Right Side of the Rainbow

This is correct. McCain-Feingold is unforgivable.

Unless John McCain repudiates his signature legislation and then champions its repeal, his dream of occupying the White House will elude him.

(HT: The Man)

Posted by Paul at 10:10 PM | Permalink

New York Sun:

Mayor Giuliani is calling on the Republican Party to redefine itself as “the party of freedom,” focusing on lower taxes, school choice, and a health care system rooted in free market principles.

Delivering a policy-driven overview of his presidential platform yesterday, Mr. Giuliani outlined the agenda in a Washington speech before a conservative think tank that sought to make clear distinctions between his vision and that of the Democrats, if not his rivals for the Republican nomination in 2008. The former New York mayor’s proposed redefinition of the Republican platform would signal a shift away from any focus on social issues, on which Mr. Giuliani is much less ideologically aligned with the party.

[…]

More than 200 scholars from Stanford University’s Hoover Institution greeted Mr. Giuliani warmly, but a few had pointed questions for him. One audience member asked him to respond to a “deep concern” that his background as a mayor had given him little experience in foreign policy.

“What makes you think that the mayor of New York City doesn’t need a foreign policy?” Mr. Giuliani shot back, drawing a roar of laughter and applause from the luncheon crowd.

Giuliani said it’s an analytical error to define our fight with terrorists as a war on terrorism; it is, he said, a “war of the terrorists against us.”

Rudy appears today at a fundraiser for the state Republican Party in Virginia and on Friday he’ll address the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C.

Posted by Paul at 9:30 AM | Permalink

I don’t think Republicans actually want this.

Posted by Paul at 9:40 PM | Permalink

Among likely voters, per Rasmussen.

Yes, yes, I know — all this early polling is useless. But what do you want? More Anna Nicole Smith?

Posted by Paul at 5:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Associated Press:

A deadline is a deadline is a deadline, the Supreme Court said Wednesday in refusing to allow a man wrongly imprisoned for more than eight years to sue the police officers who arrested him.

7-2. Opinion by Scalia. Stevens and Souter concur in judgment. Breyer and Ginsburg dissent.

This Court believes in deadlines! Meet them or die:

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a Florida death row prisoner lost an opportunity to challenge his conviction in the federal court system because he missed a one-year filing deadline.

5-4. Opinion by Thomas, with whom Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy and Alito joined. Dissent by Ginsburg, with whom Stevens, Souter and Breyer joined.

Associated Press:

In a victory for President Bush, a divided federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that Guantanamo Bay detainees cannot use the U.S. court system to challenge their indefinite imprisonment.

2-1, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Opinion.

Associated Press:

The Supreme Court threw out a $79.5 million award that a jury had ordered a cigarette maker to pay to a smoker’s widow, a ruling that could bode well for other businesses seeking stricter limits on big-dollar verdicts.

5-4, but not what you think. Opinion by Breyer, with whom Roberts, Kennedy, Souter and Alito joined. Stevens, Scalia, Thomas and Ginsburg dissent. Go figure.

Posted by Paul at 2:30 PM | Permalink

Hill Democrats stumble on Iraq funding curbs
Democrats were ill-prepared for unplanned disclosure, Republican attacks
Washington Post

It sounds like they were also unprepared for Democratic attacks:

“If this is going to be legislation that’s crafted in such a way that holds back resources from our troops, that is a non-starter, an absolute non-starter,” declared Rep. Jim Matheson (Utah), a leader of the conservative Blue Dog Democrats.

ADDED @ 13:00 —

True, Democrats have a majority in Congress. But anti-war liberals don’t:

“If you strictly limit a commander’s ability to rotate troops in and out of Iraq, that kind of inflexibility could put some missions and some troops at risk.” — Rep. Chet Edwards, D-TX

“Congress has no business micromanaging a war, cutting off funding or even conditioning those funds.” — Rep. Jim Cooper, D-TN

Meanwhile, Cheney tells Pelosi to rotate:

Vice President Dick Cheney refused Friday to take back his charge that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s opposition to President Bush’s Iraq war buildup is playing into the hands of the al Qaeda terrorist network.

