A Liberal Slayer

Rudy Giuliani came to CPAC this year, and while he lost the straw poll to an energized and succint Mitt Romney, he's leading in the polls overall among Republicans, largely made up of the conservative base. How can this be? The WaPo story, via RCP.

Well, it may have something to do with his being unapologetic about what he believes. He's not in your face, he's just frank. And this is a refreshing change in Republican circles. We haven't seen this since Ronald Reagan.

One of the things that bothered conservatives about Bush 41 is that he came in promising a "kinder, gentler" America, seeming to us an unnecessary apology for Reagan's leadership. But then George Sr. did have trouble with the "vision thing". And W himself felt the need to speak about "compassionate" conservatives, as if conservatism weren't inherently compassionate. We conservatives think helping people help themselves is kinder and more successful, and we think social moderates are the most morally bankrupt of all---they are just cheap liberals. As for liberals, who better to take them on than Rudy, who has beaten them in their premier stomping ground?

So we like Rudy the Respect Conservative, as characterized by the Weekly Standard:

Then there's the economy, where Democratic populists have adopted a political rhetoric that poormouths America and paints middle class families as victims. Like President Bush's language of compassion, there's a condescending message behind all this economic fear-mongering, and it offers an opening for a "respect conservative" to acknowledge working-class struggles but emphasize the importance of civic and personal responsibility, both in the boardroom and the bedroom. The Rudy Giuliani who took down Ivan Boesky could be an ideal critic of corporate irresponsibility, for instance, and the mayor who once scolded Margarita Rosario for raising her son to be a criminal might be the right man to take on the relationship between economic insecurity and America's epidemic of fatherlessness.

The MSM organ Newsweek chimes in and does their piece, but, of course, some of what they consider vice many of us consider virtue:

Giuliani may well be his own worst enemy. His strength in crisis can blur into stubbornness; his resolute conviction sometimes leads to churlishness and a tendency to divide the world into good and evil, with little apparently in between. Voters will have to decide whether his virtues are worth his vices in the White House.

But make no mistake: he is a man of formidable virtues, and mastering the brutal politics of New York is good training for a fast-paced nomination fight and what will likely be a close-run general election.

Do liberals and their press ever think a weak, indecisive candidate is a bad thing? No, they call it nuance. (that's why they like Obama.) Some of Giuliani's supposed churlishness may have been because he had to deal with so many of them in NY.

At some point a good leader has to make a judgement, which leads to a decision, and then act on it and relentlessly pursue it to achieve the goal. In a crisis, that's what we want.

And they don't understand his sense that common decency and the public trust were violated by public funding of the Brooklyn Museum exhibit of dung on a Madonna, and his words and actions to right that wrong. (Nor does Newsweek mention his estranged wife Donna Hanover's plans to exhibit herself in The Vagina Monologues at the time. Also here.)

More from Noemie Emery, Weekly Standard, RCP:

"In case after case, he refused to accept the veto of liberal public opinion," writes John Podhoretz in his New York Post column. "More than any other candidate in the race, Rudy Giuliani is a liberal slayer. When he rejects liberal orthodoxy, which he does often, he doesn't just oppose it. He goes to war with it--total, unconditional war." If you believe that the enemy of your enemy must be your friend, conservatives have no better friend than the mayor, bête noire and scourge of the limousine liberals, the race hustlers, the friends of identity politics, the opponents of capital punishment, the municipal unions, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the New York Times. Some will want him to be president, if only to annoy all these people--a temptation too big to resist.

Conservatives will gladly indulge in this kind of temptation, supporting someone who slays liberal myths and dragons. (and takes on their dragon ladies.)

Previous posts: Giuliani Warms Up, Metro Republicans, Is Rudy Right for America?