There's much about Rudy Giuliani the candidate to like and clearly some underlying strength to his campaign, which retains the mantle of "national front-runner" even in the face of his deviations from the Republican base. Yet lurking near the surface is his amazingly tone deaf minimization of the Republican coalition.
A recent appearance in North Dakota by assorted campaign surrogates sealed that impression with this blogger. Here's what Giuliani's speaker said:
"We are here to choose a candidate who can win next November. It does us no good to stand on our beautiful, wonderful principles, and lose to Hillary Clinton."
Now, I'm sometimes accused of being the resident liberal around here (which makes a number of my friends on both sides of the aisle laugh heartily), but even I can recognize that's some gravely naive thinking; guaranteed to send a not insignificant number of social conservatives heading for the exits.
Rich Lowry at the National Review has been honing in on this point too. In a column accurately portraying Giuliani's core appeal to many Republicans, as well as in a post at the Corner (where he has also had many good things to say about Giuliani). Key passage from the latter:
Rudy is opening up a huge vulnerability by continuing to insist that the GOP stool should have only two legs--free-market economics and a strong national defense. Here is a quote from a clip on Brit Hume's show yesterday: "You take those two broad principles--strong national defense, fiscal restraint, growth principles, free trade, lower taxes, smaller government. That makes us a majority party. Those are the two things that get us above the 50 percent mark and make us a 50 state party." He thus proposes fundamentally changing the successful Republican coalition of the last 30 years. Why is he doing this? Well, maybe he really believes it. Otherwise, it is self-destructive and unnecessary.
Which is exactly why Giuliani's candidacy increasingly gives me great pause. His apparently willful dismissal of social conservatives a core part of the Republican party is akin to a Democrat blowing off organized labor as part of that party's coalition. Does anyone think that would ever happen?
Posted by Eric Earling at November 10, 2007 04:55 PM | Email ThisAnd Rudy gets attacked for not having principles? If the man didn't have principles (like one of the other candidates) this primary would be a slam dunk! :)
Posted by: AD on November 10, 2007 05:07 PMReagan demonstrated that someone truly espousing conservative principles can win elections in this country handily. I know whining about "where is another Ronald Reagan?" gets tiresome, but didn't Republicans learn anything from him?
Posted by: Bill Cruchon on November 10, 2007 05:18 PMRudy the liar says illegal immigration should not be a crime:
http://www.glennbeck.com/news/09072007.shtml
GIULIANI: One of the things that congress wanted to do a year ago is to make it a crime, which indicates that it isn't.
GLENN: Should it be?
GIULIANI: Should it be? No, it shouldn't be because the government wouldn't be able to prosecute it. We couldn't prosecute 12 million people. We have only 2 million people in jail right now for all the crimes that are committed in the country, 2.5 million. If you were to make it a crime, you would have to take the resources of the criminal justice system and increase it by about 6. In other words, you'd have to take all the 800,000 police, and who knows how many police we would have to have.
Illegal immigration IS a national security issue. By his tacit acceptance of it by looking the other way, the liar reveals his lack of understanding of our national security. As far as this issue goes, we are in a time similar to the pre-911 days where we refused to acknowledge reality that terrorist wanted to do us harm. The day that a terorist walks accross the border with a WMD and sets it off in a US city will be the day these dunderheads may finally get it.
I refuse to learn this lesson at the school of hard knocks.
Posted by: pbj on November 10, 2007 05:24 PMAdvocates eliminating Roe vs. Wade,
Has been married to the same woman for over 50 years,
Served as a flight surgeon in the military
And who is also:
more fiscally conservative than the other candidates and has a plan for eliminating our deficits and eliminating the IRS,
voted for the border fence, and wants to follow the rule of law to defend US borders,
advocates disallowing illegal immigrants from welfare and social security
This candidate can unify the social conservatives and the fiscal conservatives in the Republican Party.
His name, as many of you have guessed, is Ron Paul, and he is currently in third place, ahead of McCain, but behind Giuliani and Romney. His popularity is growing fast! He raised $4.3 million in one day on 11/5/07.
Go, Ron Paul! Hope for America.
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on November 10, 2007 06:19 PMHe also said "Freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority."
That's not the kind of rhetoric we would have heard from Reagan.
Unlike Reagan and Ron Paul, Giuliani did not serve in the military. Are we sure we want to trust him with the role of commander in chief?