[…]

“… my statement was that if we adopt the Pelosi policy, that then we will validate the strategy of al-Qaida. I said it and I meant it.”

Christian Right labors to find ’08 candidate
“There is great anxiety”
New York Times

Religious conservatives face the sidelines:

… in a stark shift from the group’s influence under President Bush, the group risks relegation to the margins. Many of the conservatives who attended the event, held at the beginning of the month at the Ritz-Carlton on Amelia Island, Fla., said they were dismayed at the absence of a champion to carry their banner in the next election.

Iran leader: nuke drive a train ‘without brakes’
Ahmadinejad vows to push ahead after Tehran again ignores U.N. deadline
Associated Press via MSNBC

U.N. deadline comes; Iran goes:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Sunday his country would move forward with its disputed nuclear program, comparing its nuclear drive to a train that has no brakes.

Captain Ed argues, correctly, that the Bush Administration is not on the verge of attacking Iran: “… the administration has done nothing to build political support for such a move. That lack of preparation clearly indicates that the White House has not embarked on that course, not even preliminarily.”

Meanwhile, the Israelis are reportedly counting on the new Arrow anti-missile system to save them from an Iranian warhead:

The Arrow is the successor to the American Patriot missile system used to shoot down Saddam’s Scuds during the 1991 Gulf War. But where the Patriot attacks the incoming missile as it nears its target, the Arrow is designed to intercept a hostile missile much earlier, in the upper atmosphere.

From Israel’s perspective this is a crucial advance, especially if the Iranians were to attempt to fire missiles armed with nuclear warheads. “There’s no point shooting down a nuclear missile once it’s over Israel - the devastation would be just the same,” an Israeli military officer explained this week. “The idea is to take it out long before it hits Israel.”

There’s something about Mitt
“Why, then, this interest in Romney’s great- and great-great grandfathers?”
Power Line

I no fan of Mitt Romney, but the Associated Press is smearing him:

There is something odd, though, about trying to hang the polygamy albatross around Romney’s neck. One of the obvious differences between Romney and his Republican rivals is that Mitt is the only one who has been married just once.

Stuck in the mud
How can the GOP get moving again? Drop the dirty politics and get real
Republican pollster Frank Luntz

“… political parties are not brands, slogans are not a replacement for ideas and you don’t sell leaders the way you sell widgets:”

Republicans need a spirited, intellectually based rebuttal to every piece of Democratic legislation and an alternative to every policy — not a new parliamentary maneuver.

My polls show that Democrats now hold a perceived advantage with voters not just on reducing deficits and balancing the budget but on an issue long seen as a GOP strength: ending wasteful spending. That alone should jar Republicans into taking a fresh approach.

An upside-down world
The British far left makes common cause with Muslim reactionaries
Nick Cohen

Multiculturalism is not a belief that all cultures are equal, but a belief that Western culture is inferior. We should give some thought to what that might mean for women and gays:

Now overwhelmingly and everywhere you find people who scream their heads off about the smallest sexist or racist remark, yet refuse to confront ultra-reactionary movements that explicitly reject every principle they profess to hold.

[…]

I hope conservative American readers come to Britain. But if you do, expect to find an upside-down world. People who call themselves liberals or leftists will argue with you, and when they have finished you may experience the strange realization that they have become far more reactionary than you have ever been.

Posted by Paul at 12:30 PM | Permalink

True, she was a beautiful woman with a big rack. But that doesn’t justify all this obsessive hoopla. And it certainly doesn’t justify judicial debasement.

Posted by Paul at 7:15 PM | Permalink

Rudy’s closing faster than any of us expected:

The stock market reached record highs last week, but nothing on the Dow Jones Industrials outstripped soaring shares of Giuliani Preferred. The nation’s political market is bullish on Rudy.

A spate of polls showed the former New York mayor the preferred Republican choice nationally and in states as diverse as New Hampshire, Alabama and Oklahoma. The chatterazzi says someone with Rudy Giuliani’s moderate social views can’t win a Republican nomination in a contest that will include a wide swath of conservative party members. They are wrong.

