{"id":10611,"date":"2007-04-25T09:44:00","date_gmt":"2007-04-25T13:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/10611.html"},"modified":"2007-04-25T09:44:00","modified_gmt":"2007-04-25T13:44:00","slug":"giuliani-takes-the-low-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/giuliani-takes-the-low-road\/","title":{"rendered":"Giuliani takes the low road"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s early, but Rudy Giuliani already seems to be getting a little desperate. He’s slipping in the polls, the religious right is organizing against him, he can’t talk about his domestic policy beliefs without infuriating the very GOP voters he needs to win, he’s burdened by a scandalous personal history that keeps bubbling to the surface, and he knows less than the average college student about foreign policy (and it shows).<\/p>\n

So, what’s a guy to do? Giuliani seems to believe fear, demagoguery, and exploitation worked for the Bush campaign, so he’s giving it a shot<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rudy Giuliani said if a Democrat is elected president in 2008, America will be at risk for another terrorist attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001. But if a Republican is elected, he said, especially if it is him, terrorist attacks can be anticipated and stopped.<\/p>\n

“If any Republican is elected president — and I think obviously I would be the best at this — we will remain on offense and will anticipate what [the terrorists] will do and try to stop them before they do it,” Giuliani said. […]<\/p>\n

“I listen a little to the Democrats and if one of them gets elected, we are going on defense,” Giuliani continued. “We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation and we will be back to our pre-Sept. 11 attitude of defense.” <\/p>\n

He added: “The Democrats do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Is that so? OK, foreign policy expert Giuliani, what is<\/i> the full nature of the terrorist threat?
\n<\/p>\n

Giuliani said terrorists “hate us for the freedoms we have.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, who can argue with such a sophisticated and well-thought-out analysis? Giuliani’s foreign policy advisors must have really worked overtime to formulate such a comprehensive and erudite worldview.<\/p>\n

“This war ends when they stop coming here to kill us!” Giuliani said in his speech.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wow, those are clearly the words a real expert. I’m impressed; how about you?<\/p>\n

After his speech to the Rockingham County Lincoln Day Dinner, I asked him about his statements and Giuliani said flatly: “America will safer with a Republican president.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You mean like we were on 9\/11, when our president blew off a security briefing and shrugged at a warning that bin Laden was poised to strike at the U.S.?<\/p>\n

Giuliani is quickly becoming an embarrassment to himself. On the one hand, he believes he’s uniquely prepared to anticipate and prevent terrorist attacks. On the other hand, he put NYC’s emergency response center inside a known terrorist target. On the one hand, Giuliani presents himself as an expert. On the other hand, he doesn’t know the difference between Iran’s and North Korea’s nuclear programs, and has no idea whether Iran and al Qaeda are Sunni or Shia. Asked on his thoughts on the efficacy of the president’s escalation strategy, Giuliani said yesterday, “I don’t know the answer to that.”<\/p>\n

As National Review’s Rich Lowry recently noted<\/a>, when Giuliani responds to voters’ questions, “his answers on foreign policy and military affairs aren’t deeply informed.”<\/p>\n

If empty, hollow talk about “offense” and “toughness,” backed up by embarrassing ignorance, will keep America safe, Giuliani’s the right man for the job. If not, he’s just another hack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s early, but Rudy Giuliani already seems to be getting a little desperate. He’s slipping in the polls, the religious right is organizing against him, he can’t talk about his domestic policy beliefs without infuriating the very GOP voters he needs to win, he’s burdened by a scandalous personal history that keeps bubbling to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10611\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}