No one is saying he should change his views, and nothing in my post should be construed as you somehow take it that Giuliani's principles are in question. Your putting a whole lot of words in other peoples' mouths.
My point, like Lowry's (which he discussed in his Corner post I linked to), is that Giuliani has some areas of agreement with social conservatives. He would be better to talk about those issues - especially judges - rather than simply ignore them when he's on the stump and pretend there isn't more to the Republican coalition than economic and national security issues.
Moreover, I'm not terribly interested in a candidate who just tells me what I want to hear. I think Romney had a legitimate conversion on the value of being not only personally pro-life, but pro-life in terms of public policy. If it was inauthentic, I don't think conservatives like Paul Weyrich and John Willke (one of the founders of the National Right to Life Committee) would be signing on to support him.
Obviously, some people aren't going to agree, but I don't see where calling someone a bald-faced liar because you don't believe them in full is productive.
Posted by: Eric Earling on November 10, 2007 08:21 PMDon't minimize the social conservative support Rudy will have. He likely will pick a southern pro-lifer to be his running mate. That will appease a great many of the anti-abortion single-issue voters at the general election. Most of the social conservatives will easily support him in the general election, not just because Hillary is the other candidate, but because frankly social conservatives want the radical islamists to be wiped from the face of the earth and they will see that as something that could be accomplished well before they see the abortion issue being settled.
I don't see Rudy to take up the mantle and create a Rudyism following like Reaganism. He doesn't appear to be someone that will try to make his whole cabinet and executive branch follow his social views. Rather it appears that he will try to get others to be the social figurheads in his administration.
Posted by: Doug on November 10, 2007 08:39 PMI'd rather vote for Hillary.
Posted by: Independent Voter on November 10, 2007 09:05 PM"Freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority."
is that it does not seem to recognize any limitations on government authority. It is a statment of a dictator, not of a representative in a republic.
Reagan and Ron Paul could never have uttered this sentance. They would have said something like: "Freedom is not accepting whatever laws the leaders choose to enact, freedom is your natural or God-given right to do whatever you want as long as you are not hurting anyone else." This, of course, is the exact opposite of Rudy's quotation.
As proof of this, I offer some of my favorite quotations from the quintessential Republican conservative, Ronald Reagan. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do, and I hope that by contrast we will see that Rudy is no friend of limited government. He is no conservative in this sense. Instead, it is Ron Paul who's philosophy and rhetoric are most like those of the Gipper, most Republican, and most conservative.
"Man is not free unless government is limited."Â
"You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism."
"We've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of government himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?"
"We who live in free market societies believe that growth, prosperity and ultimately human fulfillment, are created from the bottom up, not the government down. Only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals are given a personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefitting from their success -- only then can societies remain economically alive, dynamic, progressive, and free."
"There are some who've forgotten why we have a military. It's not to promote war; it's to be prepared for peace."
"The federal government has taken too much tax money from the people, too much authority from the states, and too much liberty with the Constitution."
"Outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector."
"Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation from government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment."
"No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size."
"Nations crumble from within when the citizenry asks of government those things which the citizenry might better provide for itself."
"In an atmosphere of liberty, artists and patrons are free to think the unthinkable and create the audacious; they are free to make both horrendous mistakes and glorious celebrations."
"I believe the highest aspiration of man should be individual freedom and the development of the individual."
"How do you tell a Communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin."
"History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap."
"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."
"Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem."
"Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other."
"Government does not tax to get the money it needs; government always finds a need for the money it gets."
"Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things. It is the continuous revolution of the marketplace. It is the understanding that allows us to recognize shortcomings and seek solutions."
"Freedom is the recognition that no single person, no single authority or government has a monopoly on the truth, but that every individual life is infinitely precious, that every one of us put in this world has been put there for a reason and has something to offer."
"As government expands, liberty contracts."
"A government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth."
Ronald Reagan
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on November 10, 2007 09:14 PMHello?
Anyone there?
Huh.
Giuliani has an extremely difficult task: he needs to pander to social conservatives he almost completely disagrees with (on the issues that characterize their social conservatism), while at the same time, appear to everyone else like he's not. Part of this would be a wink-and-a-nod campaign over "originalist" justices, for example, but that can only go so far and is pretty transparent to everyone else.
He's not off to a good start, either, having been endorsed by Pat Robertson. Now, I know I am not from the South, but Pat Robertson is not nearly what he once was in the social conservative/evangelical movement. That won't get him many, if any, votes where it counts. It might help him win some Southern states should he get the nomination, but it won't get him the nomination.
