Bill Kristol: Rudy Giuliani Is Running For President Again
The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol says that Rudy Giuliani is running for President:
I’m told by two reliable sources that Rudy Giuliani intends to run for the GOP nomination for president in 2012. He may throw his hat in the ring soon.
Rudy’s theory of the race: In the fall of 2007, he decided he couldn’t compete with both Mitt Romney and John McCain in New Hampshire, and disastrously decided to try to pull back there and pitch his tent in Florida. This year, he’ll commit everything to New Hampshire, where he thinks he has a good shot at beating Romney—whom he criticized there earlier this week. He then thinks he can beat whichever more socially conservative candidate(s) is left by winning what are still likely to be winner-take-all primaries in big states like California, New York, and New Jersey.
Rudy’s message: I’m tough enough to put our fiscal house in order and to protect us from enemies abroad. The U.S. in 2012 is in bad shape—like New York in 1993. The budget crisis is as severe—and seemingly intractable—as the crime/welfare crisis was in New York then. Rudy dealt with that when people said it couldn’t be done. He’ll deal with this.
To which I only ask —- Why?
Why not? The Republican field is weak. Giuliani probably doesn’t have a great shot (the more people became familiar with him in New Hampshire in 2008, the less they liked him), but neither do most of the other candidates.
I personally don’t think he’ll win the nomination, but I do think he’ll make the Republican debates more exciting. Giuliani sparred frequently with Romney in debates in 2007-2008, and both of them will be trying to out-conservative the other to cover up the fact that both were very liberal Republicans until relatively recently.
On the other hand, this is Bill Kristol. I’ll wait until it’s confirmed by multiple sources.
So, Rudy is going into this with the assumption that he can’t even win New York? I mean, you know he can’t win NY, and I know he can’t win NY, but if even he doesn’t think he can make it out of the minor leagues, WTF is he even running for? Even if he’s just gunning for a VP slot, he’s still got to be able to deliver electoral votes to be worth anyone’s while, right?
Because 9/11!
Romney’s going to waltz in NH & Bachmann versus Pawlenty will cancel both of them out in Iowa, allowing Mitt to look semi-respectable there if he chooses to contest that state seriously. With the new WaPo/Gallup numbers showing Romney over Obama with registered likely-to-vote Americans 49-46%, why not go with a guy who’s respectable without being charismatic.
Obama’s charisma & rhetorical skllls are fading faster and faster with each jobless report andgas price rise, plus being stuck running up unfundable deficits that are burying the US economy’s ability to expand under a load of crushing debt.
The US is starting to look like Greece & Portugal as a swelling class of parasitic entitlement government employees starts to outnumber paying customers in the accountability dept. If Obama doesn’t alter his course very soon, he will be sailing into the 2012 elections with two broken masts. Lotsa luck getting dispirited Dems to outvote the swarm of discontented independents who this time aren’t going to be suckered into rolling the dice again.