Why Giuliani Failed

One of my favorite National Review contributors weighs in.

The collapse of Rudy Giuliani’s presidential bid is surely one of the most striking developments of the 2008 campaign. Strategic mistake? I don’t think so. Rudy lost because he dissed social conservatives. In fact, the reason Giuliani missed those early primaries is because he dissed social conservatives. Giuliani’s attempt to take apart and reconstitute Ronald Reagan’s winning political coalition was his original sin…

With Huckabee’s triumph weakening Giuliani further in New Hampshire, Rudy decided on strategic retreat to Florida as his best option. Perhaps in retrospect Giuliani could and should have made a bolder stand in New Hampshire. But Rudy’s early decisions on how to handle social conservatives underpin his logic of retreat. South Carolina was another socially conservative state where Rudy was profoundly handicapped. Had Giuliani coopted at least a significant group of social conservatives back when he was seen as the party’s savior, Huckabee would not have been able to take so many of South Carolina’s evangelicals, and McCain would have had to fight a viable Rudy for South Carolina’s hawks.

One of the keys to understanding why social conservatives are so important is to realize that they are the broadest demographic within the GOP’s prime constituency. For the average church-going, tax-paying citizen in the South (just for an easily imaginable example), a candidate who is pro-life or pro-marriage is who they will favor, not necessarily one who is best on taxes or education. To throw away social conservatives and win is something that a Republican will probably not see for many, many years, if ever.

Oh, and By The Way…

Rudy Guliani may be dropping out of the race, and he may be endorsing John McCain, but he’s got one last bit of news for America:

Giuliani said he had spoken to Romney and he commended McCain, as well as Mike Huckabee – and Ron Paul – “who won all of the debates,’’ Giuliani added.

So, I guess it’s OK to tell the truth when you have nothing left to lose?

Ahh, politics.

McCain’s Triumph

John McCain demonstrated last night why some people consider him the GOP’s only serious hope this election year. His victory over Mitt Romney is Florida saw him win in a duel between two very different visions for the Republican party. McCain, for better or worse, embodies the qualities that defined the Republicans in a post-9/11 Bush presidency: Tough on national security, weak on national soveriegnty, and insistent that the first quality trumps the second vice.

McCain representes the dramatic transformation that happened in the GOP under President Bush in the War on Terror-era. Now, Republicans believe that President Bush established the party philosophy on engaging terror, and most of the last 6-7 years has been spent in defense of that doctrine (one’s definition of which means all the difference in support or opposition). McCain has defended it relentlessly.

McCain promises to bring some sort of unity to the scattered fragments of the GOP. Conservatives have right to be angry over McCain’s blatant compromises on illegal immigration, and his view of the Constitution does not stand out among his party. But many view McCain as the clear conservative choice over fiscally progressive and socially dubious Mitt Romney. McCain, for all his faults, has somewhat of a sense of direction and consistency to his record. Romney does not, and that is a glaring deficiency in today’s GOP, as it is rare enough among the Congress.

Can McCain defeat the Democrats? Probably not, but the larger issue for Republicans this year is finding out who can defeat the Democrats running the GOP. To that end, McCain inspires considerably more optimism than Mitt Romney.

Christopher Hitchens: The Michael Moore of Religion

One telling aspect of a debater is how often he or she resorts to name-calling, sarcasm, or more frequently, arrogant assertions that everyone except his opponent is very much aware how right he is. Well, Christopher Hitchens makes a point of getting the triple crown whenever he can open his mouth, and a recent debate with Intelligent Design advocate Jay Richards demonstrates. Read some of these Hitchisms, and admire how, with Matrix-like efficieny, an “intellectual” dodges every issue:

“I can’t imagine it’ll take me 14 minutes to demolish intelligent design, as I refuse to call it…”

“I rest my case… [t]his is an honest guy, who has just made it very clear [that] science has nothing to do with his world view.”  [said after asking Richards if he believed the virgin birth and resurrection, to which Richards answered yes]

“I think I am smarter than most people…”

Honestly, I don’t think we can blame Hitchens completely. He is the product of an intellectuall system which has long abandoned the art of reason and dialogue and settled for intellectual elitism and class-based social discrimination. He is simply regurgitating the same talking points Oxford has been churning out for almost a century.

He is like the Michael Moore of religion, producing hit pieces long on conjecture and phantom repression-theory but short on substance and facts. A intellectual shock-jock–nothing less, and certainly nothing more.

Read: Thinking Christian’s take

Wandering Eyes

Drudge gets the prize this week:

Time Will Tell

As I write, the President is about 12 minutes from delivering his final State of the Union address.

This is a momentous occasion. A President departs who, regardless of one’s opinion regarding him, endured the most dramatically challenging eight years the Executive Branch has seen possibly since the birth of the United States. His legacy is for the people he served to determine, but the severe commitment he consistently displayed, both professionally and personally, can never in honesty be forgotten.

We live in a time where political divison and polarization is not only absurdly easy, but it has become standard operating procedure for most citizens. George W. Bush was certainly not a uniter. No one, not even he, has claimed that he accomplished ideological harmony during his terms. What he DID accomplish was to engage the United States, for truthfully the first time, in the defining national challenge for our generation: The War on Terror.

