Redstate

conservatives' hatred of McCain and simultaneous support of Rudy.

McCain, though not perfect, is much more closer to the conservative philosophy then is Rudy.

The nutshell answer to which is that McCain has often picked public fights with the Right and lent his name to give a bipartisan veneer to media trashing of Republicans (much a mirror image of why the Left hates Lieberman), whereas, at least for the past 8 years or so, Rudy hasn't - even where he disagrees he has generally not gone out of his way to make life difficult for conservatives.

"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill

...but if the choice were between McCain and Clinton, McCain is the obvious choice.

HRC might be horrible, but at least she is sane.

"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle

Let's not turn on NR for trying to make a living. Doing it this way is far more provocative than making a cover with 7 or 8 caricatures. Plus, they seem to be using it as a mechanism to frame the conservative versus moderate debate within the Republican Party -- a healthy discussion for '07.

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We would also like to know your advice for somebody like my daughter, who's going to graduate in two years, advice that you would give a young person.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Advice for a young person. Study history.

My understanding is that NR has never made a profit, or at least hasn't in a long time.

If they're doing this, it's not to sell a few extra subscriptions.
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Run like Reagan!

They don't make a profit, but that's not to say that they don't need the money from subscriptions and ad sales. AFAIK, NR's not actually a charity (in the tax-deductible sense), either.

Based on the information to be had, I'd say they've made a reasonable guess. AFAIK, Giuliani hasn't made any declaration of a Presidential run, and Brownback and company look like also-rans. Not to say that it isn't a very long way to primary season, but I can't see faulting them for not foreseeing the unforeseeable.

I agree that it’s a tacky thing to put on a magazine cover. However he posed for it and it’s also an image that will follow a Giuliani presidential run up through Election Day. If you really think he ought to be our nominee then it’s something that he and his supporters are going to have to come to grips with.

belonged to a men's club that used to go in the woods and run around like savages. So what? People should be able to have fun without having their silly moments held against them. I once wore a toga and a crown of leaves to a Halloween party (and was accused of coming as Mother Nature) A good thing I have the only picture of me that might or I too might be forever barred from any possible public career.

Frankly I don’t see how a socially liberal politician from New York City gets through the GOP president primary with a picture and video of him in drag all over the internet. It might be considered “fun” in NYC or CA but out here in flyover country, it’s just plain weird.

at a couple of Military functions as a matter of fact when he shaved his legs the hair never grew back. My father also saw action during the Korean War. My father is now a 77 year old semi-retired doctor. We don't live in NYC or CA and we don't think it's weird. There is a cultural history in dressing in drag from Bobe Hope and Milton Berle and Tom Hanks. I guess those of us who are very sure of their own masculinity have no problem with it. Lighten up is just fun.

that the other candidates have on marriage, judges, life, spending, etc., I think most conservatives will be willing to forgive Sen. Brownback for a relatively rare and, yes, relatively minor, departure from conservative doctrine. Don´t get me wrong, I disagree with him on immigration, but when push comes to shove, I´m willing to overlook that for someone I know I can trust on issues that are more important to me. I can´t speak for all conservatives, but I´m sure I´m not the only one in that boat.

It seems to me that Senator McCain has been on the right side (which is to say against the majority of his party usually including Senator Brownback and the President) on most of the major spending issues – Medicare Part D, Farm Subsidies, Energy Bill, Transportation, Bill, etc.

As far as Governor Romney, while he didn’t get a vote, he has at least been willing to lead the charge on the need for entitlement reform (something which begins and ends with far too many in GOP with supporting PRA’s for Social Security) and for reducing the costs of Medicare Part D.

Mayor Giuliani was part of a group that brought a suit against the US Government saying that the line-item veto was unconstitutional.
http://faculty.babson.edu/bortman/line-ite.htm

Northeastern political machines are as bad as Southern ones when it comes to pork-barreling (but I believe they call it “patronage”) and Giuliani once admitted that that was key in his decision to support Cuomo for governor in 1994 and his mending fences with Al D'Amato as the thought that both would be more likely to divert State and federal funding respectively to NYC.

One of the things that generally makes governors generally attractive as presidential nominees is that the perception that they can balance a budget and make spending cuts because they don’t really have a choice. Big city mayors apparently have the opposite quality because they can go to the State or federal government for a bailout in the form of “local government aid.”

If Republicans are serious about regaining credibility with the fiscally conservative wing of the GOP (which I believe was one of the reasons we lost Congress), picking Giuliani might be as bad as picking Trent “earmark” Lott as the nominee.

