerry, with a chilly 39.6, sails in dead last among the 20 pols Quinnipiac discussed with respondents between November 13 and 19.
Giuliani’s standing among the 490 self-identified Republicans Quinnipiac surveyed is even more compelling. Republicans give Giuliani a very comfortable temperature of 71.7. That puts him just behind Rice (72.3) and Bush (72.1), neither of whom is expected to be on the ballot in 2008. Among those who might run, Giuliani is well ahead of McCain (62.2), Gingrich (58.9), and Romney (52.8). (Error margin for this subset: +/- 4.4 percent).
Most fascinating is Giuliani’s performance among self-professed “White evangelicals/Born-again Christians.” Here again, among 439 of the study’s most socially conservative respondents, Giuliani is at the top of the heap. He scores 66.3, ahead of Rice (64.4), Bush (58.1), McCain (57.1), Gingrich (47.8), and Romney (46.4). (Error margin for these respondents: +/- 4.7 percent.)
For further details, please see this chart I compiled.
In other recent surveys, Giuliani also leads the way.
Pollster Scott Rasmussen found Giuliani with 24 percent to 18 for Rice and 17 for McCain in a November 4 – 7 national survey of 1,050 Republicans and 203-GOP-leaning independents. With Rice excluded and her votes reallocated, “Giuliani would top McCain 32 percent to 22 percent,” Rasmussen told me.
The closest McCain gets to Giuliani in a national poll is in Opinion Research Corporation/CNN’s November 17 – 19 survey of 365 Republican adults. McCain earned 30 percent, but, again, Rudy ranked first with 33 percent. Gingrich and Romney tied at 9 percent. (Error margin: +/- 5 percent.)
In Strategic Vision’s selected state-by-state surveys released November 6, Giuliani outpaced McCain by nine points in Georgia, 19 in Florida and Washington State, 22 in New Jersey, and 23 points in Pennsylvania. Romney rose no higher than third in these states.
McCain only can point to Michigan as a state where he tops Giuliani ‘ specifically 33 percent to 25.
The conventional wisdom further argues that Giuliani benefits from his high name ID in the wake of his universally covered and highly appreciated leadership on September 11. But Giuliani is not outshining a state senator here or a second-term House member there. McCain is widely known from coast to coast, as are Gingrich, Bush, and Rice. Giuliani easily outpolls the former speaker of the House of Representatives and the man who was runner-up for the 2000 GOP presidential nomination. Giuliani tops the current secretary of State and the president of the United States in general “warmth” and comes within 0.6 and 0.4 “degrees” of them in popularity among Republicans.
As for his alleged liberalism, Giuliani, to be sure, will face resistance from Republican primary voters who differ with him on abortion, gay marriage, and gun ownership. While Giuliani’s views on these issues eventually may gravitate to the right, he will address his potential critics with an enormous reservoir of goodwill, as Quinnipiac’s numbers show.
Some have speculated that Giuliani’s numbers will fall once GOP voters across America learn that he favors civil unions, is pro-choice, and has called for greater gun regulations. Perhaps.
But his numbers could hold or even rise once Republicans outside Gotham learn that, as mayor, he cut the local tax burden by 19 percent, jettisoned racial and gender preferences for contracting (during his first month as mayor, no less), hunted deadbeat dads and made them pay their child support, implemented charter schools, promoted “vouchers” (always embracing that word), and hosed down seedy, crime-infested areas such as Times Square. It now is safe, literally, for Mary Poppins ‘ a new Disney musical that opened on 42nd Street, where pornographic films unspooled prior to Giuliani’s tenure.
Can you say, “family values?”
Giuliani also can point to a history of fighting militant Islam all the way back to his service on an anti-terrorism task force in the Ford administration.
Giuliani may secure the 2008 Republican nomination and coast to a Reaganesque landslide that November. Or he could go up in flames in the snows of Iowa and New Hampshire that February. Who knows? It’s too early to say.
What we can say today is that Giuliani currently outruns his rivals for the GOP nomination, even if most of the press corps’ eyes are too welded shut to notice (Ryan Sager and Philip Klein are two notable exceptions). With the polls showing him ahead and the conventional wisdom dismissing his prospects, Rudolph W. Giuliani has achieved the impossible: He’s a front-running underdog.
_________________________________________________________________
This article originally appeared in the National Review Online on November 30th, 2006. It is reprinted here with the author’s permission. Researcher Marco DeSena contributed to this article.
From the NYT:
On Thursday, John Edwards is planning to announce what has been clear to much of the world since the end of the last presidential election: He is running for president in 2008. A similar declaration is expected shortly from Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, followed, in all probability, by Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Barack Obama of Illinois and John McCain of Arizona.
Edwards, who is arguably the most Web-savvy candidate in the ‘08 race to date, is using Thursday’s event to try to gin up his supporters via the Internet. He sent out an e-mail earlier this week, saying he was on the verge of making a decision that his aides say has, in fact, already been made.
The decision of how to time the announcements also reflects the particular needs of the candidates.
For Edwards, there is clearly interest in trying to win attention after two months in which Clinton and Obama dominated the coverage of the Democratic contest. The decision by Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh not to run has left a clear opportunity for Edwards to position himself as the alternative to the other two senators.
