I don’t know which party Giuliani thinks he’s in, but…

July 10, 2006

For every step [tag]Rudy Giuliani[/tag] takes towards a [tag]2008[/tag] presidential [tag]campaign[/tag], there’s been a nagging concern that he couldn’t possibly go through with it. Sure, he’s leading in several early [tag]polls[/tag] thanks to high name recognition and a 9/11 halo, but Giuliani is to the left of his party on, well, almost everything.

And yet, according to Bob Novak, [tag]Giuliani[/tag] is undeterred.

Well-connected public figures report that they have been told recently by Rudolph Giuliani that, as of now, he intends to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008.

The former mayor of New York was on top of last month’s national Gallup poll measuring presidential preferences by registered Republicans, with 29 percent. Sen. John McCain’s 24 percent was second, with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich third at 8 percent. National polls all year have shown Giuliani running either first or second to McCain, with the rest of the presidential possibilities far behind.

GOP insiders respond to these numbers by saying rank-and-file GOP voters will abandon Giuliani once they realize his position on abortion, gay rights and gun control. Party strategists calculate that if he actually runs, he must change on at least one of these issues.

It seems to me Giuliani’s chances of winning the GOP [tag]nomination[/tag] are only slightly better than mine, but with Novak’s observation in mind, I think there are a few points to consider.

First, flip-flopping on one of these three big social issues isn’t going to be easy; Giuliani has decades of public comments on the issues that he won’t be able to walk away from. Hanging out with Ralph Reed and Rick Santorum won’t change that.

Second, it’s not just [tag]abortion[/tag], [tag]gay[/tag] rights and [tag]gun control[/tag] — there’s also some personal baggage that I know the [tag]Republican[/tag] [tag]base[/tag] isn’t happy about.

Third, I think Novak is right that Giuliani’s positions on some of these social issues aren’t well known by GOP voters. New York magazine had a great item in 2004 featuring comments from Katon Dawson, the South Carolina Republican chairman, who was effusive in his praise for Giuliani — right up until the reporter started bringing up some specific issues.

And finally, a Giuliani campaign may benefit [tag]John McCain[/tag] more than anyone else. As of now, McCain has to un-burn the bridges to the far right that he destroyed in 2000, while convincing the party’s activists that he’s conservative enough. It’s a challenge, but McCain’s going out of his way. Giuliani, however, helps McCain look far more right-wing. If they’re the two heavyweights in the primaries, McCain benefits from having Giuliani around.

Perhaps we should be approaching Mr. Giulani about running as a Dem. He seems like he might fit nicely. Out of curiosity, what makes him a Republican in the first place?

  • Either of these guys would be relatively good news for Democrats. Not only because they’re not quite wingnuts and because they would be easier to beat because they would be base-less. Let us pray for lesser evils.

  • Isn’t it just the opposite effect? I think Giuliani and McCain are fighting for the same type of GOP primary voter (i.e., the non-loons). If they’re both in, they”ll split the non-loon vote.

    To me, a Giuliani candidacy would be McCain’s worst nightmare.

    You have to think of it in terms of the primary voters’ second choice would be. I’m guessing a large number of McCain/Giuliani voters would have the other one as a 2nd vote as compared to say George Allen voters.

  • Wow! Just look at those polling numbers. Where’s Frist, Brownback and Allen? Where’s Keyes?

    Or is Novak just leaving them out of the equation 😉

    McCain is a conservative, really, truely, get that straight all you right wing nuts. Okay, so he wasn’t actually born in the United States, was captured by Communists and also divorced his first wife. But in 2000, the theocratic reactionaries attacked HIM first. That’s why he attacked them back.

    I think a Giuliani condidacy would be great for McCain. It would take all the oxygen (media attention) out of any other candidacy, making the race one purely of McCain and Giuliani. The last thing the second string Wingnut candidates want is Giuliani running. I expect THEM to be the ones to try and cut Rudy out of the equation.

    In a head-to-head of McCain and Giuliani, I think John has all the advantages. The Republican’t nominating process isn’t designed to give us the BEST candidate, just the most apparantly conservative.

    I say ‘apparantly’ because 2000 clearly prove that Republican’ts CAN’T identify a true conservative standing right in front of them.

  • CB, you remind of Giuliani’s personal baggage re his marital issues, but I strongly suspect there is much more baggage as well. (1) There is a reason he was wildly unpopular prior to 9/11 — all of those issues about race, accountability, etc will come back up in a campaign; (2) he has quite a money trail to follow in his post-elected-official life that will be used against him; and (3) I strongly suspect there will be good ways to link him to some of Bernie “I used to have a building named after me” Kerik’s problems. Also I think it will be easy for rivals and the media, in debates and elsewhere, to trigger his gruff temper. I would be shocked if Rudy could win either the primary or the general, much less both.