It has not been a perfect, and even less so popular, administration. President Bush’s poor constitutional vision was by no means isolated in Washington after the emotional floodgates of 9/11 were opened. A shortsighted strategy, a triumphal facade, and a downright wrong use of Presidential power were things that the Bush Administration did not need. Indeed, they should never have happened under a conservative president. His efforts to salvage himself politically by compromising on illegal immigration and education reform have disillusioned the core conservative constituency of the GOP. President Bush has left us much to rebuke.

But a fair question is this: Is the United States really a safer place? I thnk the only answer is yes. By virtue of the vices of Presidents long departed, President Bush encountered 9/11 and the War on Terror with a government so massive, so drunk with the wine of federal fiat (and with a citizenry so used to it), that to do what he did simply showed he knew what he could do. It is hardly fair to blame President Bush for the size of the federal government; Policies of revered nationa figures (FDR and JFK coming immediately to mind, but there were others) were what created the behemoth we now call Washington, D.C. We will never have the benefit of knowing what Reagan or Jefferson would have done from 2000-2008. Instead, we know two things: President Bush said protecting America was his first goal, and to that end, he has largely been a success.

Time, and only time, will tell what history says about George W. Bush. I have a feeling it will neither crucify nor deify him. I believe the President will be remembered as a man who did what he could to do want he wanted to do. Time will tell of the legacy of our next president, whom we will choose this year. Let us choose wisely, as I believe we did eight and four years ago.

Dropping The O-Bomb(a)

Barack Obama destroyed Hillary Clinton in this weekend’s South Carolina primary. There might be some legitimate shock at just how disparate the numbers really are, but honestly there’s a simple explanation for why Senator Obama won.

Obama has outpoliticked Hillary Clinton every conceivable phase of the game. He has presented himself as the smarter, more sensible agent of real anti-establishment change and has conistently demonstrated that his appeal is not exaggerated. This has to irk the Clintons; Hillary, for the obvious backhand to her smug self-assuredness,  and Bill for the loud and clear message it sends him about his own lack of deification within the Democratic party.

Let’s face it: The Clintons are on the run. They played hardball hoping to call in old loyalties, and instead looked like the scum of the political earth. Obama has beaten Hillary by letting her be herself, and the inevitable result will be not just defeat but disillusionment. What can she do? Well, for one thing, she’s leashing the attack dog. She might perhaps be able to repair her image in less aggressively pro-Obama states, but the sound bytes she has given out (particularly to a conservative media base that has all but ignored the Illinois Senator) will be on loop for some time.

The nomination is Obama’s to lose. Whether he will or not is too early now to tell, and weirder things have happened. But the reversal of fortunes has been finalized.

John Edwards, Before & After

Charles Krauthammer writes that John Edwards has a serious problem deciding exactly what he’s for and when he’s for it.

As senator, he voted for the Bush-Kennedy No Child Left Behind education reform. He now campaigns against it, promising to have it “radically overhauled.”

As senator, he voted for the Patriot Act, calling it “a good bill … and I am pleased to support it.” He now attacks it.

As senator, he voted to give China normalized trade relations. Need I say? He now campaigns against liberalized trade with China as a sellout of the middle class to the great multinational agents of greed, etc.

Breathtaking. People can change their minds about something. But everything? The man served one term in the Senate. He left not a single substantial piece of legislation to his name, only an astonishing string of votes on trade, education, civil liberties, energy, bankruptcy, and, of course, war that now he not only renounces but inveighs against.

This is interesting because I think it points to a greater problem within the modern Democratic party, which has defined itself in terms of the Republican platform. Unable to manufacture economic strategies relevant after the 50s and foreign policies that actually worked, the Democrats shape-shifted continually to keep in step with their new appointment as the party of pure social progressivism. The tally has not been kind though. Since 1980, GOP to Democratic presidential years count 20-8.

And people like John Edwards probably explain why.

Have a happy weekend.

Will The Real Greenland Please Stand Up?

The Global Warming Heretic is getting mixed signals out of the Left’s favorite apocalyptic hot spot.

From the London Times via Fox News, January 17:

Greenland Ice Sheet Rapidly Melting, Scientists Find

Greenland’s ice sheet shrank more rapidly last summer than at any other time in the past 50 years, measurements have shown.

Researchers said the extent of the melt was evidence that the ice sheet was in “inexorable decline” because of global warming.

The researchers found a shift in meteorological patterns over the past 15 years, with a direct correlation being found between Greenland’s weather and the generally warmer weather across both the northern and southern hemispheres.

From Icecap.us, January 17:

Ice Returns as Greenland Temps Plummet

On Disko Bay in western Greenland, where a number of prominent world leaders have visited in recent years to get a first-hand impression of climate change, temperatures have dropped so drastically that the water has frozen over for the first time in a decade. “The ice is up to 50cm thick,” said Henrik Matthiesen, an employee at Denmark’s Meteorological Institute who has also sailed the Greenlandic coastline for the Royal Arctic Line. ‘We’ve had loads of northerly winds since Christmas which has made the area miserably cold.’ Matthiesen suggested the cold weather marked a return to the frigid temperatures common a decade ago.

 Conference, anyone?

What Really Happened With Fred Thompson

Michael Ramirez