If he got Dobson's endorsement, well, that's another thing entirely. But I guarantee (not that I have insider knowledge on the matter) that ain't gonna happen.
Posted by: pudge on November 10, 2007 09:51 PMGuthrie, Ron Paul is the Dennis Kucinich of the right. I'll bet he has seen UFO's. I don't disagree with some of what he says, but he has his head in the sand on national defense and has implied that we brought 9/11 on ourselves. Anyone who believes that needs to be in a mental institution. Whether you agree with our reasons to be in Afganistan and Iraq or not (I happen to believe these are two of the finest things our country has undertaken since WW2), you have to understand that now that we are there, we can't afford to leave without a complete victory. We are still paying a heavy price for losing in Viet Nam, despite winning every military engagement. We can't survive as a nation if defeatist truthers like Ron Paul have their way and we lose in Iraq. He has some validity in Congress, but no way in hell does he have any experience that qualifies him for the White House. If he gets the nomination (no chance in hell) I would vote for him because all of the Dems are even worse, but this country would be in for some dark days indeed.
A lot has been made over the past few days about Ron Paul raising $4 million in one day and how that shows that he has all this support. Big woop! It was nothing but a publicity stunt. The average donation was $100, which means it came from 40,000 donors. Nationwide, that is a tiny, insignificant number. When they sober up they will realize that they just spent their next week's beer budget and they will go "WTF, I won't do that again" and Paul's campaign will be toast.
I'm not crazy, at least yet, about any of the Republican candidates. Thomson is DOA. McCain is out for himself and not the country. Only Rudy and Romney actually have any experience that might qualify them for the job. None of the Democrats do.
Posted by: deedub on November 10, 2007 11:28 PMObviouslt you didn't read the entire interview. He was asked POINT BLANK "SHOULD ILLEGALLY INVADING THE UNITED STATES BE A CRIME???"
Rudy said "No". The interview was about Rudy the presidential candidate, not reminiscing about his PA days. Don't give me the crap and doublespeak about him "wearing his prosecutor's hat". It makes you look dishonest.
If that were the only indication of his PRO-ILLEGAL INVASION tendency, it could be dismissed. However he ran and thouroughly supported the largest sanctuary city in the United States.
Hey, I personally like the guy. I bought his book. I like Bush too but e has turned to be a disaster in regards to stopping the illegal invasion.
The last thing we need is a closet pro-illegal aliean supporter in the White House. Yeah I know the Democrats openly support invasion of the US. But if we are going to go to hell, I'd rather it carry the Democrat name than Republican. Principles are something like a cheap suit in fashion on year and thrown out the next. People aren't so stupid that the cannot realize this. But politicians think they are. And we wonder why so many people do not vote anymore.
If Rudy supporters were honest, they'd admit he is all for illegal immigration and they could care less. They would admit that they could care less about any principles but lust just to win. Power at any price? Not for me thanks.
Oh, and for the ones who are wistful about Reagan, he was responsible for the last great act of true no questions asked amnesty for illegals, was he not? I think Reagan was great, but he wasn't really the bastion of stolid conservatism that people these days seem to think he was. And that is how he got elected. If people here can remember their history, they'd remember that Goldwater did not get elected to President!
Go Rudy!
Posted by: ferrous on November 10, 2007 11:39 PMThis isn't a newsflash, and I agree with Paul on that. And Rudy incredibly said he'd never heard that before, which makes me think he didn't pay attention to the 9/11 Commission, or talk to any experts at all.
What I *disagree* with Paul on is that "them" hating us for what we did means we shouldn't have done those things. While there's a lot I would change about U.S. actions in the Middle East over the past several decades, there's also a lot I wouldn't ... even knowing that it might have contributed to "them" hating us enough to attack us on 9/11.
Posted by: pudge on November 11, 2007 12:01 AMI was referring to the transcendent political meme du jour clearly alluded to in your post that Rudy has support only because he's ahead in the polls and is our only competitive option. The quote talking about the supposed "beautiful, wonderful principles" was not necessarily stated to mean that Rudy and his supporters don't care about principles or that electability should be one's primary criterion for selecting a candidate, but rather it was a tongue in cheek jab at others in the race (Romney) who brag all day about conservative principles that magically (conveniently?) came into existence the same day the decision was made to enter the Republican primary.