  • Slightly OT, but both Giuliani and McCain are going to be here in Illinois stumping for Judy Barr Topinka, the Republican candidate for Governor, so they’re both obviously on the Presidential trail.

    Bush last week, now these adulterers? I’m not sure Judy is doing herself any favors. She’s relying on charges of corruption to bring Blagojevich down.

  • MNProgressive, Giuliani is no Democrat. He’s a vicious hyper-partisan with pronounced totalitarian tendencies. All his “moderate” positions were taken by convenience, to win in a socially liberal city; if he could shed them, I’m convinced he would.

    Rudy likely would be more competent than Bush, simply because he’s far more intelligent and informed. But he’s a bad, bad guy, and he’d be a bad president in a very different way than the current disaster.

  • The Giuliani and McCain candidacies only highlight what seems to me to be obvious. If the Democrats can manage to avoid doing two things, they will waltz to victory in 08. (I’m assuming that the danger of hackable electronic voting machines will be avoided as well.) If they can avoid nominating Hilary — the only thing that would unite Republicans — and could agree among themselves that, whatever their differences, they should campaign against Bush and not each other, they will be able to watch the Republicans create a Goldwater-style debacle.

    Right now, there are a substantial number of Republicans who believe that Bush’s problems stem from him not being conservative ENOUGH, that he didn’t push anti-abortion, or the ‘social issues’ or tax-cutting or whatever they define as conservatism hard enough. (Or, I’d guess, that he didn’t prosecute the war hard enough, though I’ve seen little of this.) But these issues are losers for the Republicans, The voters don’t support them, no matter how loudly the wingnuts yell.

    Even more important, unlike Goldwater’s time, when ‘conservative’ had a fairly simple meaning — and even he got hurt because of the racists that attached themselves to his candidacy — the conservatives are split, badly. Fiscal conservatives, religious conservatives, racist conservatives (LGFers, anti-immigrationists and old fashioned racists), libertarian conservatives have only been able to stay united because they had a comm0on enemy, and because most of them believed that they were using the others. Neither tax cutters nor corruptionists have any love for the religious right, and while Christianists may have been conned into believing that ‘though shall not raise taxes’ is a commandement somewhere in Leviticus, they can’t accept the Abramoffs. The libertarians oppose everything the Christianists stand for, etc. Then throw in a Giuliani, who will win votes from moderates, and a McCain who still has some enemies left and whose character flaws are out their as targets, and the Democrats can sit back and watch them tear each other to shreds, and then see whatever groups don’t win in the prelims stay home on election day.

  • dajati (who posted while I was typing):
    I’m a life-long New Yorker. Giuliani does believe in many of these positions, and unlike McCain, won’t be kissing up to the Falwells and the like. Yes, he does have a temper, and an ego that will make him dangerous were he to be elected. (“Hyper-totalitarian” is an overstatement, though I see why you think this. It is more a ‘my way or the highway’ and ‘don’t you try and get any publicity, I am the boss.’ But this has always been used against his associates, not the people in general.)

    I don’t think he can be nominated, but I think he would be less dangerous than the others, and might even make a halfway decent president. Certainly he is, in general, an honest man who would never fall for the Abramoffs, nor would he allow a Rove to make decisions based on Machivellian political strategies.

    Which doesn’t mean I wouldn’t watch him closely, or that I’d vote for him over any Democrat in the race — I’m a Feingold supporter, btw. But if I knew the Democrats were going to blunder so badly that they were going to wind up electing a Republican, I’d rather him than Brownback, Frist, Huckabee, Gingrich, or the arch-hypocrite McCain.

  • “An honest man?”

    If you’re a New Yorker, surely you know who Russell Harding is. And everyone now knows the name of Bernie Kerik. They weren’t the only ones in Rudy’s administration. There was welfare chieftain Jason Turner, who was both an ideologue and a crook.

    I’d much rather see McCain win. He’s got his problems too, but at least his Keating 5 experience made him very sensitive to corruption. Rudy and his guys have the arrogance of people who think they’re too smart to get caught.

  • However, conservatives love Mario Cuomo, and Rudy’s endorsement of him in 1994 will make up for all the other transgressions against Republican dogma. He’s a shoo-in, everybody! Kerik for Secy’ of State!

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