And speaking of the new issue of National Review…
Writing by treason on Saturday, 29 of July , 2006 at 6:27 pm
Tony Curtis did it; Jack Lemmon did it; Milton Berle did it; even Dustin Hoffman did it. Like covers of Weekly World News, this one’s suitable for framing. Is it Marilyn Monroe? Jayne Mansfield? Mamie van Doren? No…it’s Rudy Giuliani in drag.
I admit I cracked up when I pulled Rudy out of the mailbox this week. I knew it was coming and now here it is. I’d mentioned this on The V.O.T. a long time ago: Will America vote for a (male) candidate who’s been known to wear a dress in public?
I submitted back then that I would. But it looks like I might not have that opportunity. Would the Republican Party really nominate Rudy Giuliani as their 2008 presidential candidate? Like NR asks: Would Rudy play in Peoria?
This will be interesting to watch because the Left would have to be careful how it attacks Giuliani. They can’t very well criticize the man for being pro-choice and anti-gun. What can they do? Pull video of Rudy’s appearances in Pride parades and chide him for moving in with a gay couple after one of his sloppy divorces?
What the Left has generally said about Rudy is that he was too tough and did too good a job of cleaning up New York City and making the place inhabitable. Shame on him for turning public opinion of the city around and attracting all those tourists from Middle America who had previously sworn that they’d never step foot in that hellhole.
I visited New York in the early nineties and fell in love with the place. I even went to Shea Stadium and spoke with some lovely Mets fans. I was wearing a Cubs shirt and cap and had expected to be jumped outside the park, but the fans were surprisingly funny and friendly. This wasn’t the New York I’d expected.
There’s a very long list of things I like about Rudy Giuliani and one of the things I like is his temperament. It works for a mayor of a city like New York, but will it work for the leader of the free world? A lot of people are wondering the same thing.
And I suspect that there are social Conservatives who won’t support him. My Catholic friend who’s a one-issue voter says she would never support a pro-choice candidate. If both the Democrats and Republicans nominate pro-choice candidates, what will voters like her do? And what will the two parties do? Find the most conservative VPs to put on the ticket? That won’t play in Peoria or Pasadena or Poughkeepsie.
What I don’t look forward to is the attack from the Right. It’ll get ugly and personal, and it will show the party in a most unflattering light. The Left will only have to sit back and watch and say “See? We told you they were like this.”
The question, I guess, is who is the base in 2008? Will the GOP need to depend on social Conservatives to win, or have those people already made up their minds to look elsewhere for representation? The most socially conservative Republicans I knew in 2004 were supporting the Constitution Party. These folks would never vote for a Rudy Giuliani or a John McCain.
So what to do? Abandon them and play to Republicans and Independents who are tough on crime, taxes, and terror, but soft on everything else? Sounds to me that the Democrats and Republicans will be nominating the same candidate. Well, maybe except for that taxes part.
Um, is there a Libertarian in the house?
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