Posted by: AD on November 11, 2007 12:48 AM:snip:
Hassan al-Banna, not Sayyid Qutb, was the founder of the Society of Muslim Brothers in Egypt in 1928. Nevertheless, Qutb popularized the Brothers during the 1950s and 1960s. His most famous acolyte is Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s radicalizer, personal nephrologist, friend, and #2 man in the al-Qaeda operation. To understand bin Laden requires an understanding of Zawahiri; to understand Zawahiri, one needs to acknowledge his mentor, Qutb, who has had an enormous influence on all of the characters in the current Al Qaeda passion play we are witnessing in the world today.
Lawrence Wright, in his fine “New Yorker” article, “The Man Behind Bin Laden” (2002), writes that “Qutb had studied American literature and popular culture; the United States, in contrast with the European powers, seemed to him and other Egyptian nationalists to be a firendly neutral power anda democratic ideal.” (p. 5) But when Qutb encountered America, he experienced a devastating culture shock that transformed his life and, quite frankly, my life, too (the attack on September 11, 2001 can be linked directly to Qutb’s ideas, writings, and proselytizing).
“Qutb wrote about many things Americans take for granted as examples of the nation's culture of greed, for example, the green lawns in front of homes in Greeley. Ironically, Greeley in the middle of the 20th century was a very conservative town, where alcohol was illegal. It was a planned community, founded by Utopian idealists looking to make a garden out of the dry plains north of Denver using irrigation. The founding fathers of Greeley were by all reports temperate, religious and peaceful people,” said Robert Siegel. (3) “But Qutb wasn’t convinced. America in 1949 was not a natural fit for Qutb,” Siegel continued. “He was a man of color, and the United States was still largely segregated. He was an Arab [and] American public opinion favored Israel, which had come into existence just a year before.” Never married and with no evidence of ever having had a relationship with a woman, Qutb bitterly denounced American women as “vixen” and jazz music “created by Negroes to satisfy their love of noise and to whet their sexual desires.” (Wright, p. 6)
...
Qutb returned to Egypt a radical where he reinvented himself as a militant Muslim (similar to the New York Times description). When Army Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser took power in 1952 following an uprising against the British, whose “lingering occupation of the Suez Canal zone enraged the nationalists” and who had massacred 50 Egyptian policemen, mobs, organized by the Muslim Brothers, tore up Cairo. And so, the British began to leave.
http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=239
Posted by: FT on November 11, 2007 06:50 AMAs for whether it's factually true or not, I tend to think it is. There are many who believe very strongly in social conservatism; Rudy believes that the Republican tent is large enough to hold those who don't.
If the Republicans are the only party serious about facing the threat of Islamic terrorists, he is absolutely right. Anyone in their right mind should vote Republican regardless of their views on anything else.
SAYING it, though, is another matter entirely.
I don't disagree to some extent and have said in the past that Giuliani and Romney are both going to have to pick a VP nominee with impeccable conservative credentials should they win the nomination. That doesn't take away, however, from being perplexed at Giuliani's oft omission of social conservatives on the trail. While there is much to like about his candidacy, that tactic does him more harm than good.
AD -
The "meme du jour" you mention wasn't one of Lowry's points or mine. I don't espouse it anyway since it's founded on hypothetical general election match-ups a year away from the actual election, when the current electorate is hardly engaged in following the primaries, let alone next year's general.
Also, I get your point about the possible intent of the Giuliani surrogate in question. I've just heard that kind of talk come out of the mouths of too many moderates who use it as a polite way of saying, "let's shut up about those issues for a bit." Moreover, the surrogate's statement is just an anecdote which more overtly supports the more subtle signals Giuliani's campaign is already giving off.
Posted by: Eric Earling on November 11, 2007 07:24 AMWhoribillary is less inevitable than she was before her last debate and her continued debacle since, but she's still probably inevitable. She really has to worry about getting the male vote and the married woman vote.. and God, I hope the thinking persons vote! Also, the debate was only the beginning: she has too many unanswered questions and incomprehensible double answers... except when she says MORE TAXES. Tuesdays tax defeats across the country doesn't exactly bode well for that message. And what has she actually done except block-tackle for Bill's hyperactive groin? Certainly nothing of note as Senator (although I hear she's hell on wheels at post office naming).
Rudy is not the perfect candidate, but then one really doesn't exist, so single issue voters need to wake up and get over it or they will wake up to President Whoribillary.
Huckabee has all the social conservative credentials, but lets face it Whoribillary will eat him alive... as an appetizer.
