Not Rudy, no way, no how

Patrick posted this over on Born Again Redneck:

I was one of the first to jump on the Rudy bandwagon and even started a "Run, Rudy, Run" Blogroll when he first announced. Why? Because I thought that we had a winner in "America's Mayor." But, as I learned more about him, I realized that I had made a mistake and I intend to make every effort between now and the primaries to ensure that he is not the GOP nominee.

[. . .]

I have hesitated to oppose Rudy vehemently till now because I still thought that he was the GOP's best shot and because I wondered what I would do if I opposed him now and he won. Would I have to hold my nose and defend him as President just because he's a socalled Republican? If I don't oppose him now, then I will be stuck later defending someone whom I do not like, trust or respect.

I posted this on November 9, 2006:

When Bill Clinton was elected president for the first time I was distressed. When he was RE-elected I was livid. So when I went into Tuesday's election facing the prospect of a Democrat victory in one or both houses of the national legislature I figured that if the worst happened I would be pretty bummed out.

As I woke up on Wednesday morning and turned on Fox news to see just how bad it was (I went to bed with Allen in VA having a comfortable lead) and saw that both the House and Senate had fallen to the party of surrender and appease European-style socialism I felt a strange sensation. A kind of buoyancy and a strong desire to sit down at this blog and write something.

Now understand this. For the past couple of months I have been finding it hard to write. I was filling space by doing a lot of cut-and-paste blogging and posting a lot of pictures. I don't have a problem with cut-and-paste blogging. If I find something on the 'net that I think you would find interesting or should know about I'll bring it to your attention. And I like taking pictures of the beautiful part of the country that I live in and love sharing them. And you seem to like them as well. In fact I get emails from people asking me to put together slide shows for them. However I was doing these things in order to avoid having to write and I started this blog so that I would have a chance to write.

So what was going on? Why did I not feel depressed and why was I once again eager to write? The answer came to me today as I was listening to the Rush Limbaugh Show. Rush was talking about how he felt a sense of release after the Republican losses because he no longer had to go out and carry water for people who didn't deserve to have their water carried.

I realized that I felt exactly the same way. I had become soul sick at the prospect of sitting down here every day and defending the indefensible and now I don't have to any more.

Why did I do it? Because as bad as the Republicans had become the Democrats are vastly worse. Cutting and running from Iraq will only bring the terrorists back to our own soil. I do not want to turn on the local news and see the mangled bodies of teenagers being carried out of the Asheville Mall because some Islamofascist suicide bomber walked into the food court wearing 20 pounds of C-4.

I do not want to see the the US economy, which is better now than it has been in decades, derailed by higher taxes and choking regulation. I do not want to see people unemployed because it has become too expensive to hire them. I do not want to see all the progress which our soldiers have fought and died for in Iraq wiped out and Iraq and Iran merge into a Shiite theocratic superstate which would control nearly half of the world's oil reserves and possess nuclear weapons.

All of these things are a realistic possibility now that the party of the left controls congress. I worked to keep Republicans in power because all of these things worried me greatly. They still do, but I am also happy.

I am happy because now we can start over. The Republican Party had been hijacked by creatures like John McCain and his little lickspittle Lindsey Graham and they were running it into the ground. Our Republican president was, on balance, more liberal than conservative and our congressional "leadership" seemed to have no stomach for a fight with the Democrats and no ability to impose discipline on its own RINO troublemakers.

All that is, at least potentially, over now. There are things that can be done to mitigate the worst that the Democrat moonbats in the new congressional leadership can do (more about that tomorrow) and the chance to rebuild the Republican Party into a conservative party once again is priceless. Two of McCain's treasonous "Gang of 7" are gone, McCain's presidential hopes are in the toilet with the rest of the turds and South Carolina Republicans are vetting a list of potential candidates to challenge Graham in the next primary even as I type this.

How could I not be happy.