With this:

This announcement - which is, of course, the framing of the race that Romney, in particular, wants - is curious for two reasons.

I couldn't disagree more with that statement. I don't think Romney "wants" to be considered the contendah against McCain right now -- where are you getting that implication?

It's a fact. It's a matter of editorial prejudice here, from Ben Domenech to Streiff to Mark Kilmer to yourself, as far as I can tell. But stop making things up just for the sake of putting them out there. Where in the Universe has Mitt Romney stated that he thinks he's the equal contender to McCain except in this piece of opinion you just made up out of thin air?

First of all, I don't hate Romney, I just don't think he's our best candidate. For the record, I'm with Rudy, at least for now.

Second, Romney is clearly trying to frame the race as a conservative-moderate battle with himself as the conservative. Making it a two-man fight between him and McCain plays right into that in two ways: it elevates Romney's stature and validates him as the more conservative alternative (since that's the main case against McCain).

"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill

If you think Rudy is the best candidate for Conservatives, then why hasn't there been *anything* and I mean *anything* here on RedState talking so far about his position on gay marriage?

I've seen people attack McCain here for more than two years now. And for the past two months I've witnessed them turn on Romney before his campaign even gets off the ground. But so far, on some of the stickiest social issues that Social Conservatives are supposed to be so enormously concerned about, in terms of "single issue voting" not very many people have brought up the fact that Rudy Giuliani is:

1) Pro abortion
2) Pro "gun control"
3) Pro gay marriage

What's the deal, guys?

A lot of the single-issue voters I know about are single-issue voters on, say, The War On Terror. There's a handful who voted for Bush while pinching their nose because they were single-issue voters who cared solely about The Supreme Court.

In my personal life, I don't know anyone who is a single-issue voter on abortion or gay marriage. I know a handful who are single-issue voters on gun control, but they have been getting more and more frustrated in years past. Neither party is good enough to really attract the single-issue gun-rights people.

All that to say, all of the single-issue voters I know either think Rudy is pretty good on their single-issue or are the type to think that the Libertarians don't go far enough (i.e., he never had a chance in the first place).

But, then again, I'm pretty sure that my circle of people with whom I get into shouting matches about politics are not representative of the general population.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

Some of us are saving our powder for 2007.

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Even those who learn from history are surrounded by those doomed to repeat it.

abortion issue and his support for some limited gun control measures while he was mayor of New York but don't spread false information that is just not true. He has never been pro-gay marraige.

CNN LARRY KING LIVE

Interview With Rudy Giuliani

Aired February 14, 2007

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0702/14/lkl.01.html

"GIULIANI: Gays should be protected. I signed The Domestic Partnership Law in New York. But the way I'm portrayed by my opponents -- and I guess to drive people away from me -- is that I'm in favor of gay marriage. I am not. I did 220 weddings. They were all between a man and a woman. I believe marriage should be between a man and a woman. At least, I hope they were all between a man and a woman. It looked that way at the time."

"But, yes, I believe that marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman and that the way to handle this, and the way to handle respect and everything else is to have something like domestic partnership, which I support."

That I consider McCain to be the man who is going to win the nomination and win the Presidency, at least right now. I think he's virtually unstoppable, at least as far as taking the nomination is concerned. I'm supporting Romney because I would like to see McCain have some real competition in this race, because to my mind, everyone else is an also-ran.

If RedState wants to destroy Romney (or anyone else) before this race even gets into 2007, I hope the editors here will enjoy their enormous plate of crow while they're watching TV each morning and listening to President John McCain.

And I would vote for Sam Brownback if it weren't for just one thing:

Nobody that I know has any idea of who he is (at least not yet). I have done my own informal polling of people I meet and I mention Sam Brownback's name: there's a blank stare while the gears turn and the wood burns and people associate him with Sam Adams or Samsonite luggage or Samuel Morse or the Son of Sam for all I know. On the other hand I've actually read some of the things that Sam Brownback believes in and I think he'd be a great President, but the big problem that I see in his candidacy is the: "Who he?" factor.

He could change that, and he could do it pretty quickly as the election gets closer. If it came down to a choice between Mitt Romney and Sam Brownback, I would vote for Brownback -- but only if I had the wisp of an implication that he might be able to win.

You're right. Romney is trying to court conservatives. He has made a lot of statements and signed a few things recently (one of which I thought was a good idea, BTW) to court Conservatives.

