Story here.
The usual issues:
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Is McCain nominable?
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Is he electable?
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What kind of POTUS would he make?
I fell asleep with the TV sound off and woke up briefly while he was on screen saying this. This morning I woke up with visions of Tim Conway in the oval office.
Dumb move.
Lots of Republicans are already calling McCain the media’s candidate, and by “announcing” on the Letterman show, he’s just playing to this perception.
What he ought to be doing is shoring up his contacts with conservatives, where he is in real trouble. His fundraising is taking huge hits. Yet he didn’t find time in his schedule to go to the CPAC conference right here in DC.
Unless he turns this around fast, he’ll be eclipsed in short order. Right now Rudy Giuliani has more traction among conservatives than McCain does.
I have a question for Mr. Moto and any other conservatives.
Disclaimer first: Rudy Giuliani is my choice to be our next President.
Why do the conservative dislike McCain when his overall voting record is fairly sympathetic to the conservative ideals and Rudy’s record has many areas that differ greatly?
- Rudy has supported gun control.
- He has never acted or voted against pro-choice.
- He is “Gay” friendly.
- He appears to be quite fine with government control and regulation of business.
- He is thoroughly a New Yorker.
What I think conservatives might see in his favor:
- He stands by his word to the point of ridicule at times.
- He is hawkish.
- He is extremely pro-police and tough on crime.
What else am I missing?
I had assumed for several years that he could not win the primary as he was too liberal of a Republican, but now it looks like he might actually have a chance.
Jim
Well, I am conservative, sure. But I am also a Republican. I’m far more comfortable with a party that includes people like Giuliani than a party that would shun him.
Also, I’m a guy who prefers to look at results rather than rhetoric, and Giuliani is a man who has actually gotten results, and clearly ones a conservative can largely agree with, in his years as a prosecutor and as a very effective mayor.
He also is one of the only people in this race who truly understand the nature of this war, and the measures we must take to win it.
Of course, the man has done some things that I don’t agree with. But so has McCain, and McCain’s transgressions have pissed me off far more. While I can chalk up Giuliani’s gun control efforts to his experiences as a big-city crime fighter and a differing interpretation of the Second Amendment, and thus be satisfied that it was a mistaken act by a man of good will, I’m not so convinced of McCain’s campaign finance efforts. These were so blatant an assault of First Amendment principles that I can’t really excuse them at all.
I don’t see McCain as being the future of the Republican Party in any way. Running him just because it is his turn risks another loss like Dole’s. With Giuliani and Romney, I’m keeping an open mind, and also watching for late entrants. I don’t think anyone else running on the Republican side right now (Hunter, Tancredo, et al) have a snowball’s chance.
I’d previously posted that McCain was going to be the next POTUS. I’m retracting that now (well, actually, retracted a few minutes ago in a pit thread). Announcing on Letterman was tacky…and he’s also said he thinks Roe v. Wade should be overturned. One thing I read said he’d made the Roe comment earlier, but it was new to me.
I figure we may as well issue McCain a fonzie jacket and some skis, and start looking to rent a shark…
What exactly has he said about that, that distinguishes him from the other Pub candidates?
:rolleyes: You’re not talking about this sorry, feeble, lame, pathetic, half-assed excuse for CFR, are you?
How’s that? I mean, what’s Rudy actually know about foreign policy, the Middle East, or any of that?
I mean, sure, he could have read up on it in his spare time, but so have many of us.
AFAICT, he represents the all-too-predominant Bar-Fight School of GOP thought: if somebody gets on your nerves, they need to be punched out. Is there a way in which his ‘understanding’ of the nature of this war differs appreciably from that?
Thank you so much for your answer. I hope more conservatives see it the way you do. As a moderate Republican, I have been feeling rather disenfranchised and I now have some hope that Rudy can move the party in a direction that will have wider appeal and be less unpalatable to large numbers of socially moderate to liberal voters.
Jim
Disclaimer: I’m not likely to vote for any of the Republican candidates in '08.
Having said that, I find myself thinking that McCain’s campaign is figuring (probably correctly) that Giuliani’s glow among conservatives isn’t going to withstand closer examination of his politics and political history, and that a closer exam of McCain’s is going to make him look better to conservatives.
And that media coverage alone will accomplish a lot of that as it ramps up. So perhaps he’s looking ahead to the general election: trying to burnish his own shine among independents and swing voters. Losing those is a bigger risk in the long run than losing the conservatives.
I’m enjoying the irony of a guy whose campaign apparently peaked months before his announcement that he’s going to announce his candidacy.
Win the war!?! How the hell does he plan on doing that?