And this, from George F. Will:

Regarding the Republican race, for many months commentators have said that when the Republican base learns the facts about Rudy Giuliani’s personal life (an annulled first marriage, a messy divorce, then a third marriage) and views on social issues (for abortion rights, gay rights and gun control, in each case with limits), support for him will evaporate. But such commentary is becoming self-refuting. The insistent reiteration of it during Giuliani’s coast-to-coast campaigning is telling activist Republicans — the sort of people who read political commentary — the facts about Giuliani. And so far those facts are not causing a recoil from him: According to the USA Today/Gallup Poll, his lead over John McCain has risen from 31-27 in November to 40-24 today.

This does not mean that the social issues have lost their saliency. People for whom opposition to abortion is very important might, however, think that in wartime it is not supremely important. Or they might reason, correctly, that presidents can change abortion policy only by changing the Supreme Court, so Giuliani’s pledge to nominate justices like Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito and John Roberts is sufficient.

Furthermore, California’s primary is being moved up to Feb. 5, and New Jersey’s and some other states’ might be moved to that date, so Giuliani’s views on social issues might become, on balance, advantages. And suppose Giuliani convinces Republicans that he can become the first Republican since George H.W. Bush in 1988 to be competitive for California’s (now 55) electoral votes.

Markets are mechanisms that generate information. The political market is working: Americans are learning much about the candidates, and themselves.

Finally, a CBS News poll of Republican primary voters puts Giuliani over McCain 50-29. What’s going on here? Patrick Ruffini explains:

I see several vectors converging on a single point: the low-key coverage of Giuliani over the past year, combined with the whisper campaign that he wouldn’t run, had artificially depressed his earlier numbers. The polls are now catching up with the reality that the Mayor is a fully-fledged candidate.

Posted by Paul at 1:20 PM | Permalink

Craig Crawford:

It would be easy to feel sorry for George W. Bush, given his many woes — rock-bottom poll ratings, a hostile Congress and unending bad news from Iraq. Easy, that is, until you realize just how much he still manages to get his way, even when the chips are down.

America’s president — even when he’s an unpopular lame duck — is still one of the most powerful people on earth.

Posted by Paul at 7:35 PM | Permalink

Per the Associated Press, via Fox News. Note the AP’s new math: “The vote was 56-34. That was six short of the 60 needed to advance the measure …”

ADDED —

Meanwhile, stand-by: “The Surge is showing signs of success. The progress made so far invites hope and optimism, but it’s still too early to celebrate …”

ADDED II —

Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, says the Senate is in “quagmire.” If so, he should now take his own advice and quit the fight. Go, senator, for “not more war, but less war” with the Republicans.

Nine Republicans, including Sen. John McCain, didn’t vote today. McCain was on the campaign trail. Another seven Republicans voted for defeat. The names of the surrender monkeys:

• John W. Warner (Va.)
• Chuck Hagel (Neb.)
• Norm Coleman (Minn.)
• Gordon Smith (Ore.)
• Olympia Snowe (Me.)
• Arlen Specter (Pa.)
• Susan M. Collins (Me.)

Posted by Paul at 1:45 PM | Permalink

Now the Democrats must really hope for an American defeat in Iraq; otherwise, they’re boxed in.

Something’s alarmingly wrong when a U.S. political party hangs its hat on our Nation’s defeat at war.

Posted by Paul at 1:40 PM | Permalink

Stymied: The headline reads “Senate set to vote on Iraq troop surge.” But it should read “Senate not set to vote on Iraq troop surge” because the Republicans will refuse cloture.

Posted by Paul at 11:35 AM | Permalink

Robert Kuttner warns that U.S. trade policy is headed for the abyss:

With $1.07 trillion worth of foreign currencies, China has surpassed Japan as the world’s largest holder of foreign exchange. And China’s immense stash of dollars happens to be a prime source of funding America’s national debt.