Now, all of that might be a ruse. He might be trying to dupe everyone in the world as the most Skillful Politician since Bill Clinton.

But I don't think so. Romney has basically staked his entire political future on this Presidential run. He's not going back to be the governor of Massachusetts: after this, if he fails, he's going back into private life, perhaps as a professor somewhere, maybe as a consultant, or back to venture capitalism. I'm giving Romney the benefit of the doubt on his "flip-flopping" until I hear at least a little more from the man himself. We have almost two years left and people should weigh the minuses of his past statements against the pluses that have accrued because he has proven his ability to be successful as a Republican in the most liberal state in the nation.

he couldn't win.

If Mitt Romney did end up running for re-election for Massachusetts Governor instead of running for the '08 Presidency, then he would of had a much better chance of winning that race than Kerry Healey! There were many Massachusetts voters who didn't like: 1.) Mitt Romney spending a lot of the last two years of his term as Governor often doing political activities outside of the state instead of just being the Governor of Massachusetts while staying in the state. This situation irritated a lot of Massachusetts voters along with Mitt Romney frequently making fun of Massachusetts politics in general while he was campaigning outside of Massachusetts. 2.) Kerry Murphy Healey, the former Lt. Governor of Massachusetts with Mitt Romney, is a very wealthy woman who was disliked by many Massachusetts voters and who also didn't really relate to the majority of middle class voters and lower class voters. She has always lived in her own "cocoon" of wealthy people, and this harmed her political chances a lot. Also, a lot of state woman voters didn't like Healey as a person, and they were not going to vote for her for any reasons whatsoever. This irritation of both Mitt Romney and Kerry Healey from many Massachusetts voters also harmed the chances for any kind of political inroads for the total Massachusetts Republican Party at every level, and this proved to be true during the November '06 election. Also, the "anti-Republican Party wave" that existed throughout the entire U.S. during the '06 November election didn't help boost the chances for Republican victories either.

The Left will go bonkers over this because (1) they think it's a "Swift Boat" thing that will hit Rudy on his strongest point and (2) sick people filing lawsuits over invisible toxic exposure is a natural for the Left.

"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill

And I don't think that's his biggest problem by a long shot. I know I wouldn't let it influence my decision. Guiliani did an absolutely heroic job in New York in the aftermath of 9/11 and I think that if anyone tries to use that against him it will be a *big, big* mistake.

I would like to see him united with Santorum.

Brownback is my first choice and I say that even thou I disagree with him on amnesty for illegal aliens. Aside from that, though, I think he is Right (double entendre) on just about every other issue. Unfortunately, even I don't think he is electable.

However, I would like to see him as a Vice Presidential candidate.

you will be far from happy to see Hillary Clinton taking the oath of office in Jan 2009.

Nice to see you speak for all Evangelicals on Romney. I have actually seen alot of support for him.

just about every issue. Well I guess taxes,fiscal responsibilty, and the war on terror aren't issues to you. He is not pro-gay marriage and has never been however he is to the left of the social conservatives on the abortion issue.
He also has supported some limited gun control measures while he was mayor of New York City that I personally don't approve of but to make a claim that he is to the left of most democrats in congress on every issue is simply ludicrous.

I think Frank Keating would be a good conservative alternative to Romney. He is a conservative Catholic Republican former governor.

What a majority of both conservatives and Republicans should do is fully support a Hunter/Steele ticket for '08!

I like Steele, but he lost. If he had one, he would have been a credible vice-presidental candidate.

How about Keating/Rice?

Steele almost won his race in the "very blue" state of Maryland while there was a "very negative political wave" against all of the Republicans all over the U.S. at every political level during the November '06 elections. Steele was a terrific debater who is also a black Republican, and Steele could help the Republicans get more of the minority voters, including the women's vote. Republicans will need all of the help that they can get in just two years if they seriously and truly want to become a political majority again. I see the Democrats fully supporting a Clinton/Obama ticket in '08, and the Republicans will need a very likable ticket to have a serious chance for victory in '08. Right now, I believe that a Hunter/Steele ticket would do very well by November '08, and the '08 election cycle hasn't officially begun yet. "Steele" and "Hunter" are very catchy as a team, and the lack of name recognition wouldn't last long for a Hunter/Steele ticket.

VP is a slot we can stick just about anybody in. You don't need to have a track-record of winning elections (especially in states like MD) to make the bottom of the ticket. How many elections has Rice won?
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman

If you look at McCain's actions he is obviously NOT the most conservative. Actions speak louder than words. Record, record, record!