Edwards early announcement may be an attempt to try to get take some momentum from Obama. We’ll see how that goes, considering that the MSM has already declared that the Dem nomination has come down to a showdown between Clinton and the Illinois Senator.
Pataki’s history makes him history
This column is designed to drive the final railroad spike into the coffin of George Elmer Pataki’s presidential ambitions.
The Empire State’s drowsy Republican governor drifts off January 1 after 12 years in office. He departs about 11 years too late. Pataki is less than just a politician of breathtaking mediocrity; his lack of competence, charisma, and character composes a sickening trifecta that actually has led some local Republicans to look with hope at Governor-elect Elliot Spitzer, a busybody liberal Democrat.
As the curtain creaks down on Pataki’s seemingly endless Broadway run, it is vital to this Republic’s health that his threatened national roadshow go nowhere.
Five years after 9/11, the former World Trade Center remains an excruciating chasm. “Al-Canyon” is a dual testament to al Qaeda’s urban-redesign skills and Pataki’s lack thereof. As the man responsible for transforming Ground Zero from a five-story-deep national tear duct into a symbol of American renaissance, this site only now is emerging from the post-September-11 dark ages. Pataki’s indecision and dithering delayed concrete from being poured for the Freedom Tower’s foundation until November 18 ‘ five years and nine weeks after Islamo-fascists demolished the Twin Towers.
Pataki’s Pit perfectly symbolizes a governorship darkened by profligacy, debt, patronage, and influence peddling. This black hole must not be allowed to swallow Iowa, New Hampshire, or any other primary state.
Pataki, nevertheless, was in the Granite State recently when he told Fox News’ Carl Cameron:
Republicans don’t get elected by going on spending binges that result in a growth of government spending that is not sustainable and more than the people want. I think we did get away in Washington from those principles that Republicans believe in ‘ limited government, controlling spending, cutting taxes.
How rich. If only Pataki had heeded himself.
To his credit, Pataki initially cut taxes.
“Among his leading first-term accomplishments were his $3 billion, 25 percent income-tax cut and a substantial cut in the capital gains tax and inheritance tax,” states the Cato Institute’s “Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors: 2006.” However, in his second term, Pataki “raised the cigarette tax to $1.50 per pack. He raised taxes on net, by more than $3 billion his final term in office.”
As Pataki’s reign of error ends, New York is No. 50 in the Tax Foundation’s State Business Tax Climate Index. It also has America’s 50th best individual state-tax burden, and is the 47th-best place to pay unemployment insurance.
Under Pataki, the state budget has soared 79.5 percent ‘ from $63.3 billion in 1994 to $113.6 billion in 2006. Pataki’s 12-year-average annual spending rate is 4.9 percent.
“Pataki’s budgets grew by almost twice as much as inflation,” says Cato Institute fiscal analyst Stephen Slivinski. In Pataki’s third term, this spending pace zoomed to 8.3 percent. In Cato’s latest gubernatorial report card, Pataki’s financial mismanagement earned him a D.
Pataki has borrowed like a pawnshop patron. He has deepened state-funded debt by 61.3 percent ‘ from $31 billion in 1994 to $50 billion today.
Public-health costs are yet another fiasco. Pataki currently stars in local TV commercials in which he encourages people to apply for Child Health Plus (CHP), a state Medicaid program. Such ads, in which Pataki has appeared since 2002, have worked. Even as just-released Census estimates show New York’s population grew just 0.72 percent between July 1, 2002 and July 1, 2006 (from 19,167,600 to 19,306,183), state Medicaid enrollees accelerated 18.3 percent (from 3,568,627 in June 2002 to 4,222,748 in June 2006). Participants in Family Health Plus, another Medicaid subsidy, rocketed from 2,864 in January 2002 to 563,100 last January ‘ a 19,561 percent ascent. Medicaid is swallowing the state budget like a killer whale devouring a walrus. And yet Pataki’s ads stimulate that whale’s appetite.
Pataki has transformed Medicaid from low-income health care into a recipe for middle-class welfare dependency. Former Democratic Governor Mario Cuomo inaugurated CHP in 1992. A family of four in 1998 could make no more than $35,631 for its kids to qualify. Under Pataki, that ceiling has risen 40.3 percent since then, to $50,000 today.
Even worse, recent estimates show that perhaps 40 percent of New York’s $46.6 billion Medicaid budget (up 93.4 percent from $24.1 billion in 1994) funds questionable and fraudulent claims. This $18.6 billion deadweight loss previously has subsidized such worthies as a Brooklyn dentist who, on one day in 2003, charged Medicaid for 991 procedures. Such news makes Pataki yawn.
Greater insistence on Medicaid’s integrity might have made Pataki collide into his pal, Dennis Rivera, a board member of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition and president of United Healthcare Workers East, Local 1199. This 285,000-member union backed Pataki in 2002. In exchange, Pataki gave Rivera’s then-200,000 New York-State-based members a three-year, $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded pay hike. (Local 1199 has 250,000 NYS-based members today, in addition to workers it represents in Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C.)