I may have been a bit overly optimistic, but I stand by what I said. After all the Democrats in control of the legislature have managed to accomplish almost nothing and McCain may wind up finishing behind the Ass-Clown Ron Paul in the primaries.

However I may have erred seriously in my belief that the Republican Party could once again become a conservative party. At least that is the way that it looks today with Rudolph Giuliani holding a comfortable lead in national polls.

Patrick is worried that he will be forced to defend Giuliani if he is the Republican nominee. As I stated in my year-old essay I am finished with defending the indefensible. My concern for the truth will cause me to speak up when anyone (even Hillary Clinton) is unfairly attacked however I will never carry Rudolph Giuliani's water.

Rudolph Giuliani is a bad person in both his professional and personal life. As a US Attorney he was a bully and a thug targeting people he knew to be innocent of any wrongdoing and intimidating them into confessing to crimes they did not commit in order to enhance his reputation. In his personal life he has shown himself to wallow in immorality on a scale which almost approaches that of Bill Clinton (only without the forcible rape).

Politically his domestic agenda on everything other than tax policy is indistinguishable from that of Hillary Clinton. This is not an exaggeration. Think about everything you know about the first Clinton co-presidency then think about everything you know about Giuliani's actions as mayor of NYC and ask yourself if he wouldn't be a good fit as Attorney General in the second Clinton co-presidency.

What would AG Giuliani have a problem with in a Clinton administration, cracking down on abortion clinic protesters? Enforcing draconian gun control laws? Targeting "white collar criminals" (translation: successful businessmen who don't give enough money to Democrat candidates)? As I said on domestic issues they are very nearly joined at the hip.

The long term effects of a Giuliani presidency on the Republican Party would be disastrous. The Republican Party is a coalition of fiscal conservatives, social conservatives and national security conservatives. The support of all three of those groups is enough to give a presidential candidate victory but if a significant portion of even one of those groups sits out an election or leaves the Republican Party altogether the Party will not be able to win.

This is seen in George H.W. Bush's unsuccessful run for reelection. Enough fiscal conservatives abandoned him because of his violation of his "no new taxes" pledge and enough social conservatives left him over his assault weapons ban to doom his campaign (some people will say that it was H. Ross Perot's third party that cost Bush the election, but who do you think was voting for Perot - mostly Republicans who couldn't stomach Bush any longer).

If Giuliani gets the nomination he can probably win. There will be enough independents who will vote for "America's Mayor" and enough Republicans suffering from Hillary Derangement Syndrome to push him over the top. But the price the Party will pay for that victory will be fatally high. The character of a political party does not rise from below it descends from above.

If Republicans choose Giuliani to be the Party's candidate it will mean that the Republican Party is no longer the conservative party, no longer the pro-life party and no longer the pro-gun party. Some doctrinary conservatives, pro-lifers and gun owners will stick around like battered wives who refuse to leave because they don't think they have anywhere to go but enough will pack their bags and leave to make the difference in future elections.

The Republican Party will either have to accept permanent minority status or attempt to regain the left-of-center voters that Giuliani was able to attract. Either way the Republican Party is finished as the home of conservatism and without a conservative party able to win elections the United States is finished as a free and prosperous nation.

I will not participate in the destruction of the United States so I will not support Rudolph Giuliani under any circumstances. Better to have Hillary Clinton in the White House.

Before anyone has the vapors just consider this. If it is the destiny of the United States to be badly governed by a wretched and detestable excuse for humanity would it not be better for that waste-of-skin to be a Democrat? At least then we could point to her and say "see, this is what happens when you elect Democrats". At least then it would be the jackass party that gets tainted by the stink coming out of the Oval Office.

If 2008 comes down to a contest between Hillary and Rudy then it is a given that the nation is going to be up shit creek for the next four years. Let it be a Democrat hand on the tiller so they'll get the blame. That strategy has worked well before. If it had not been for Jimmy Carter the American people would have never been pushed to the point of electing Ronald Reagan, a man most had considered too "extreme" only four years before.