More Rudy

by John Podhoretz

"On issue after issue of concern to America's conservatives - the misuse of the welfare system, the destructive effects of bilingual education, the disastrous misuse of public monies by municipal unions, the need for tax cuts, the essential requirement of supporting the city's police against unjust attack as they risked their lives to secure civil peace - Rudy fought.

He fought The New York Times and the liberal establishment - and gave them no quarter. They despised him - and the relentlessness of their expressed displeasure only seemed to push him to greater action.

Conservatives nationwide don't know any of this. But thanks to Norm Siegel and others, they may hear about it from exactly the sorts of people whose loathing of Rudy will enhance his stature and burnish his credentials.

Rudy's appeal to GOP primary voters can and will go beyond his peerless handling of 9/11 and his brilliant record on crime. Voters will learn that he was a liberal-slayer.

Norm Siegel doesn't dislike Rudy because he's pro-abortion and pro-gay rights. He dislikes Rudy because he thinks Rudy is an evil right-winger; that's why the Times hated him too.

By his enemies shall ye know him. One of the reasons conservatives like Rudy is that they believe he is one of them. Liberal attacks on him may convince many of them that this is even truer than they thought.

One reason they mistrust John McCain, despite his mostly sterling conservative voting record, is that they sense he isn't one of them at all. Certainly, the more he campaigned for the presidency in 2000, the less he did seem like one of them.

So here's the conundrum for 2008: Do social conservatives vote for the conservative they just don't feel is truly a conservative, or the moderate whom they correctly sense is actually a dyed-in-the-wool right-winger?"

Were I the Mayor of New York City and looked out the window to see the line of "good" folks (who's lack of a criminal record simply meant they hadn't been caught yet) awaiting the issuance of the new concealed carry law I forced past a begrudging liberal state house and police department, I know damned well I'd have more reservations than the Wild West before Custer arrived. If Rudy could take a small town, unblemished by the ravages of liberalisms, and mold it to suit his beliefs, he'd have no problems allowing most of his true Conservatism to shine through.

But because Rudy lived where he lived and experienced what he experienced, he has this one glitch that may be impossible to overcome. He knows you cannot simply allow everyone in NYC to own a gun, just as he knows that trying to stop abortion there would be insane. You'd never become elected to begin with and couldn't do the good you wanted to do if you said such things, even if you believed in the 2nd Amendment and were a right-to-lifer.

Here's the kicker. Rudy feels that some people are more equal than others when it comes to the 2nd Amendment. A lot more. He believes the canard, the fairy tale, that law enforcement is somehow more worthy than the general populace with regards to the ability to defend itself. He believes that police officers are better-trained and better mentally prepared, and not just because they went through an academy. He believes that the type of man who seeks such work, for the most part, is more likely to use his rights to defend himself for the sake of the common good and not for evil. In this manner, his mindset is far different than those who believe that the Constitution should mean what it means.

Background checks in NYC? Sorry, my Conservative brethren, but that is an imperative. The system exists to conduct such checks in a matter of minutes, not days, and wouldn't get in the way of a law abiding man or woman's right to own a firearm. I despise the credo of Guilty Until Proven Innocent that remains and shall ever be one of the main liberal clarion cries, but there can be no absolutes when dealing with a cesspool the size of NYC. It's too far gone to treat it as just any other gathering of citizens. I'd call for a national carry law that excluded such havens for criminals and ne'er do wells, and if the good people of these towns wanted more they'd have to vote out the liberals who keep them barefoot and pregnant and vote in the sort of folk who'd do their utmost to return some semblance of sanity.

If Guiliani returns to the true Conservative fold, and comes to the conclusion that the country is NOT New York, he gets my vote. But the last thing we need is yet another RINO waffling when he should be acting.