As Congress increases the pressure on the Chinese to reform trading practices, there is anxiety in Washington about China resorting to its financial neutron bomb, the threat to diversify its currency holdings out of US dollars.

If China starts dumping dollars, expect interest rates to rise.

Posted by Paul at 11:00 AM | Permalink

According to the Washington Post, Rep. John Murtha’s plan to micromanage the war may be “unconstitutional.” And Murtha himself is ignorant:

He continues to insist that Iraq “would be more stable with us out of there,” in spite of the consensus of U.S. intelligence agencies that early withdrawal would produce “massive civilian casualties.” He says he wants to force the administration to “bulldoze” the Abu Ghraib prison, even though it was emptied of prisoners and turned over to the Iraqi government last year. He wants to “get our troops out of the Green Zone” because “they are living in Saddam Hussein’s palace”; could he be unaware that the zone’s primary occupants are the Iraqi government and the U.S. Embassy?

Posted by Paul at 10:35 AM | Permalink

Ralph Peters says it’s treason: “The ‘nonbinding resolution’ telling the world that we intend to surrender to terrorism and abandon Iraq may be the most disgraceful congressional action since the Democratic Party united to defend slavery.”

Posted by Paul at 10:20 AM | Permalink

Roll call here. ABC News has this report.

Fortunately, predictions of thirty to forty GOP defections proved false. The names of the seventeen white flag Republicans:

• Castle
• Coble
• Davis, T
• Duncan
• English (PA)
• Gilchrest
• Inglis
• Johnson (IL)
• Jones (NC)
• Keller
• Kirk
• LaTourette
• Paul
• Petri
• Ramstad
• Upton
• Walsh (NY)

And the two stand-up Democrats:

• Marshall
• Taylor

In the Senate, where a test vote is scheduled tomorrow, Republicans say the resolution is DOA.

ADDED —

“The potential for a constitutional crisis here and now is real …”

Well, maybe. I’m more sanguine. True, the war in Iraq is unpopular. But actually pulling the plug on American troops in theater is a huge political risk. Were the Democrats certain it was the politically correct thing to do, they’d try it now, and not later this year as Senator Lieberman warns. But the Democrats aren’t certain. And that’s why they’re testing the waters by jacking around with improvident but non-binding resolutions.

It’s also worth noting that the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination supports the war and the surge. And the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination voted for the war and refuses to call her vote a mistake. If the American electorate thought it imperative we leave Iraq this instant, we’d hear that from Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Clinton — or else they wouldn’t be at the top of their fields.

Are the voters unhappy with the war and do they see it as a problem? Yes. But in politics, it’s almost always a mistake to conflate consensus about a problem with consensus about the solution.

Finally, which strikes you as more likely: the president takes the safe (and GOP election-enhancing) step of declaring a post-surge victory and begins to draw down U.S. troops in Iraq by, say, January 2008, or the Democrats take the risk of defunding the war? Call me cynical, but I don’t think the Democrats’ opposition to the war extends to endangering their congressional majority.

ADDED II —

By the way, the politics of today’s vote are mostly neutral. The Democrats who voted for the resolution will get nothing but the adulation of their base. We can say the same of the Republicans who voted against it. In neither case will the broader electorate punish them.

The only members likely to pay a price for their vote are the seventeen Republicans who voted “aye.” Some of them will not survive their next encounter with the Republican electorate.

Posted by Paul at 3:25 PM | Permalink

Is it just me, or does social conservative, law professor and influential blogger Hugh Hewitt sound sweet on Rudy Giuliani?

Relatedly, Rudy has won the GOP Bloggers’ straw poll of online Republicans. Note also John McCain’s negatives.

Posted by Paul at 2:10 PM | Permalink

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit (Alabama, Georgia, Florida) has upheld Alabama’s ban on the sale of sex toys. (See Ala. Code § 13A-12-200.2(a)(1), which makes unlawful the commercial distribution of devices that stimulate human genitalia.)

Highlights of the decision

Question: Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion in Lawrence, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), does the preservation of “public morality” still serve as a constitutionally legitimate basis for legislative policy judgments? Answer: Yes.