Whatever it is you think about Rudy: love his positions or hate them, the one thing that absolutely has to be admitted is that you know exactly where he stands. Whether I agree with him or not, I admire that he has the courage to own his positions and say 'Take me as I am because...'. That's pretty gutsy (and honest!) in a day and age when most politicians will tell whomever they are talking with exactly what they want to hear and/or whatever it takes to get a vote and then turn around and say the oppposite to the next guy.
Posted by: Ragnar Danneskjold on November 11, 2007 11:45 AMWhy the Ron Paul Campaign is Dangerous for the GOP
Posted by: Ragnar Danneskjold on November 11, 2007 12:01 PMI agree with you about Hitlary. I think she had her Howard Dean moment. It is time for the media to put the plastic crown on another anointed liberal.
Posted by: pbj on November 11, 2007 12:34 PMBy the way, the unpopularity of the Iraq war is exactly why Rudy, if nominated, would run to the center on the Iraq war issue after being nominated by the R's. Just wait. You'll see. Your hawkish candidate must start advocating troop withdrawals in order to get elected. And he will, and when he does he will sound like a total hypocrite. You will be very dissappointed, and the electorate will see him as having no principles, and reacting to polls.
deedub @15, pudge answered you nicely @ 18, and my reply to pudge is that the trade-off of US interventionism just is not worth it. The benefits accrue mostly to special interests, and the costs are not just to our own safety and prestige. Because our interventionism makes America hated, it also tends to make Liberty hated. Liberty gets tarred with the same brush. If we really want to export our principles of freedom, free trade and limited government, we should seek to be admired, not feared.
That said, we need a strong defense. But what we taxpayers are now paying for is an occupying empire, or the defense of foreigners, not Americans.
Politically Incorrect @ 20: Ron Paul's position is that abortion is a state's rights issue. What would happen if Roe vs. Wade were eliminated? The states would each regulate it differently. Abortion would only be totally illegal in a few states like S. Dakota and Utah. In most states, it would be legal in the first four or five months, and this is when most abortions occur anyway! The way it is now, aborting an 8.5 month fetus is legal, but I think that is infanticide, don't you? My boy was born premature at 8.5 months... I am pro-choice, but only before the fetus has a significant amount of brain function... THAT's when a fetus acquires rights.
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on November 11, 2007 01:00 PMThe drive by media is setting up Paul as the next Perot to split the conservative vote.
If this happens, it will be because the country club Republicans still have their heads somewhere up the Hershey Highway.
Posted by: Independent Voter on November 11, 2007 01:44 PMGuthrie@28: "...we should seek to be admired, not feared." You're kidding, right? The terrorists are ignorant savages who have bought into a religous philosophy of death and hatred. The closest thing they can feel to admiration is fear. So unless we can figure out a way to kill every last one of them, for them to fear us is a very healthy thing. Something you cumbaya folks have a hard time understanding.
By the way, contrary to what you hear in the press and from certain folks with an anti-American political agenda, we are respected and admired throughout most of the civilized world. Most Europeans, for example, understand that without our interventionism on three occassions in the past century, they would be under occupation by the Germans or Russians today. If we had allowed that to happen, it is unlikely we would not have suffered the same fate eventually.
Posted by: deedub on November 11, 2007 02:13 PMAnd all that deficit spending makes us WEAKER, not stronger.
All I am saying is if we really were a shining example of these principles, and if it lead to peace and prosperity for Americans as you and I believe it will, and if foreigners saw that then they would want it for themselves. Free trade and American telivision shows such as Dallas did more to export the principles of Freedom than US foreign policy ever did since the early 70's.
Your goal of exterminating the "ignorant savages" is unachievable, utopian authoritarian empire-building and will only make problems worse. You will create terrorists faster than you can ever destroy them. The cost will be our own security and freedom.
I am a fiscal conservative. I am a laissez-faire, free market capitalist. Call me a liberal if you will, but call me a "classical liberal" like the founders! I wear that label proudly.
But given that no one can win in '08 on a pro-war footing, would you rather have:
A) Giuliani, with his socially liberal, fiscally liberal positions, and his new (July '08)centrist position on the Iraq war.
OR
B) Ron Paul, with his pro-life, fiscally conservative positions, and his consistent position of using US taxpayer money to defend US borders?
The choice is yours.
But I am for Ron Paul all the way! If he loses the nomination, he will not split the R vote because he will run for his Congressional seat again from Texas. He has said he would not run for President as a Libertarian or as an independent. If he loses the R nomination, I'll vote Libertarian. :) By the way, Bloomberg might be the Ross Perot of '08. You have much more to fear that he will split the R's. Enjoy Hillary in '08!
