Decision ‘08

The Case For Rudy

In my new book (”Can She Be Stopped?“), I suggest that the Republican best suited to the challenge of preventing Hillary Clinton’s ascension to the Oval Of fice in 2008 is Rudy Giuliani.

A Fox News Opinion Dynamics poll released yesterday offers some strong ballast for the idea: In a head-to-head matchup, Rudy beats Hillary 49 percent to 40 percent, the best showing among all Republican contenders.

By contrast, John McCain has a 46-to-42 advantage over Hillary - besting her but not as decisively as Rudy does. Rudy is viewed favorably by 64 percent of those asked, McCain by 49 percent (Hillary: 50 percent).

And this is not a poll of Republicans alone: The respondents are 41 percent Democrat, 32 percent Republican and 21 percent independent.

Well, sure, the conventional wisdom goes, but what about the primaries? JPod again:

In surveys of Republican primary voters, two names top every list - Giuliani and McCain. Each gets support from around 30 percent, with every other possible contender hovering around 2 or 3 percent at most.

What’s interesting about this is that if you ask political professionals, they will tell you that McCain and Giuliani will have an extremely hard time getting to the nomination. McCain has a socially conservative voting record, but his signature piece of campaign-finance legislation was a conscious effort to disempower grass-roots groups - like those advancing socially conservative ideas.

As for Rudy, he is not an opponent of gay marriage and spoke out against a partial-birth-abortion ban - two views that put him at dramatic odds with the GOP’s evangelical base.

And yet the polls that have these two men galloping away from the rest of the field were done exclusively with Republican primary voters. Such people tend to be more involved in and better informed about politics than the average American, so it stands to reason that they have some knowledge of McCain’s and Giuliani’s positions.

And so far it isn’t bothering them. Why?

One word: leadership.

I’ll buy that…

3 Responses to “The Case For Rudy”

1 fatman Says:
May 23rd, 2006 at 12:14 pm
I wouldn’t.

McCain has the advantages of being a true war hero, a former presidential candidate and a media darling (at least up until now) for his reputation as a “maverick”. Guiliani has his admittedly superb performance under pressure during the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. That makes both men well known and (at least by some) respected. While I might agree that both of them have displayed leadership qualities, I have serious problems with where they would lead us to.

What I’d like to know is how many of those Republican primary voters responded by saying that they (like me) wouldn’t vote for McCain and/or Giuliani under any circumstances.
2 Sean P Says:
May 23rd, 2006 at 5:51 pm
fatman: Well, I think its a given that a large number of the undecided Republican voters will not vote for either Rudy or McCain, and that said undecideds will eventually coalesce around the most plausible ABC/ABR candidate in the race.

But will it be enough? If you add John McCain’s 30 percent with Rudy’s 30 percent, you get more than enough support to win, even if the rest of the party is dead set against either. Thus, if Rudy can attract the rump of McCain’s support and hold on to his own, he is the nominee, period (same calculation for McCain if Rudy drops out).

Now, obviously, there are some Republicans who consider McCain acceptable as a nominee but not Rudy, and vice versa, but I suspect that if I were to draw a vin diagram consisting of the voters who wouldn’t vote for Rudy under any circumstances (at least in the Primary) and the list of Republican voters who feel the same about McCain, the two groups would almost completely overlap. The only anti McCain/ pro Rudy Republicans I know of are the libertarians who can forgive Rudy’s heresy on gun control but not McCain’s support of McCain/Feingold, and that group is heavily overrepresented on these weblogs. And I’m not even sure what the makeup of the Anti-Rudy pro-McCain voter would be. Bottom line, if it comes to it, I think the survivor of a McCain/Rudy showdown should be able to attract the rump of the other candidate’s supporters and, if he holds on to his own support as well, should have enough to win the nomination.
3 Dave Says:
May 24th, 2006 at 12:53 pm
It’s important to keep in mind that the nomination won’t be decided by the national GOP electorate, but by Republicans in a few early primary states.

Iowa will make or break all but three candidates right out of the gate. The only time a candidate can do poorly in Iowa and still have a chance is when that candidate “skips” Iowa and pours everything into New Hampshire. Iowa GOPers are good midwestern conservatives; they’ll like Romney, McCain’ll probably place, Allen will do well but not superb. What will be interesting is seeing how IA Republicans react to Rudy, who’s used to campaigning to a very different crowd in a very different manner. The retail politics of the Iowa caucuses is not the same as the mass-media politics of NYC. This could hurt Rudy’s chances, though I don’t doubt he’ll do well in NH.