Giuliani Blog Tracking the likely Presidential candidacy of Rudy Giuliani

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Take Back the Majority. Rudy Giuliani for President

Yes, we got killed tonight. And we now have a big hole to dig ourselves out of.

Where do we go from here?

First off, we know that our principles didn't lose tonight. The new House and Senate Democrats came from Bush districts, and parroted conservative ideas at every opportunity. The solutions the public demanded -- from border security, to fiscal discipline, and to desperately wanting to win in Iraq vs. cutting and running -- were fundamentally conservative ideas.

At some point, the Republican majority became but feckless defenders of an agenda the American people support, craving their next re-election at the expense of advancing these principles. Let this election be a lesson for Republicans for generations to come.

The answer to this crisis is principled, unapologetic, and fearless leadership.

And there's one man -- and only one man -- who is poised to deliver that leadership.

Rudy Giuliani.

And it's more than about poll numbers and electability. It was arguments about polls that caused Republicans to abandon their principles on important issues like Social Security and to pursue reckless spending to secure their own re-election. The reasons for Rudy are more basic and more fundamental than mere poll numbers.

Simply put, there is no one in politics more adept at both executing and communicating on matters of serious principle than Rudy Giuliani. As Mayor, he made bold promises and delivered -- cutting crime and welfare every single year he was mayor. There was no "mid-course correction" or cooling his jets in one area buy some leeway in another. It was a full-bore offensive from the day he got there to the day he left. And he put the liberal establishment in its place where it was strongest, driving them bananas. Before BusHitler, there was RudyHitler. Before BDS, there was RDS.

When his poll numbers went down, he didn't care. (This is a virtue he shares with our current President.) And when a defining moment came, he had this incredible internal reserve that enabled him to turn around a struggling mayoralty into one of the great leadership stories of our time.

Rudy Giuliani's leadership is the kind forged in steel. It doesn't bend or twist with the wind when an adviser brings in a bad poll saying he needs to hike spending to stay in power or blanch at an all-out blood, sweat, toil and tears defense of the war we are currently engaged in.

We need a leader who can execute and follow through on what we were elected to do: cut spending, cut taxes, secure the border, win the war.

We need a leader who isn't afraid to stick it to our opponents and be a strong leader of his party as well as his country. When Bush took the fight directly to the Democrats, he won. But inexplicably, his efforts on this front this year were only halting.

We need a leader who can break the mold, who is a fresh face, and who hasn't "gone Washington." In the words of the best Senate candidate of '06 Michael Steele, we need someone who can Change the Game.

We need a leader who unifies the Republican Party, and doesn't hurl insults at key segments of our base.

AND we need someone who can win.

One and only one leader stands out from the crowd: Rudy Giuliani.

He is also the kind of leader who makes you feel good about being a Republican at a time when the brand has taken a huge hit. This excitement extends to an astronomical 78% of South Carolina Republicans who say they personally like Rudy. I doubt all of them will vote for him, but numbers like this show he is the one leader who unifies all segments of the Party -- conservatives and moderates.

Take a look at some of the seats we lost that we should have won. Rudy is hugely popular in South Florida, where we lost FL-16 and FL-22. In Florida, I can easily imagine people flocking to the Giuliani/VP Nominee/Negron '08 ticket as a powerful straight-party combo that's capable of quickly taking back the Red State seats we lost. Ditto for a blue-collar district like IN-2 and maybe even the three seats in New York we lost when Rudy makes NY purple in '08.

Rudy has had no stake in the fights that led to the Republican collapse, so he can transcend them, and make the 2008 election about the future not the past.

With Rudy, we won't need to spend any time in the wilderness because he is the one uniquely equipped to restore the Republican Party to a politics of fearless principle. The way forward is clear.

It's Rudy time.

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