Interesting article on Giuliani

[Tiger Al 0]

American Rudy: Hot Dog Wants to Be Corn Dog

Rudy Giuliani now comes in a new package. Social conservatives still aren’t buying it.

“It’s a sleight of hand,” said Bob Barr, a former Georgia Congressman and champion of small government. “On issues that I consider extremely important to conservatives, such as respect for the Second Amendment, he is nowhere near even remotely in the ballpark of a conservative philosophy.”

The famously resolute, plain-spoken and uncompromising former Mayor has unveiled new shades of nuance to go along with his historically liberal positions on abortion, gun control and gay marriage, which pose the major obstacles to his pursuit of the Republican nomination for President in 2008.

But as he inches up to an official declaration of his candidacy—he’ll be campaigning among Southern primary voters in South Carolina on Wednesday—Mr. Giuliani has his work cut out for him. This is, after all, the thrice-married Mayor who once lived with a gay couple, who supported the Brady bill and who once said of abortion, “I’d give my daughter money for it.”

The trick is that Mr. Giuliani’s newly articulated, conservative-sounding positions have been carefully calibrated to appeal to a conservative base without definitively contradicting any of his past statements, which would run the risk of undercutting his iconic image as the unwavering leader of Sept. 11.

The result has been a somewhat dizzying dose of coded talk and footnoted arguments from Mr. Giuliani and his political surrogates.

On Feb. 14, Mr. Giuliani conceded to Larry King on CNN, “I am pro-choice, yes,” but he quickly added that he would only appoint strict constructionist judges to the federal courts.

His campaign invited national reporters onto a conference call earlier this month with Representative Candice S. Miller of Michigan, who, despite Mr. Giuliani’s strong record on gun control as Mayor, said he assured her that “he is a very strong supporter of the Second Amendment.”

Mr. Giuliani, who signed something called the Domestic Partnership Law when he was Mayor, now stresses the notion that marriage is sacred and should be between a man and a woman.

“I have watched this process,” said Dick Armey, the former House Majority Leader and a principal author of the “Contract with America” that helped bring about the 1994 Republican revolution. “He is somewhat artfully juxtaposing one small-government conservative value against the other.”

In a Republican field without a conservative champion who is both viable and impeccably credentialed, Mr. Giuliani is betting that primary voters will be willing to endure his complicated explanations.

“In politics, you’ve got to go with what you have. It’s the only hand they could play on this one,” said Charles W. Dunn, dean of the Robertson School of Government at Regent University, a school founded by the Christian conservative Pat Robertson, where Mr. Giuliani is scheduled to give a speech in April. “It could be a successful hand.”

So far, at least, it seems to be paying off. A Fox News poll of 900 registered voters released last week showed Mr. Giuliani crushing Mr. McCain, 56 percent to 31 percent, among Republicans. Forty-two percent of the Republican respondents were aware that Mr. Giuliani was pro-choice.

Some of Mr. Giuliani’s supporters argue that he might not even need social conservatives to win the nomination in 2008.

“The hard-right conservatives are a very small percentage of the electorate today,” said Barron Thomas, a Giuliani supporter and former “Pioneer” fund-raiser for George W. Bush.

Either way, Mr. Giuliani’s campaign firmly rejects the notion that he had shifted in any way to appeal to conservatives. If the Mayor is giving new answers, the argument goes, it’s simply because no one ever asked him the right questions.

“You now have to talk about things in a larger scale than you did in the past, because when asked these questions in the past, he was Mayor, and he couldn’t affect certain things,” said Anthony Carbonetti, a senior advisor to Mr. Giuliani. “He’s explaining more fully what he has always thought, but now they are relevant to the position he is seeking.”

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LINK

[AURaptor 1,126]

Still a better choice than any Democrat.

[Guest Tigrinum Major]

That's it, Raptor. Keep that party line.

That's the attitude that has us where we are today. Until we get a viable third party, we are doomed to have to choose between a conservative in every way except fiscal matters and a bleeding heart liberal.

Both parties are getting farther and farther away from the mainstream.

Bill Nichols would puke at the sight of the Democractic Party today. And Ronald Reagan probably would throw up in his mouth a little at the sight of the GOP.

[MDM4AU 336]

American Rudy: Hot Dog Wants to Be Corn Dog

So he wants to be an LSU fan?