The Party of Freedom

Last week Guiliani spoke to members of Stanford's Hoover Institution, then headed to red/blue Virginia . Salena Zito, via RCP:

Giuliani said Hoover's approach to the Soviet Union -- successfully achieving peace through military and diplomatic restraint -- was at the core of Ronald Reagan's policy, "and Ronald Reagan was a hero of mine."

In Virginia, the conversation that GOP members wanted to have with Giuliani centered on the Iraq war and the state of the Republican Party.

"That discussion was focused on the war in Iraq and how we have to look at it," he recalled. "But we also talked about how the Republican Party should position itself and rejuvenate itself as the party of freedom over our own lives."

The party of freedom, the party of decision.

Jim Sleeper, TPM Cafe, a onetime liberal supporter, makes the case for Giuliani while trying to blast him:

He forced New York, that great capital of “root cause” explanations for every social problem, to get real about remedies that work, at least for now, in the world as we know it. I saw Al Sharpton blink as I told him in a debate that twice as many New Yorkers had been felled by police bullets during David Dinkins’ four-year mayoralty as during Giuliani’s then-seven years and that the drop in all murders meant that at least two thousand black and Hispanic New Yorkers who’d have been dead were up and walking around.

Giuliani’s successes ranged well beyond crime reduction. As late as July, 2001, when his personal and political blunders had eclipsed those gains and he had only a lame duck’s six months to go, I insisted in a New York Observer column that he’d facilitated housing, entrepreneurial, and employment gains for people whose loudest-mouthed advocates called him a racist reactionary. James Chapin, the late democratic socialist savant, considered Giuliani a “progressive conservative” like Teddy Roosevelt, who was a New York police commissioner before becoming Vice President and President.

But they're worried now. Democrats always say they're "fighting for you" but when they run into someone who is really willing to fight for what he believes in they think he's crazy.

No, we can't have someone who "panders shamelessly to some Hispanics and Orthodox Jews"---clearly dangerous constituencies. (I don't know about deals with cronies, might wanna ask Dem leader Ritzy Harry Reid about that.) Maybe it was that clip Rudy did with The Donald for a press roast. Gasp.

Anyone willing to make a fool of himself in aid of a little humor can't be that dangerous.

And Sleeper suggests economic good luck had a lot to do with his tenure in NY. Funny how it's always luck for Republicans, pure genius when it's a Democrat (Bill Clinton) taking credit for a good economy.

And the ultimate---Rudy's an---OPERA FANATIC.

The horror!

Too much culchah--he's "living in a libretto"! (not to be confused with bordello, that was Bill)

To them 9/11 was just a day at the opera, isolated in time, with no real consequences, and the emergent hero is scarier than any real villain.

It seems liberals can only handle dead bodies when they're on a stage. Too much real devastation, emotion, love of country and willingness to fight a truly evil enemy are too much for them.

Who's out of touch with the real world?

Not Rudy.

And a reminder---a grateful Great Britain only dumped Churchill after he defeated the Nazis. And secured our freedom.

UPDATE: Rudy's in Chicago tonight at the Palmer House. (scroll past Lynn Sweet's gushing coverage of Michelle Obama.)