… we find that public morality survives as a rational basis for legislation even after Lawrence, and we find that in this case the State’s interest in the preservation of public morality remains a rational basis for the challenged statute.

Question: In the Eleventh Circuit’s view, did the Lawrence Court announce a fundamental constitutional right to sexual privacy? Answer: No.

… Lawrence … did not recognize a fundamental right to sexual privacy.

Question: What’s the difference between the statute at issue in Lawrence and the statute at issue here? Answer: the difference between private and public.

… while the statute at issue in Lawrence criminalized private sexual conduct, the statute at issue in this case forbids public, commercial activity. To the extent Lawrence rejects public morality as a legitimate government interest, it invalidates only those laws that target conduct that is both private and noncommercial.

[…]

This statute targets commerce in sexual devices, an inherently public activity, whether it occurs on a street corner, in a shopping mall, or in a living room. … There is nothing ‘private’ or ‘consensual’ about the advertising and sale of a dildo.

Question: Do the judges of the Eleventh Circuit endorse Alabama’s law? Answer: No.

By upholding the statute, we do not endorse the judgment of the Alabama legislature. … ‘The Constitution presumes that … improvident decisions will eventually be rectified by the democratic process and that judicial intervention is generally unwarranted no matter how unwisely we may think a political branch has acted.’ … This Court does not invalidate bad or foolish policies, only unconstitutional ones; we may not ‘sit as a super-legislature to judge the wisdom or desirability of legislative policy determinations made in areas that neither affect fundamental rights nor proceed along suspect lines.’

Alabama’s ban on the sale of sex toys — the law does not prohibit their possession or use — is silly and intrusive. But I agree with the Eleventh Circuit that there’s nothing the federal courts can do about it.

Technorati tags: Law, courts, sex+toys, Alabama, Eleventh+Circuit, federal+courts

Posted by Paul at 1:25 PM | Permalink

Among Republicans nationally, Giuliani now +16, per Gallup.

Posted by Paul at 9:30 AM | Permalink

Rudy’s going to win the Republican nomination for president, and in so doing he will change our party and the electoral map. Noemie Emery on the rise of the Metro Republican:

Giuliani is not only pro-choice, but also anti-gun and gay-friendly, an urban cowboy who marches in gay rights parades (just like a Democrat), and appears in drag at a correspondents’ assembly, though looking less like the plausible Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie than like Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot. This should count him out in the South, and with social conservatives — but so far, at least, it has not. How come? Because they admire him despite his stance on those litmus-test issues. Indeed, they see him in some key respects as a fellow social conservative who brought law and order to a city in crisis, the head-banging crime fighter who bonded with cops, flushed the porn shops out of Times Square, and protested loudly when a dung-draped Madonna was shown at the expense of the public at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. He has endeared himself to conservatives everywhere by taking on, and often defeating, the New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union. He is the enemy and the antithesis of the therapy culture that is at the core of the modern liberal project, the foe of relativism and friend of retribution and punishment, when it is called for. The word evil doers would not seem strange on his lips.

Giuliani’s accomplishment in hosing down a sink of a city that some people think could have passed for Gomorrah has allowed him to bond with the base of his party as no other figure has done. And no one else emerged from the events of September 11 in quite the same way, as both a wartime leader and in some ennobling way as a survivor of the attacks, too. “Giuliani can’t do southern preacher,” wrote Hanna Rosin, the former religion writer for the Washington Post, “yet there’s a current of spirituality running through his speech on the subject of 9/11, and how that day shattered and changed him [as] he stood watching debris fall from the Twin Towers, and realized that it was, in fact, people jumping. He was lost, without a plan… . Yet somehow he found sources of inspiration and strength. He remembered what he’d always known: ‘the value of teamwork,’ the need to ‘be there when the going gets tough.’ … Giuliani does not mention God, except once, in a joke. But his speech is infused with the kind of uplifting message that these days shares boundaries with preaching. ‘You’ve got to care about people… . You’ve got to love them,’ he says.” What he has done is to give a religious speech that appeals to his base without alarming a larger audience. In the end, few seem to be thinking of guns, or abortion, or gays.