But I like Rudy. He’s a tough guy and we need someone in office that will kick some heads around. He’d be the first President that we’ve had in a long time that will have come from an extremely civic-minded background. I can see him doing a lot for Urban America, to tell the truth, and I think he approaches thing from a very common sense standpoint. I like the guy, regardless of what his personal life was like. I like Mayor Mike too though.
However, I am generally a liberal in most aspects, and I gotta say that John McCain grows more and more despicable in my eyes. His Straight-Talk Express days earned my approval, but his post South Carolina behavior has really let me down, then made me feel that he had no character. Sure he was a torture vicitim, and a general American treasure in that regard, but his political behavior has been repulsive. He’s stated that Roe v. Wade should be overturned. Now, why does this annoy me? Because it’s simply politics of the lowest common denominator. He hadn’t really come out on that much before. It’s annoying to me that he’s pandering to the far right. Well, he has to though, right? With Rudy on his left, he’s got no other choice, because he can’t push Rudy too far. Sorry for using Rudy, but I can’t remember how to spell Giuliani. I’d rather only get it wrong once!
But most Republicans are going to get stuck on the Iraq issue. Not many people think it’s possible to solve that problem. But then again, pulling out won’t help matters either…We need to invent a peace ray…
I’d say that McCain has little chance though. He’ll also be very old at the time too. 72 years old. If he’s elected he’ll be 80 by the end of his second term. That’s simply too old if you ask me.
The Bush/Cheney foreign policy is based on kicking heads. How’s that working for you?
I think the last six years have amply demonstrated how toughness is overrated unless it’s combined with a great deal of cluefulness. And I don’t see that Rudy has a great deal of that quality.
The decade is not right . . .
Please explain. I think he is a policy guy, myself, and those policies he pursued have demonstrably improved New York City.
Gee, based on what deep insight compared to the 3 leading Dems or John McCain?
How is Rudy not filled with this mystery quality of cluefulness? He was a sharp prosecutor and a sharp mayor. Hillary was a divisive first lady and a Senator. Edwards has no foreign policy experience, no executive experience and only a small amount of political office experience. Obama ditto. John McCain was a POW and a long term Senator with some foreign policy experience.
Out of the current top five, Rudy ran and improved our largest city and should be given credit for some cluefulness.
Jim {my bolding above}
And he followed up Safir with America’s hero, Bernie Kerik, the ultimate clueless tough guy. But Giuliani didn’t have a clue about how clueless Kerik was.
Half of being President is getting capable people in the right places. We’ve just had six years - it’ll be eight by the time the next President is sworn in - of a guy who absolutely sucks at that. Be nice to follow him up with someone who doesn’t have serious problems in that vein.
And then there’s his thin skin, and his tendency to use the powers of office to deal with those who get under it:
Yeah, I don’t find him particularly clueful. I can’t see this guy helping unravel tense situations in the Middle East or on the Korean peninsula. I see him being the sort of guy who will take a tense situation, and make it worse.
We’ve already had six years of such a guy.
He unquestionably did do a great deal of good, but even as his term as mayor wound down, New Yorkers had had enough of him, despite his successes:
Dunno how representative they are of “conservatives,” but the Freepers’ reaction appears to be consistently negative.
Don’t go by them. Leave that bunch to their devices, and they’d nominate Tancredo.
The thing about Giuliani is that conservatives don’t see him as one of their own, necessarily, but they like him, respect what he’s done and see him as a genuine American hero and success story. That likability can excuse a lot.
I’m sure a lot of liberals excused some of Bill Clinton’s more moderate stances for the same reason.
This has always been a puzzle to me. McCain is a solid conservative. Maybe some of the anti-media conservative wingnuts just assume that because McCain was a media darling that he wasn’t “one of them”. Or maybe it’s because he isn’t partisan enough-- he’s willing to buck the party when he thinks it needs to be done (eg, the gang of 14). Somehow, though, many Democrats seem to like him (witness the interest in drafting him as Kerry’s running mate in '04) and many Republicans seem to distrust him, even though the guy is what I would call a rock solid conservative (pretty much like Reagan). And he’s a social conservative, too, even though he’s not an in-your-face type of social conservative. I wouldn’t call him a gay-basher, but I don’t see him championing gay rights, and he’s always been anti-abortion (AFAICT).
Like Oakminster, I was predicting 6 months ago that McCain would be the GOP nominee and the likely next president, but I’m backtracking on that now. I’m cautiously optimistic that the GOP will nominate Rudy Giuliani. Even with his faults, he’d be a good candidate and it would signal a shift away from the religious right’s overinflated importance to that party.