[QUOTE=Marley23]
Hey, it kept me from voting for her in 2000, but for most people it was a non-issue. I’m just saying she has a better answer for the ‘Northeast liberal’ charges than Kerry did - she even campaigned for Goldwater as a college student, although I don’t know if Democrats will be enthused to hear that.
[/QUOTE]
And again, that just plays into how the Pubbies will portray her-- how can we be sure what her *real *political position is? She may act like a centrist, but deep down she’s a {shudder} Liberal!!!
[QUOTE=Marley23]
He IS going to have some problems with the religious right. Maybe people think he’ll waltz to the nomination solely on the strength of that “America’s Mayor” crap, but he’s not only pro-choice and pro-gay rights, as noted, but very publically cheated on his wife while he was in office, and when he decided to get a separation from his wife, he told the press before he told her. They’ll have to square away some moral questions.
[/QUOTE]
The RR (and for that matter, most liberal Democrats) is less concerned with someone who will personally embody their values than they are with someone who will champion their issues. They loved the divorced Reagan, and only tolerated the happily married GHW Bush. Guiliani is the guy who cleaned up Times Square and put Disney where the porno places used to be, and who fought against obscene art in the MOMA; those count way more than his own personal morality.
Pro-choice is easily finessed: RG says that he thinks abortion should be legal, but that he will appoint non-activist judges. I’m not aware of RG championing gay marriage; most RRs are, at this point, indifferent on many other gay issues. His record on guns is also easily ducked: “the positions I took as Mayor of NYC are not necessarily ones that I’d advocate for the whole country.”
More fundamentally, most in the RR, and most in the GOP, see security as issue #1, and nothing else is very close. He will run on his record cleaning up NYC, and nobody in either party will be able to touch him in executive experience, and nobody but McCain (or possibly Hillary in the general) will match him in percieved “toughness.”
McCain might have been a challenger, but he’s gone out of his way to pick fights with the base. Giuliani, wisely, has been on the sidelines keeping quiet.
[QUOTE=furt]
Pro-choice is easily finessed: RG says that he thinks abortion should be legal, but that he will appoint non-activist judges.
[/quote]
I don’t know if I see the religious right tolerating that. I get the sense that the group was expecting more from Bush than they have received, and Giuliani would only be promising less. Your point about a champion for their issues is perceptive, though.
That’s running from your record. Granted, Democrats are still behind on the gun issue, so it might not matter at all.
[QUOTE=Marley23]
I don’t know if I see the religious right tolerating that. I get the sense that the group was expecting more from Bush than they have received, and Giuliani would only be promising less.
[/QUOTE]
Very true. But if I’m right about security being issue #1, the only question re: abortion will be whether or not he’s promising enough.
IOW, imagine a two-man race between Guiliani and, say, George Allen. Allen will be offering more on abortion; but Rudy offers more on a bigger issue, with more “electability” to boot (which may be very important by 08 if the pubs lose seats in 06). All he has to do is be “acceptable” on abortion, and that will satisfy all but strict single-issue types.
Not really; he can say he still supports a handgun ban for NYC. So far as I know, he’s never said it should apply to Alabama as well, so there’s no contradiction there. The NRA and the hard-core gun types won’t like him, but so long as he reassures Joe Six-Shooter that he has no desire to set up a national registry, he’ll be fine.
IOW, I think the Pubs would nominate a social moderate (though not a liberal) who is strong on defense and who offers general election promise (which could coattail back in a GOP congress as well as more SC nominees). RG can fit that bill. The RR will hold their nose and vote for him the way they did for GHWBush.
[QUOTE=Age Quod Agis]
Interesting. I think more Americans will be inspired to vote for the first ever black candidate than will be turned away by it. I guess I think racism isn’t as prevalent as you. Plus, I think black voter turnout would probably be significantly higher than normal, if given the chance to elect a black candidate to the nation’s highest office.
[/QUOTE]
But you forget it’s not the number of turnouts that’ll win. Democrats need to win states they didn’t win last time. Are any of those states likely to switch based on black voter turnout? I’m not so sure.
Just to be clear “strong on defense” means ‘strong on offence’ doesn’t it? Lots of money for the military. It’s one of those USA things, having no rational connection to defense of territorial USA from foreign aggressors?
[QUOTE=Sevastopol]
Just to be clear “strong on defense” means ‘strong on offence’ doesn’t it? Lots of money for the military. It’s one of those USA things, having no rational connection to defense of territorial USA from foreign aggressors?
[/QUOTE]
Yes. We vote for the person most willing to kill lots of brown-skinned foreigners.
[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
There’s no such person. You can go negative on anyone. If you can’t find anything true, just make up some entertaining lies.
[/QUOTE]
Yep. I don’t think it was the charges made by the Swiftoaters that were the problem-- it was the fact that the charges shifted the discussion from the issues back to the Vietnam War. I doubt that anyone who wasn’t already dead set against Kerry took those charges seriously. But that, plus the forged CBS documents kept people’s minds off what should have been the biggest issue-- Iraq. It seems like we spent most of the campaign debating what went on in 1970 instead of what was going on in 2004. A better campaigner would’ve confronted the Swiftboaters head on, and gotten them out of the way. I mean, even FoxNews was debunking their charges, so it’s not like the press was overly sympathetic to them.
My big disappointment with Warner is that if he wasn’t going to run for President, couldn’t he at least have figured it out in time to run against Allen this year? One reason - possibly the reason - why Allen’s still ahead of Webb, despite Macacarena and everything after, is that Virginians still don’t know Webb all that well. If Warner had been Allen’s opponent, I believe he’d be 5 points ahead in the polls by now.
[QUOTE=An Arky]
I don’t see why Giuliani is considered a serious contender. He’s on his third marriage, it’s pretty widely known that he was having an affair with his current wife on his second wife, and in fact announced he was divorcing his second wife in public before he even informed her. He’s a shithead, and I really don’t understand why everyone wants to line up and kiss his ass.
[/QUOTE]
Um, he’s not someone riding his daddy’s or husband’s coattails, which these days makes a man look surprisingly like the Real Thing.