Professional analysts, both liberal and conservative, keep insisting that Giuliani will never survive the Republican primaries. Non-professionals sense something different.

Posted by Paul at 9:20 AM | Permalink

Bill Bradley for Pajamas Media:

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani turned in an impressive performance in his luncheon keynote address today at the California Republican Party convention in Sacramento. There in the ballroom of the Hyatt Regency at Capitol Park, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s state capital residence, as it happens, Giuliani received a much more rousing response than did Schwarzenegger last night at the convention’s opening banquet. Giuliani’s nearly 50-minute address was interrupted several times by standing ovations.

ADDED —

A big part of what’s going on here is that Rudy has been underexposed; as he becomes overexposed, the momentum he has now will slow. All Giuliani supporters know to expect this, yes?

Posted by Paul at 9:10 PM | Permalink

In the U.S. Senate, defeat for the Democrats:

What prompted Senate majority leader Harry Reid to think he could outmaneuver Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell on which Iraq war resolutions would be voted on is anybody’s guess. Reid never had a chance, and he lost badly.

Sen. McConnell is well on his way to proving himself a fearsome opposition leader.

If you listened to Harry Reid after his derailing last week by McConnell, you know Reid’s frustration was palpable:

If, as he says, “there can be no military solution” to the war in Iraq, why doesn’t Sen. Reid insist on a vote to cut off funding for the troops? Why pay for the insoluble? Isn’t it the whole war, and not just the surge, that Democrats are against? Why not get to the heart of the matter? Call for a vote to cut off funding, senator. While I cannot officially speak for my party’s congressional leadership, I’m certain Sen. McConnell would allow that vote to proceed.

Posted by Paul at 2:10 PM | Permalink

I’ve been hoping that Rudy Giuliani’s presidential candidacy would renew national discussion about the benefits of federalism. Comes now some evidence that his campaign is having just that effect.

In federalism we can find a solution to the culture wars.

I have often wondered what it would be like to live in a state where center-right gays and lesbians formed a governing majority. Obviously that’s never going to happen. But still, it’s still fun to think about.

If you talk to enough right-leaning gays and lesbians, you’ll find that their homosexuality has a definite, if not fully quantifiable, influence on their conservative sensibilities. In the conservative gay state, I think social policy would be rather permissive (or at least not punitive). But the culture would be mired in tradition — and religion. And in the lives of a people, culture and religion are always more important than politics.

Attend and pay attention to a gay pride parade in a city like Houston, and you’ll be struck by this: a disproportionate number of the entries are from churches. You wouldn’t know that from watching the 10 o’clock news, but it’s true.

Posted by Paul at 1:45 PM | Permalink

Howard Kurtz: “On the House floor, Republicans managed to take a bill about alternative fuel and turn it into a debate on Pelosi’s transportation arrangements …”

Traction.

Posted by Paul at 9:45 AM | Permalink

Hugh Hewitt:

Congrats to [Senate GOP leader] Mitch McConnell and the Republican caucus which stuck to its demands for fairness, and forced the Democrats to flee from the prospect of voting on the Gregg resolution. The whole sorry circus has now pulled up stakes and left town …

We’ll see what the House does, but the U.S. Senate will not vote to undermine our troops in Iraq. For that, we can thank Sen. McConnell, who has performed admirably — just as I knew he would. Republicans should be proud of him.

Now the clock is ticking on the Iraqis. They have until January of next year to get their shit together. That’s when we pull out. The GOP’s election prospects require that we be long gone from Iraq when voters go to the polls in November 2008.

Posted by Paul at 10:35 PM | Permalink

HOME, JAMES: “Mrs. Pelosi wants a larger aircraft that can fly to her home district of San Francisco nonstop.”

Global warming.

HT: Pajamas Media

Posted by Paul at 4:30 PM | Permalink

Toby Harnden:

Republicans are at a tipping point. If they want to win in 2008, they have to accept their 2006 defeat as deserved and coalesce around a candidate who may not be ideologically perfect but who is nevertheless electable and effective.