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on November 11, 2007 02:44 PMIt's hard to understand sometimes why this country gives aid to certain other countries. Sometimes this is a mistake. Other times, by doing so we may be keeping an even bigger problem in check. Stalin was arguably a more evil entity than Hitler, yet we allied with him to defeat the more immediate threat. It is never so simple as it seems and I am suspicious of the judgment of people who see the world in such simplistic terms.
I do not accept your given that a pro-war candidate can't win. While the majority of Americans may want to end the war, I don't think a majority want the war to end in defeat. If we leave Iraq the way we left Viet Nam, the world will see it as another defeat and our days as a nation will be numbered.
There are lots of things I don't like about Rudy. But he is strong on national defense and your guy isn't. He has experience in actually running something and your guy doesn't. Ron Paul says he won't run if he doesn't get the nomination, but don't be surprised if he changes his mind. It wouldn't be the first time a politician's ego got in the way of his common sense. And as for Bloomberg, bring it on. He will draw more votes from the Democrats than from the Republicans.
So you won't vote for the Republican nominee unless it is Ron Paul. Instead of voting for a candidate you see as flawed, you will vote for someone who has no chance of winning and help a Democratic candidate who is even more flawed. Smart. Really smart.
Posted by: deedub on November 11, 2007 04:10 PMDon't worry, Ron Paul won't run as an L or I. And now I hear that Bloomberg may run for NY Governor instead of Prez. Good news.
I vote for the candidate who best represents my values, as long as the fit is "close enough." Ron Paul is close to my views, Rudy is not. I will not waste my vote by casting it for someone who is opposed to my position, even if it means Hillary, who is much worse, gets in to office. Why? Because my one vote will not change the outcome. Hillary will win or lose anyway. I vote to defend my values, to represent my values to the system. If I vote for Rudy, the system records that as support for all of his policies. This takes me further from my goals of liberty.
If the R's think they can have my vote while not supporting my position, then they have no incentive to run candidates like Reagan, Goldwater and Ron Paul.
So, go ahead, sell your vote cheap. I have higher standards for my vote. I will not vote for the lesser of two evils. When you do so, the result is evil.
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on November 11, 2007 05:15 PMNot likely.
Those people will no more vote conservative than Seattle will collectively grow a thinking brain.
Ron is their "useful idiot" to be used to create chaos, nothing more.
Furthermore it's backfiring on them:
Ron Paul fans upset they cannot get more than 4% of Republicans to support Paul which leaves him OUT of the Iowa debate Dec 4 and sitting on the sidelines along with Tancredo and Hunter.
Posted by: Ragnar Danneskjold on November 11, 2007 08:33 PMRon Paul is bringing:
Libertarians (Partisans)
libertarians
young people
dissaffected, apathetic voters
fiscal conservatives opposed to the war
people who value the Constitution
and many others
in to the Republican Party. He is causing them to register Republican.
Ron Paul is not being used by the Democrats. They know he is the only Republican who can get "to the left" of Hillary, and undermine her support. They know he is the only Republican who has credibility on the issue of bringing the troops home, and is therefore the only real threat to Hillary on what will be the biggest issue of the campaign. The Democrats would love him or Bloomberg to run an independent campaign and split the vote, but neither of these will happen.
Remember the 2006 elections? Republicans were turned out in droves for three reasons:
1) The Iraq war is unpopular (Still is)
2) The Republicans were perceived to be corrupt after having had control of Congress for too long
3) The Republicans had not controlled spending and deficits (Still aren't)
All of these facts are still true, and if the R's don't nominate someone who can defuse these issues, they will suffer the same kind of defeat they did in 2006.
Ron Paul is an excellent choice on all of these. He wants to bring the troops home quickly, he has an excellent record based on principles and no scandals and he has never voted for a tax increase or an unbalanced budget in his 20 years in Congress.
Are Republicans smart enough to nominate him? I doubt it.
And if they turn us away, we will go back to voting Libertarian or not voting at all.
Your choice.
By the way, I love you nom de plume, "Ragnar Danneskjold." It comes from Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, my favorite book. I assume that you and I have similar values. We probably agree with Ayn Rand about 95% of the time. I'd say the 5% is probably different. For instance, I know that Rand was an atheist. Here, I agree with her and you do not. On the Iraq war, I am guessing that Rand would have advocated it, while you and I will disagree with each other.