Pataki’s pay-to-play apparatus is like an old Automat restaurant: cash in, goodies out. In one egregious example, attorney general Spitzer found that, in 2001, the New York State Canal Corporation gave Richard A. Hutchens information that helped him score a non-competitive bid to construct $21.7 million in housing along the Erie Canal. These rights cost him just $30,000 ‘ a potential 72,233 percent return on investment. As it happens, Hutchens gave Pataki’s campaign $8,000. “Everybody makes a political contribution for a purpose,” Hutchens told investigators.
“George Pataki turned the New York GOP into a machine devoted exclusively to the empowerment and enrichment of his coterie,” the New York Post’s Eric Fettman observed. “There’s nothing left that even resembles a genuine infrastructure capable of recruiting candidates with strong statewide appeal.” As Fettman predicted last February 21, this “leaves the party facing likely statewide disaster.”
November 7 indeed was a disaster for the Empire State GOP. This, however, was no surprise. Terrified of being upstaged by potential candidates with actual talent, Pataki instead has boosted hacks, losers, and also-rans.
In 2004, Pataki’s pick ‘ invisible state assemblyman Howard Mills ‘ vanished anew after winning a state-record-low 24 percent against Democratic senator Charles Schumer. This year, Pataki short-circuited a promising U.S. Senate challenge by conservative Manhattan attorney Ed Cox in favor of Westchester prosecutor Jeanine Pirro. She stumbled, switched races, and then garnered just 40 percent against attorney-general-elect Andrew Cuomo. With Cox on blocks, former Yonkers mayor John Spencer captured 31 percent against Democratic senator Hillary Clinton. Such horribly squandered opportunities have denuded Albany of statewide GOP officials. Beyond Michael Bloomberg, the Big Apple’s nominally Republican mayor, elephants approach extinction here, thanks to Pataki’s pachydermocidal “party-building.”
As former Republican National Committeewoman Georgette Mosbacher told the Post’s Fred Dicker: “Our New York party leaders have tried to be everything to everybody, and what’s now happened to us is that we’ve become nothing to everyone.”
Despite all this, Republicans across America have told me, “Rudy Giuliani’s a big liberal, but at least Pataki’s a conservative.” After dropping my drink, I patiently explain that this inverts reality. While Pataki built government like a carpenter on steroids, Giuliani curbed Gotham’s tax burden by $8 billion or 19 percent; cut real, year-on-year outlays in two of his eight budgets; and, by Cato’s calculations, kept annual average spending at 2.9 percent vs. Pataki’s 5.9 percent his last eight years. (Giuliani maintained outlays below his tenure’s 3.6 percent inflation rate.) Giuliani’s production, not Pataki’s, deserves a coast-to-coast tour.
So far, Pataki cannot impress even his neighbors. According to an October 1 Strategic Vision poll, 50 percent of New Jersey Republicans favor Giuliani for president while only 1 percent want Pataki in the White House. What a humiliating performance for the governor of a contiguous state whose citizens have been bathed for 12 years in commercials and news stories on Pataki, courtesy of New York’s media.
“Pataki is prepared to give the nation what he gave New York: out-of-control spending, corruption, political favoritism, and neglect,” warns Hudson Institute president Herbert London, a veteran Gotham conservative activist. “To suggest that the last 12 years of his leadership were a failure would be a grotesque understatement. Pataki is an anchor around the ship of state, drowning residents in debt and special favors.”
Drowning, indeed. George Elmer Pataki’s presidential dreams merit a pair of cement shoes and a non-stop trip to the bed of the Hudson River.
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This article originally appeared in the National Review Online on December 22nd, 2006. It is reprinted here with the author’s permission
Another day, another critical article on Gov. Romney from The Boston Globe. Here’s a snippet from their Christmas Day piece:
Gov. Mitt Romney, who is preparing for a possible run for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, has spent all or part of 212 days outside Massachusetts in 2006, according to the Boston Sunday Globe.
Romney plans to spend the rest of the year vacationing with his family in Utah, putting him on track to be away from Massachusetts for all or part of 219 days this year.
Since announcing he would not seek re-election a year ago, Romney has traveled to 35 states and eight countries — and been out of the state an average of more than four days each week, according to The Globe, which reviewed his public schedules.
In October, for example, he spent six full days and four partial days in Massachusetts, his schedules show. Starting Nov. 28, he was gone for 19 of 20 days.
New Hampshire, home to the first presidential primary contest and Romney’s summer home, is one of the states he visited more than 10 times in 2005.
Romney, who is expected to announce his presidential intentions early next month, spent most trips working as the chairman of the Republican Governors Association, raising money for his Commonwealth PAC or testing the waters for a presidential bid, the newspaper found.
Among other trips, Romney attended the elevation of Cardinal Sean O’Malley in Rome and made visits to troops and officials in Iraq and Afghanistan and a detention center at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He recently returned from a trip to Japan, Korea and China, which he paid for himself.
“Gov. Romney is a national leader in the Republican Party. He was increasingly called upon to help candidates from his party, and he took a leadership role in the Republican Governors Association,” said Eric Fehrnstrom, the governor’s communications director, in defending Romney’s absences.