Strange as it seems, there are signs that Mr Giuliani, who once lived with two gay men and a Chihuahua named Bonnie as he awaited his second divorce, could be emerging as the most viable Republican candidate. Character and perceived competence may turn out to trump ideology in 2008.

The former New York mayor has already indicated he won’t let his socially liberal personal views stop him appointing conservative judges. And who better than the hero of 9/11 to persuade Republicans that defeat in 2008 is not inevitable and convince Americans that the war on terror is not lost?

Posted by Paul at 10:04 AM | Permalink

RPC’s John McIntyre:

There is an assumption by many that Giuliani is un-nominatable as a Republican for President given his less than conservative positions on many social issues. Charlie Cook summed up the conventional Washington wisdom on Giuliani’s chances with his statement in the Washington Post several months ago that he’ll “win the Tour de France before Rudy Giuliani wins the Republican nomination.”

But the conventional wisdom on Giuliani’s ability to capture the nomination is wrong. Not only can Giuliani win the GOP nomination, but as the Republican field sits today he has to be considered the favorite.

National Review’s John Podhoretz:

Rudy, by contrast, is trying to convince social conservatives that he’s their friend. They disagree on certain matters, he’ll say, but on the key issue of our time — the struggle of the West against Islamic extremism — they’ll never have a better or more staunch ally and leader.

And while his personal views on some issues may differ from theirs, he’ll appoint judges in the manner of Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito — which is, in the end, most of what a president can do to support the ideas in which social conservatives deeply believe.

It may not work. But he’s knocking on an open door. Giuliani’s support is solid and quite deep, and his numbers are very strong.

The key point is this: Republicans want to nominate him if they can — if he can demonstrate to them that he’s not too liberal for them.

And that’s a very powerful position to start from.

Posted by Paul at 10:00 AM | Permalink

“There are always disagreements. And then some people just won’t be able to vote for you. You’ve got to live with that. The reality is you’ve got to be yourself. You’ve got to be honest with people.”

Posted by Paul at 10:00 PM | Permalink

“We’re at war. We’re at war because they’re at war with us. Sometimes when you listen to these debates in Congress, and you listen to the politicians debating, you sort of get the impression they think we’re in control of whether we’re at war or not. It doesn’t matter what we think. They’re at war with us.”

Posted by Paul at 9:55 PM | Permalink

Fox News has this report.

Posted by Paul at 1:45 PM | Permalink

Don’t miss George F. Will’s must-read column on global warming: “Enough already. It is time to call some bluffs.”

Posted by Paul at 9:50 AM | Permalink

USA Today:

A debate over President Bush’s plan to send more troops to Iraq is set to begin in the Senate today, but it’s not clear whether there will be a vote.

Actually, according to the balance of USA Today’s own story, it is clear that there won’t be a vote:

On CNN’s Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, predicted Sunday that Republicans would filibuster the non-binding resolution …

[Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid does not have the 60 votes it would take to overcome a filibuster. [Emphasis added.]

Posted by Paul at 8:00 AM | Permalink

Rudy Giuliani hasn’t asked me for my political advice, of course. But had he, I would have counseled him to give just exactly the answers he’s given.

• On whether he’ll run as an independent or a Republican:

I will not run as an independent. I will run as a Republican. I believe very, very much in the Republican Party.

• On whether he’ll modify his liberal social views to suit the GOP’s culturally conservative base:

What I’m going to say to them is, you know, evaluate me as a whole person — as a person who’ll be honest with you rather than kind of shade my positions or change my positions.

• On the kind of justices he’ll appoint to the U.S. Supreme Court:

I know John Roberts and Samuel Alito. John Roberts and Samuel Alito are friends of mine. … John Roberts and Samuel Alito are exactly the sort of jurists I’ll appoint.

These are the correct answers.

If Giuliani ran as an independent, he’d cut himself off from the institutional support that only a major party can provide and he’d alienate many of his supporters.

RUDY GIULIANI: Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.