I guess my point is that you and I agree on so much more than we disagree on. Free markets, limited government, etc... Let's just agree to disagree on Iraq, God and Ron Paul. I will never persuade you, and you will probably never persuade me.
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on November 11, 2007 11:16 PMOne of the top ten slogans for the Ron Paul campaign is "who is Ron Paul?"
I'll bet that there are more Ayn Rand fans in the Ron Paul campaign, than in the campaigns of all the other Republican candidates for President combined.
Care to join us? We are taking the US one step closer to Atlantis.
We could use a good pirate like you. Will you comandeer a government ship for us and deliver the gold back to the people who earned it?
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on November 12, 2007 10:06 AMI'll make you a deal: I'll accept that one reason they attacked us is because we are infidels if you will accept the fact that another reason they attacked us was the presence of our troops on their soil.
Does that sound like a fair deal? It is the truth.
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on November 12, 2007 10:11 AMAll of this time is being wasted and people are getting sick of the 08 presidential race before there are primaries, but the proctologists posing as prostitutes of the media are puking out more stories to distract the public from the real news out there - yawn !
Posted by: KS on November 12, 2007 11:20 AMI have accepted your reason as one of the reasons for the attacks: they hate us because we are infidels. It seems a bit uncharitable of you not to accept that my reason, that we are over there, is not also one of the reasons.
Doesn't it make sense that in an issue as complex as this one there should be multiple reasons?
Why are you so afraid to accept the simple idea that they would resent our troops being in their country? Wouldn't YOU resent the presence of Saudi or Iranian troops garrisoned in the 50 states? I sure would! :)
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on November 12, 2007 11:39 AMthe trade-off of US interventionism just is not worth it.
Fine. But that is not the argument often presented by Paul, and others, which is: there is blowback, so therefore we were wrong. It always depends on the case in question, because as you say, there are trade-offs. It's an equation.
Also, that would be great if Bloomberg ran for governor. I don't like him, but he is many times better than Spitzer. He, respectively, favors and opposes just about everything I oppose and favor.
deedub:
I wasn't quoting Ron Paul. I said he IMPLIED that we were to blame for 9/11.
Except no, he didn't, except in that he stated we were to blame for our own policies, the result of which was, in part, "blowback," including 9/11. That is all he said, or implied. And it's absolutely true.
The theory that if we had just had different or no policies in the middle east we would have been safe and they would have loved us is just silly and implies that we brought this on ourselves.
It's not silly, it's true. If we had nothing to do with the Middle East, 9/11 never would have happened. That is not to say we are "to blame" for 9/11. We're not. Everyone is responsible for their own actions.
I have noticed that it is primarily left-leaning "experts" who seem to hold this view.
No, it is all of them.
They may hate us for our middle east policies, but their hatred runs much deeper than that and to think otherwise is just naive.
Of course it does, but so what? They may hate us, but they would have had no cause to attack us and have us respond militarily unless we were doing something to them.
Again, I don't think what we were doing was wrong. Far from it. I did, and do, support our support of Israel, our decade-long enforcement of the no-fly zone in Iraq and military presence in Saudi Arabia, and other things that angered the radical Islamists. But it's obviously not true to say that those things has no significant influence on their decision to attack us, or that they were at all likely to attack us otherwise.
That's homing in on the point, not "honing" in.
Eric, you need an editor.
Posted by: stu on November 12, 2007 12:05 PMGuthrie says that there were multiple reasons for 9/11 including our middle east policies and he is right. However, he and you want to give more weight to the issue of our policies than the fact that they just plain want to kill all infidels. The problem with your theory is, absent our involvement in the middle east, their hatred of us would still exist just as deeply. Our policies are just one of their current excuses in their propaganda war. It's impossible to claim, logically, that 9/11 would not have happened if our policies had just been different. The best you can do is say that the attack might have been delayed while they dealt with more immediate enemies.
These death cultists have stated their intention to rule the world and rid it of the infidels. While there is no way they can achieve this goal, it is stupid to ignore them or try to accomodate them in any way.
"But it's obviously not true to say that those things has no significant influence on their decision to attack us, or that they were at all likely to attack us otherwise." The first part I agree with. The last part isn't obvious at all.
Posted by: deedub on November 12, 2007 01:03 PMHave you ever stopped to wonder WHY Ron Paul (along with Rudy) has become the darling of the LEFTY press?
By the way, Ragnar, did you know that Ron Paul named one of his sons "Rand?"
I'm afraid that doesn't sway me one iota. As I have previously mentioned, I chose the name to maintian anonymity and because Ragnar is a favorite FICTION character. I could have easily chosen Hermione Granger, Repairman Jack, Stephanie Plum, Joe Pike or Jack Reacher.
That said, I do like Rand.. a lot. I've read some of her books multiple times and I agree with much of her philosophy. BUT I am not defined by Rand... or by fiction.
Regarding Paul and his $4 million dollar day. Yep, it's an impressive number. BUT, I understand that there were no major contributors just loads of little ones. IF they all gave $100 each... that's still only 40,000 contributors and, although I hate to burst your bubble, 40,000 is an insignificant number when standing agains MILLIONS of votes availbale across the nation.
We all have crazy uncles and we love them even when they confound us. Ron is the crazy uncle for the GOP family. I 'll give him points for tenacity but I stand by my original thoughts on Ron.
God, I cannot wait till we are done with the primaries
Tell you what. There's a paypal link on the main page. Send us a truckload of cash and maybe Stefan will consider hiring someone to pore over the posts of volunteer bloggers, prior to publication, so that every little typo that upsets you so greatly can be addressed.
Posted by: Eric Earling on November 12, 2007 02:40 PMSaying that we are responsible for the "blowback" from our policies clearly implies that only we were responsible for the attack.
I didn't say we were responsible for blowback. I said blowback happens when we act. This is true. Please don't waste time by denying it. And the potential responses to what we do have to be factored into the equation.
For example, I was quite convinced that if we went into Iraq in 2003, that terrorism in and out of Iraq would increase. I was correct. Yet, I favored going into Iraq in 2003. So by your logic, I was actually IN FAVOR of the Madrid and London bombings, since I knew things like that would likely happen in response to our actions, and was in favor of acting anyway.
But that's nonsense. All I was doing was recognizing what some of the responses to our actions would be. This does not absolve the terrorists of responsibility, it does not imply what they are doing is justified, and it does not imply our policies were wrong.
It is nothing more or less than evaluating what others might do in response to what we do. The only other option is to not think about it, or irrationally pretend that what other people do has no relationship to what we do.
The other implication is that our policies were wrong. (Some undoubtedly were, but surely not all.) You may disagree with this implication, but I have seen no evidence that Ron Paul does.
Yes, and that is what I was explicitly complaining about in regards to Paul, further up.
Guthrie says that there were multiple reasons for 9/11 including our middle east policies and he is right. However, he and you want to give more weight to the issue of our policies than the fact that they just plain want to kill all infidels.
No. What I want to do is honestly evaluate the facts. And the facts tell me that 9/11 never would have happened -- not now, or in the near future, anyway -- if we had not been involved in the Middle East, similar to how the Madrid and London bombings would not have happened if not for the Iraq invasion and subsequent military actions in that country. That doesn't make those policies wrong, but it's foolish to think they would have happened anyway.
The problem with your theory is, absent our involvement in the middle east, their hatred of us would still exist just as deeply.
You can't know that. However, it is not just about how much they hate us, but what they are willing to do and sacrifice in order to try to harm us. If you have a family and a business and some land, you won't be so quick to risk it all just to kill some infidels, because how does that help YOU? And we see this all the time. Terrorists whose family was harmed, and businessmen who give resources to terrorists because they saw some terrible thing "Americans" did on TV.
I am not saying we are the only cause for their hatred. I am saying they would not risk so much to harm us if we left them alone.
It's impossible to claim, logically, that 9/11 would not have happened if our policies had just been different. The best you can do is say that the attack might have been delayed while they dealt with more immediate enemies.
Um. Those are both saying the same thing, in fact. 9/11 is 9/11. It's not some other attack later.
Posted by: pudge on November 12, 2007 04:25 PMIt seems to me that in the current era of media spun divisive politics that the old axiom is more true, but less followed than ever. ie Voting for the lesser of 2 evils, is still voting for evil.
Posted by: lurkertroll on November 13, 2007 11:15 AMActually all three will distance them from Bush and...It will take nothing less to defeat the Democrat - Hillary or whoever..
Posted by: KS on November 13, 2007 09:16 PMThe tactic is not necessarily a bad one, it depends on the opponent.
That said, it is of course better to have a candidate people will turn out in favor of.
Posted by: pudge on November 14, 2007 06:30 PM