Romney’s State Police security detail accompanies him out of state. Fehrnstrom said he did not know the cost, but the charge to the state was “minimized.”
And from today’s edition, “Voters voice regard, regret over Romney“, which begins with a few nice paragraphs before devolving into 2 1/2 pages of “missed opportiunities”. Here’s all you need to read to get the jist of it:
…interviews with more than three dozen voters last week most strikingly revealed a wistfulness among those who voted for the governor and even those who did not. Many saw huge potential in Romney, a smart business executive with few connections to the clannish Massachusetts establishment, when he took office four years ago. Looking back, they wondered what he might have accomplished, had his ambition to run for president not overshadowed his term as governor.
I wonder if The Boston?Globe?realizes the service they are performing for Gov. Romney? After all, nothing gives a GOP candidate for president “street cred” like?being the subject of attacks from one of the most liberal newspapers in the country.
Server issues are currently?preventing comments from being displayed. I have notified our webmaster, so?hopefully things will be returning to normal shortly. Thank you for your patience. ?
Update: Apparently we are under a massive spam attack originating out of Russia. Hopefully commenting will be back online soon.
Rudy’s strong polling numbers show no signs of relenting. Via Rasmussen 
?
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) continues to hold a narrow lead over Senator Hillary Clinton (D) and former Vice President Al Gore (D) in early Election 2008 polling.
Giuliani leads Clinton 47% to 43% in the latest poll. That’s very similar to the 48% to 43% lead he enjoyed in late November. When matched against Gore, Giuliani now leads 46% to 43%. In November, he also enjoyed a three-point lead over the Democrats’ Election 2000 candidate.
Against either Democrat, Giuliani leads among men but trails among women. The two Democrats lead among voters under 30, but trail among other age groups.
Gore is now viewed favorably by 50% of Americans and unfavorably by 49%. That’s a bit better than in earlier surveys. For Clinton, the numbers are now 48% favorable and 50% unfavorable, a bit weaker than the last time we checked.
Neither Democrat comes close to Giuliani on the favorability scale. The man sometimes known as #quot;America’s Mayor#quot; is viewed favorably by seven out of ten Americans (71%).
Giuliani also does well in Republican primary polling. In fact, he is the top candidate in the early going. John McCain is second. McCain also leads Clinton and Gore in Election 2008 match-ups. In fact, Giuliani and McCain are ahead in every match-up no matter what Democrat we mention.
On the Democratic side, Clinton is the clear frontrunner. Gore has not made it clear whether he intends to run.
Giuliani’s in a good position this November
With his exploratory committee now prospecting for 2008, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani leads the pack of GOP White House hopefuls. His standing atop numerous polls remains unchallenged. Also, his recent endorsement by some former critics suggests that social conservatives who explore his record might embrace him as president of the United States.
Surveys consistently demonstrate that Giuliani, not Arizona Senator John McCain, is this race’s frontrunner. It’s not even close.
In a nationwide Rasmussen Reports survey of 1,050 Republicans and 203 GOP-leaning independents, 24 percent backed Giuliani while 18 percent chose Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. McCain, at 17 percent, lags behind Rice, a declared non-candidate.
“If we assume Rice is not running and allocate her votes,” says pollster Scott Rasmussen, “Giuliani would top McCain 32 percent to 22 percent in the November 4 – 7 study.”
Among likely Republican voters polled in Michigan, McCain beat Giuliani 33 percent to 25. Rudy romped elsewhere in Strategic Vision’s November 6 survey. Giuliani outran McCain by nine points in Georgia (33 percent to 24); 19 in Florida (46 percent to 27) and Washington State (42 percent to 23); 22 in New Jersey (47 percent to 25); and 23 points in Pennsylvania (47 percent to 24). Governor Mitt Romney (R., Mass.) scored, at best, a distant third in these states.
A Clemson University poll of South Carolina Republicans and GOP-leaners revealed Giuliani’s enormous 68 percent net-favorable rating (78 percent favorable minus 10 percent unfavorable). McCain’s equivalent figure was just 42 percent (65 favorable, less 23 percent unfavorable).
These figures don’t surprise Rasmussen.
“Giuliani has the highest net-favorable ratings of any candidate on whom we’ve been polling,” he tells me. “Giuliani’s higher than McCain and higher than Hillary Clinton. He’s even higher than Bill Clinton.”
Some argue that Giuliani’s prominence in this and other polls merely reflects his high name ID. But this notion shatters beside McCain and both Clintons ‘ three household names.
Despite all this, Giuliani had limited impact on Election Day. Among Senate candidates Giuliani assisted, 32 percent won, the New York Post reports, as did 38 percent of his House endorsees. While these are not huge numbers, few Republicans enjoyed huge numbers November 7.
Still, GOP voters should appreciate Giuliani’s tireless campaigning. At rallies, press conferences, and both individual and party fundraisers, he stumped with Republicans in 25 states this year and, The New York Daily News reports, donated $1.2 million to 55 candidates. Except for November 1, Giuliani was on the hustings daily from October 30 through November 7 and did 30 events for state-legislative, gubernatorial, and congressional nominees.
Giuliani’s message was GOP meat and potatoes.
“Republicans are united by our belief in going on offense to win the war on terror,” he wrote in a November 5 Real Clear Politics column. “Republicans stand for lower taxes; Democrats stand for higher taxes ‘ it’s as simple as that,” he added. “The successful appointments of Justices Roberts and Alito are signs of promises kept,” Giuliani observed. “They are principled individuals who can be trusted to defend the original intent of the Constitution rather than trying to legislate their own political beliefs from the bench.” And, as Giuliani concluded, “the issues that unite us as Republicans are the same issues that unite the vast majority of Americans: a commitment to winning the war on terror; a core belief in fiscal conservatism; and a faith in individual freedom. Advancing these principles, while staying on offense, can help keep the GOP a strong majority party.”
Alas, most incumbents and challengers Giuliani supported drowned in the Democratic tsunami. But other Republicans he championed swam to safety, such as South Carolina governor Mark Sanford and Arizona senator Jon Kyl.
SayNoToRudy.Org’s online retreat also impresses. As the Ohio-based website’s self-described, social-conservative organizers stated November 5: “We sought to do everything legally possible to prevent [Giuliani] from becoming the Republican presidential nominee. Unexpectedly, as we began to see more and more of who Mr. Giuliani really is, we found that Mr. Giuliani is truly a committed Republican and an accomplished conservative on many issues. Therefore, the creators of this organization, with much humility and apology, beyond all probability, hereby announce that we are willing to endorse Mr. Giuliani for the Presidency in 2008.” Cincinnati prosecutor Steve Giudicci says by phone that he launched SayNoToRudy.Org late last summer, along with a few dozen fellow grassroots conservative activists, mainly in Ohio.
“I am about as socially conservative as you can get ‘ on everything from abortion, to gun rights, to smaller government, and less taxes. You name it,” he says. The website offered T-shirts, refrigerator magnets, wall clocks, boxer shorts, and other items with a logo featuring “Giuliani 08″ and a circle and red line running through it. “Nominate a REAL Conservative,” the merchandise demanded.
But the more Giudicci and his colleagues learned about Giuliani, the more they realized they had misunderestimated him.
“We were researching Mr. Giuliani and some of his speeches and writings,” Giudicci says. “The turning point was when we read a book by Fred Siegel called The Prince of the City. That’s when we started to realize there was more to Mr. Giuliani than we initially anticipated. We felt he was a really accomplished conservative and committed Republican. It raised our level of respect for him, and opened our eyes.”
Giudicci saw Giuliani speak at a New Hampshire campaign stop on November 3 and was sold. The former Rudy foe is now a Rudy fan who hopes to swing more grassroots activists his way.
“If a President Giuliani meant the same thing as Mayor Giuliani ‘ namely innovative and competent leadership, less government, lower taxes, a strict-constructionist judiciary, and bad guys brought to justice ‘ then I’m all for it.”
Despite widespread misinformation about how “liberal” Giuliani is, this group’s 180-degree reversal shows what can happen when conservatives actually scrutinize Giuliani’s entire performance. Giuliani chopped overall crime 57 percent, slashed homicide 65 percent, graduated 649,895 New Yorkers (58.4 percent of relief recipients) from welfare to work, curbed or abolished 23 taxes, sliced the tax burden by $8 billion or 18.9 percent of personal income, halted racial and gender quotas in contracting, delivered 25,637 children from foster care to adoption, privatized some 23,000 apartments from bureaucratic control to individual and family ownership, and financed charter schools while fighting for vouchers. Some liberal.
Yes, America’s Mayor must comfort GOP primary voters on abortion, gays, and guns. He might do this by advocating parental consent for minors who have abortions, and opposing partial-birth abortion and subsidized embryonic-stem-cell research. (Can’t drug companies fund this ‘ or, better yet, adult-stem-cell research?) He could outline his longtime opposition to gay marriage and promise to nominate constitutionalist judges who respect the Second Amendment. If Rudy Giuliani did this, his Reaganesque approach to nearly every other issue ‘ plus his tough leadership, counterterrorism credentials, and communications prowess ‘ could make him irresistible in 2008.
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This article originally appeared in the National Review Online on November 21st, 2006. It is reprinted here with the author’s permission.
South Carolina native Gamecock, just north of the border in Charlotte, can’t see it from here, but?Award winning conservative journalist Joel Mowbray, who?worked for South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford when he was a US Representative sees a possible groundswell demand for a true conservative in the GOP Race 4 2008. He?wrote the below article this week in Real Clear Politics.
Mark Sanford: The Right Man for 2008?
With the implosion of George Allen, movement conservatives no longer have a candidate in the presidential mix that looks and acts like one of them. Even though the field contains several heavy hitters, such as John McCain and Rudy Giuliani, the GOP grassroots has no one that is a natural fit.
If a small but growing number of conservatives have their way, however, a candidate that could truly excite the base might enter the fray: my old boss and current South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.
Sanford hasn’t even hinted that he’s interested in running for 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., but that hasn’t stopped activists and contributors from prodding him. Should he run, he would face very long odds. Then again, long odds are all he’s ever known. In a seven-way 2002 primary, he beat three statewide-elected officials and then cruised to a fairly easy victory over incumbent Democratic Gov. Jim Hodges. Going back even further, he emerged from complete obscurity to top a six-way Congressional primary in 1994.
In spite of open opposition from some in the Republican establishment, Sanford won handily, 55-45-the largest margin for any South Carolina gubernatorial or Senate candidate in 16 years. To celebrate defying the GOP old guard and winning, Sanford is about to fight fellow Republicans-again-for more tax cuts.
That this is par for his course is exactly why conservatives, from inside the beltway and out, have been pleading with Sanford to think of the White House-and why his message could resonate with voters.
Read the whole story.?
“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson
The intellectual dishonesty that permeates much of the Left in regards to prejudice and bigotry is on full display in Jacob Weisberg’s piece, “Romney’s Religion: A Mormon President? No Way.”
Like many bigots, Weisburg ham-handedly assures us that, of course, he is not prejudiced:
Someone who refuses to consider voting for a woman as president is rightly deemed a sexist. Someone who’d never vote for a black person is a racist.
Ok Jacob… We understand that you are an acceptably tolerant, enlightened liberal who is not afraid to call out prejudice for what it is.
How to explain this then?
Objecting to someone because of his religious beliefs is not the same thing as prejudice based on religious heritage, race, or gender.
Really? Because I’m fairly certain that stating that you would not vote for a candidate solely because he is a member of one of the world’s major religions that you happen to personally dislike is the very definition of prejudice.
Weisburg describes Gov. Romney as a, “successful businessman, Olympic organizer, and governor…”, but admits that, “I wouldn’t vote for someone who truly believed in the founding whoppers of Mormonism.” He further rationalizes his bigotry by stating, “Nor is it chauvinistic to say that certain religious views should be deal breakers in and of themselves. There are millions of religious Americans who would never vote for an atheist for president, because they believe that faith is necessary to lead the country. Others, myself included, would not, under most imaginable circumstances, vote for a fanatic or fundamentalist’a Hassidic Jew…, a Christian literalist who thinks that the Earth is less than 7,000 years old, or a Scientologist who thinks it is haunted by the souls of space aliens sent by the evil lord Xenu. Such views are disqualifying because they’re dogmatic, irrational, and absurd. By holding them, someone indicates a basic failure to think for himself or see the world as it is.”
Weisberg’s truly sad admission is yet another example of the “good for me, not for thee” hypocrisy of the American Left; where conservatives and libertarians are shouted down as white-sheet wearing bigots for questioning the effectiveness of Affirmative Action and excessive spending on social programs, while liberals get a free pass on the most outrageous statements of personal prejudice.
Yesterday, Kavon linked to the most recent Iowa poll conducted by Research 2000 and KCCI. It has many surprising elements to it, particularly on the Democratic side. Obama is tied for first with Edwards at 22% and Hillary is down at a mere 10%. On the Republican side though, the numbers correspond to most of the recent national polls we’ve seen in the past few months. McCain and Giuliani are dueling it out for 1st in the high 20’s and Romney continues to hover around 10% or so. The fact that Romney has a better organization than McCain in the state and particularly lived there during the 2006 campaign, I don’t understand how Romney’s numbers are barely moving at all. At the same time, given that McCain not only skipped the Iowa caucuses in 2000 but he also isn’t shy about his opposition to ethanol subsidies, the fact that he is leading the pack is quite surprising. McCain and Romney have the best organizations in Iowa and we all know that in the caucuses a strong organization helps you win. Which brings me to Rudy Giuliani.
Even with all of his recent staff moves, I have remained somewhat doubtful that he was really going to mount a serious run for the Presidency. According to Republius, Rudy plans to give the keynote speech at New Hampshire State Republican Committee next month and he has secured the services of ace RNC operative Mike DuHaime. DuHaime ran much of Bush’s 04 Northeast operation and I highly doubt he would’ve signed with Rudy if he wasn’t going to seriously run. Rudy will be up in New Hampshire and will undoubtedly try to get more endorsements and staff. This led me to think that while Rudy might be running, he has no organization in Iowa at all. Iowa and South Carolina are the most conservative primaries in the country and perhaps Rudy doesn’t think he has a chance to win the state. If he focuses his strength on New Hampshire, he could have a good shot. NH is traditionally the prime ground of insurgent candidates. This would more or less be the McCain 2000 strategy and we all know how well that worked out.
There are several problems here, though. Rudy is polling better in Iowa than he is in New Hampshire. Rudy has near universal name recognition but NH is McCain country. He’s been a good 10-15 points ahead of his closest competition (Rudy) for going on 2 years now. Also, since NH is right next to Massachusetts, almost everyone there knows who Romney is too. It’s certainly possible (even probable) that Rudy will begin to put together an organization in Iowa early next year, but the longer he waits the more people that McCain and Romney will snatch up. I heard from a friend that is connected to the Iowa GOP that a lot of people would be interested in joining a Giuliani campaign but he’s done no outreach in the state and most people are signing with McCain, Romney, Brownback, even Gilmore. The Caucus Cooler blog even speculated that Rudy had talked to McCain and Romney about “joining forces” whatever that means. [UPDATE: CC meant that Steve Scheffler, head of the Iowa Christian Alliance was talking about joining with McCain or Romney and not Rudy. Sorry about that.] One thing’s for sure, Rudy is running a very unorthodox campaign with huge risks.
His 9/11 legacy and 2008 prospects?
America’s still-vivid memories of that miserable morning five Septembers ago may be brightened by recollections of former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani’s focused, confident performance on 9/11. The ongoing goodwill his leadership generated may explain why he outpaces his potential rivals for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.
Recent polls show Giuliani waxing on the right, regardless of any misgivings conservative GOP voters may have with him on abortion, gay rights, or gun control.
Among 432 registered Republicans and pro-GOP independents who CNN and Opinion Research Corp. surveyed from August 30 to September 2, 31 percent favored Giuliani for the nomination, while 20 percent backed Sen. John McCain. (Error margin: +/- 5 percent.)
Of the 6,926 participants thus far in an ongoing Internet survey for the very conservative FreeRepublic.com, 45.1 percent endorsed Giuliani, 28.3 percent backed Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and only 5.3 percent picked McCain.
An August 14–15 Victory Enterprises poll found 30 percent of Iowa Republicans for Giuliani, while 17.3 percent wanted McCain (+/- 4.9 percent). Among these 400 likely caucus voters, 70 percent called themselves pro-life.
Strategic Vision’s August polls of Republican voters discovered these results – Washington State: Giuliani 40 percent, McCain 28; Florida: Giuliani 42 percent, McCain 28; Pennsylvania: Giuliani 44 percent, McCain 24 percent.
In a July 31 through August 3 survey of 623 New York state registered voters, the Siena Research Institute saw McCain beat Hillary Rodham Clinton in New York state by 46–42 percent (+/- 3.9 percent). Giuliani, however, would stomp Clinton even harder, 48–42 percent, and capture the Empire State’s 31 electoral votes.
In a world where Islamofascists plot to use baby-formula bottles to blow up tourist-filled jets, GOP voters understand how vital it is to assign someone tough and talented to confront this life-and-death challenge. Giuliani looks like that man.
Giuliani’s formidable stature seems to make liberals nervous. Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins, authors of Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11, have attempted to rain fresh rubble on Rudy. While they praise Giuliani for his on-camera comments that day, they mainly criticize him for what else they believe he should have done then and, indeed, throughout his mayoralty to cope with such a major terrorist attack.Barrett and Collins are a two-man Hubble Telescope of hindsight. Yes, in retrospect, the Emergency Operations Center might have survived were it not situated at 7 World Trade Center, where it went unused that morning and then collapsed along with the entire building at 5:20 P.M. Besides, as Vincent J. Cannato recalls in his September 3 Washington Post review of this book, Barrett never embraced this “bunker in the sky.” In 2000, he called it “a symbol of Giuliani’s weakness for gadgetry, secrecy, and militarist overkill.”
These authors complain that Giuliani and his top aides kept moving around on September 11. Let’s see: Giuliani’s advisors considered 7 WTC too dangerous, as was the fire department’s impromptu command post at Vesey and West streets. The next stop, a basement at 75 Barclay Street, became uninhabitable after Lower Manhattan choked in dust and smoke. After phoning in a reassuring radio message to New Yorkers from a Houston Street firehouse, Giuliani finally settled in at the Police Academy on East 20th Street in Gramercy Park. Giuliani had little choice but to stay mobile that morning.
Barrett and Collins chide the Office of Emergency Management for not conducting a drill involving a major skyscraper fire. Yes, OEM should have. However, it stayed busy rehearsing for chemical-weapons attacks, securing Times Square’s millennium celebrations (a feared terror target), and guarding against immediate threats, such as a West Nile virus outbreak.
Could New York have prepared for and responded even better to 9/11? Naturally. Still, Giuliani and city employees helped some 15,000 WTC inhabitants flee to safety. While President Bush understandably remained a moving target, Giuliani restored city government, then calmly and firmly reassured Americans and the world that we had endured a serious blow, but bounced back up off the mat.
While Giuliani’s critics try to paint him as someone who first leapt on the antiterror bandwagon on 9/11, he actually has fought Islamofascists since the mid-1970s.
Barrett and Collins blow it big time when they write: “Giuliani had behaved from the outset of his mayoralty as if the 1993 [WTC] bombing had never happened.” In fact, just moments after becoming mayor, Giuliani said in his first inaugural address on January 2, 1994: “Your strength was demonstrated within sight of this place, last year, at the World Trade Center . . . those who work for our city are the most professional and best in the nation.” He praised New Yorkers, in and out of government, for emerging from that terrorist assault, and argued that Gothamites could accomplish great things under pressure.
As mayor, Giuliani had then-PLO leader Yasser Arafat ejected from an October 1995 Lincoln Center concert to which he was not invited. “Maybe we should wake people up to the way this terrorist is being romanticized,” Giuliani said. While a U.S. attorney under President Reagan, Giuliani investigated the 1985 PLO hijacking of the luxury liner Achille Lauro. Four terrorists fired on and wounded ship passengers and fatally shot Leon Klinghoffer, a wheelchair-bound retired New Yorker who was selected for being Jewish.
As President Gerald Ford’s associate deputy attorney general, Giuliani was a member of the Cabinet Committee to Combat Terrorism. According to a declassified June 10, 1976, State Department memorandum, this panel addressed the “increased danger of major terrorist attacks in the US requiring urgent preventive and preparatory action.” Among other things, this memo reveals that, at a meeting that May 27, “Mr. Giuliani said that it would be important to have the USG [U.S. government] respond to press queries during an IT [international terrorist] incident with a single voice. He suggested that a model plan be worked out.”
As Barrett and Collins aim their lances at Giuliani’s post-9/11 armor, they largely miss what GOP primary voters clearly see: a dedicated and relentless patriot who has been fighting terrorists for 30 years. Facing an unprecedented crisis, Giuliani stayed remarkably cool, maintained order, and helped evacuate the financial district’s dangerous streets. “Just keep going north,” he told those still in Lower Manhattan.
To amplify his enduring post-9/11 reputation, Giuliani should educate Republicans on his Reaganesque tax-reducing, budget-restraining, crime-cutting mayoral record. Somehow, Giuliani also needs to make peace with pro-life and Second Amendment activists. But for now, “America’s Mayor” – previously caricatured as “too liberal for the nomination” – looks like 2008’s Republican to beat.
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This article originally appeared in the National Review Online on September 12th, 2006. It is reprinted here with the author’s permission.
From Gallup:
Even though Giuliani is closely matched with McCain among Republicans, he easily outdistances all Republican and Democratic contenders in terms of his overall favorability ratings, according to a review of recent Gallup Poll data.
Seventy-seven percent of Americans have a favorable view of Giuliani. The next-most-positively rated possible contender is Rice, who received a 61% favorable rating in August, when Americans were last asked about her. Edwards, McCain, and Clinton all reside north of the 50% mark, although Clinton’s unfavorables are roughly twice those of Edwards and McCain.
Hillary Clinton is clearly the most polarizing candidate — 86% of Democrats view her favorably, compared with just 13% of Republicans. Democrats do not view Edwards and Obama as positively as they view Clinton, but Republicans view the two more positively than Clinton. A majority of Republicans, Democrats, and independents have favorable opinions of both McCain and Giuliani.
The Gallup poll?also shows Rudy and McCain tied at 28% among Republicans in the race for the GOP nomination.
A few days ago it was reported that Mayor Rudy Giuliani will be giving the keynote address at the important and highly visible California Republican Party semi-annual meeting in Sacramento on February 10.
In addition, it is now being reported by the Manchester (NH) Union Leader and others that Mayor Giuliani will also be addressing the New Hampshire State Republican Committee at their annual meeting on January 27 in Manchester. Of course New Hampshire will conduct the first presidential primary in the nation in January of 2008.
The fact that these important state GOP organizations are asking?Mayor Giuliani?to speak to them at their 2007 annual meetings reflects well on the interest in his potential presidential candidacy at the Republican grassroots level. It is also obviously a tremendous opportunity for Mayor Giuliani to sell his candidacy to crucial activists and geographic regions at such high profile events.
While it has been evident that Senator John McCain and Governor?Mitt Romney have the deepest campaign organizations?and the most aggregate senior staff talent to date, the nascent Mayor Giuliani campaign is clearly doing a great job in scheduling their candidate (which is more about proactively getting your boss booked strategically than merely responding to invitations passively, as those who have done this kind of political work know).
First off, let me thank Kavon for giving me a chance to write for this wonderful site. I like to think of Race for 2008 as a microcosm of sorts of the Republican Party in general. We each have our preferred candidates and political outlooks, but we all share the common goal of seeing Republican control of the White House extended in the post-Bush era.
While winning the 2008 election is vital, it’s important that we win with a candidate that will actually advance conservative ideals while in office. In 2004, the Democrats nominated John Kerry for the sole reason that he was deemed “electable” which as we all know proved to be a disaster as Kerry was revealed to everyone as a truly atrocious politician. But the lesson was that the Democrats were so desperate to regain the White House that they were willing to nominate someone that didn’t reflect the liberal views of their base. Republicans endured a rout in the 2006 elections and the national mood heading into the 2008 elections will be worse than it is now. The “electability” argument will weigh heavily on Republican primary voters, but it must be combined with someone who will advance our cause at the same time. I think that John McCain is the person who can achieve that. McCain has, as Larry Kudlow said, “Courage. Principle. Leadership.” That’s exactly what we need in a Commander-in-chief nowadays.
Governor Mitt Romney will file paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to establish a 2008 presidential campaign around January 2, 2007?and formally announce his intention to run for the office the following week according to a top adviser who spoke to Glen Johnson of the Associated Press.
While Romney undoubtedly will make a strong candidate based on his private and public sector experience, campaign organization, and ability to raise funds, he is being challenged recently by concerns that his views on abortion and gay rights have changed significantly since running for the United States Senate in 1994. The question?surrounding Governor Romney will be can he convince voters and the media that his new policy positions in these two areas are a result of conviction rather than political expediency in order to put the controversy behind him and allow him to campaign on his own platform?