If he attempted to change or finesse his social views, he’d come across as just another political opportunist who can’t be trusted. (For more, see Romney, Mitt.) But by sticking to his guns, he demonstrates honesty and integrity.

By pledging to appoint jurists in the mold of Roberts and Alito, he commits to advancing his social policies by democratic process and not judicial fiat. And that is what conservatives want to hear. (Conservatives believe they’ll win most culture war battles if the judiciary just butts out. Liberals believe that too, which is why they fear deferential courts.)

So far, excellent. Next Rudy will have to decide how to handle questions about his messy personal life and his public appearances in drag. He should be the first to talk about that. Don’t wait for the opposition’s late-hitting broadside. Get it out early. Get it now. And trivialize it with clever, self-depreciating humor.

Posted by Paul at 10:30 PM | Permalink

“You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.” — Leo Amery, MP, in the British House of Commons, May 7, 1940, on the need to remove Neville Chamberlain from power

Yes:

… a solid group of 41 senators that insist on victory [in Iraq] and will refuse all attempts to retreat is much to be preferred over 51 which include appeasers in powerful chairmanships.

That’s Hugh Hewitt calling on the GOP to risk a reduction in the number of Republican senators rather than cave on the war in Iraq by supporting the Democrats’ anti-surge resolution. I whole wholeheartedly agree. What’s more, I think wavering Republican senators are gravely underestimating the danger they face in the coming election cycle. As Bill Kristol notes, “Republican senators up for reelection in 2008 might remember this: The American political system has primaries as well as general elections.”

National security is the one issue that unites Republicans of every ideological hue. And from the most socially progressive gays and lesbians to the most culturally conservative Christian evangelicals, no segment of our party accepts defeat at war. That too Republican senators might remember.

Again, Hewitt:

The central issue of our time is the war. The Democrats openly have declared they are for losing it, as quickly as possible. The Republican Congressional leadership wants to debate anything but the war.

And while Americans who understand the stakes will have nothing to do with the Democrats, neither will they pretend that Republicans are somehow to be preferred just because they have an “R” behind their name. Some members of Congress seem surprised that anyone dare speak to them in blunt terms, or hold up to them mirrors. But this is what happens when the stakes get so very high.

[…]

Get it right or get out.

Posted by Paul at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Finally (for today anyway), I commend to your attention this Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll, which shows Giuliani leading nationally among Republicans by a mere 12 points. But I’m sure the pundits are right. Rudy can’t win. It’s a mystery why we’ll even bother with elections …

Posted by Paul at 12:45 PM | Permalink

I endeavor yet again, gentle reader, to demonstrate that Rudy Giuliani cannot win the Republican presidential nomination. All the pundits say so …

Michigan.

Posted by Paul at 12:00 PM | Permalink

It’s understandable why presidential campaigns want to have at least one high profile blogger on the payroll. Big bloggers have big traffic. But here’s the irony: polibloggers build traffic by expressing their (often outlandish) opinions on everything. This makes them potential liabilities to a presidential campaign.

Lots of political blogging doesn’t look good with the passage of time. And much of it never looked good in the first place to anyone except a blog’s most loyal readers.

Posted by Paul at 11:30 AM | Permalink

“I am a fucking steamroller and I’ll roll over you or anybody else.”

Which of America’s fifty governors said that? Answer below the jump.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer, D-NY, in a private conversation last week with Republican Assemblyman James Tedisco, Reuters reports. Spitzer also reportedly said “I’ve done more in three weeks than any governor has done in the history of the state.”

Posted by Paul at 10:30 AM | Permalink

Among likely Republican caucus goers in Iowa, Giuliani leads with 27%. His closest competitor, John McCain, comes in five points back at 22%.

Posted by Paul at 10:20 AM | Permalink

“Recent polling continues to suggest Mayor Giuliani is very well positioned within the party — particularly when compared to other potential Republican candidates — to win the nomination.” — Brent Seaborn, Strategy Director, Rudy ‘08, in an e-mail to Giuliani supporters

Among Republican primary voters: