Big Apple Rudy

National Review Online

The other New York mayor looking at the White House.

By Jim Geraghty

New York, N.Y. — After watching Rudy Giuliani in action, giving his pitch to a room of 600 or so well-to-do donors, I’ve come to the following conclusion: For certain Republicans, Rudy will always be untouchable — be it his stands on abortion, gay marriage, or gun control, or his messy marriages, or his in-your-face abrasive leadership style, etc.

But…

…when Rudy gets going on an issue you agree with him on… he’s really, really good. Maybe unequaled. And it’s possible to imagine him, in some future debate, mopping the floor with a liberal challenger the way Reagan obliterated Carter and Mondale.

If Rudy gets the nomination — and that’s still a huge “if” — we are likely to see him hone in on the angles and issues that separate the sacred cows and orthodoxies of the Democratic base from the common-sense views of most Americans. And years of tangling with the New York Times and one of the country’s most combatively liberal political cultures have conditioned his instincts to go for the jugular.

This was perhaps best demonstrated early on, when Rudy said, “I’ve had to watch two Democratic debates in order to prepare for mine, and I noticed something: All those hours of debating, and not once did they mention Islamic terrorism…. Did they think it wouldn’t be p.c.? Did they think it would be insulting? When you say ‘Islamic terrorists,’ the only people you’re insulting are … Islamic terrorists. And, really, we don’t care if we insult them.”

Could you see some Democratic nominee — Hillary, Obama — tying themselves in knots to explain why they refuse to call the enemy “Islamic terrorists” (as opposed to just “terrorists”) or feeling the need to specify “al Qaeda”? Can you see them trying to explain to the American people that identifying the religion of al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc., is somehow ipso facto discrimination or bigotry?

“It’s not a small point,” Rudy said, hitting on a verbal tic by Reuters, etc., that inspires such ire and passion among right-of-center bloggers. “It illustrates their denial and defensiveness.”

It was the right crowd for a tax talk. You know, the kind of audience that plunks down at least $1,000 for tomato and mozzarella salad, chicken with mushroom sauce, mixed vegetables, and potatoes, and a blueberry tart for dessert — and a limit of two bottles of wine per table.

Rudy took a shot at the Democrats “euphemism” for raising taxes, “letting the Bush tax cuts expire.” He laid out how the top rate would increase from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, and on dividends it would stop being 15 percent and return to a 35-percent corporate income tax and an individual income tax of up to 38.6 percent. As several whistles of surprise from the crowd (must have been the Wall Street types), Rudy said, Great for investment, huh? We already have one of the highest corporate tax rates, and we’re seeing businesses move overseas. It reminds me of when they had the special tax on hotel rooms here in New York, the saying was, “you can’t afford to stay here.” Well, it’ll be “in America, you can’t afford to invest here.”… If you raise taxes on dividends, you’re going to get a lot more outsourcing.

Democrats have gotten into the habit of arguing, “we’re going to raise taxes on the rich, and look at all the great stuff you’re going to get when we do (health care, etc.).” Rudy is, better than any other candidate so far, making the case, “hey, look at all the other things you lose, even if you’re not rich, when they raise taxes on the rich.”

A bit later on, when Rudy really got going, he said, “It must be the subliminal Marxist influence of their professors…” (Yes, an allegedly not conservative Republican frontrunner just talked about Democrats and the universities being influenced by Marx!) “China has figured out the benefits of the free market, but the Democrats can’t! India has figured out to move away from socialist control of the market to a free market, but the Democrats can’t!”

You might not expect a New York City audience to be all that fired up on spending or earmarks, but Rudy managed to connect runaway spending as a symptom of dysfunctional government, the kind that his administration overcame in the 1990s.

“If we can clean up New York, we can clean up Washington… Republicans were spending too much money,” Rudy said, taking a shot at the last Congress. “At one point they had 10,000 earmarks. And last year, last November, Democrats said, ‘we’re gonna stop it.’ They got elected. They’ve been there six months. And they’ve requested 36,000 earmarks. And from this I learned, when it comes to spending, Republicans are amateurs. Democrats are professionals.”

It’s funny, because Rudy is supposed to be only a little better than McCain on immigration, but for a squish, he spent a lot of time talking about securing the border. Rudy contrasts our largely open border with the example of Americans who travel to other countries and who are expected to show their passport, to confirm they are who they say they are. He asked why that’s considered normal, but it’s considered unreasonable for America to try to do the same for people entering their country.

As Rudy went over his plan, he didn’t quite focus on the fact that he would not deport illegal immigrants, if they had not committed a crime other than illegally entering the country, and if they submitted all the proper information for the database, photo ID, fingerprints, and biometric info, etc. Maybe that isn’t enough for the anti-amnesty crowd. But I suspect many Americans would find a fence and serious deportation efforts against gang members and drug dealers a significant improvement over the current situation.

The term “Reaganesque” is thrown around with abandon these days, but Rudy closed with a perfect death tax anecdote that earned that label:

Look at what they’ve done with the death tax, in which you have all this money you spent your life working for, saving up, that you’ve already paid taxes on, and when you die, the government takes more than half. In 2008, it goes down from 55 percent to 45 percent. Great. [Sarcastic.] Big reduction. Thanks. In 2009, it goes down to zero. And then in 2010, it goes back up to 55 percent. This Congress is so screwed up, they’ve managed to create a tax incentive to drop dead! (Laughter.) If you die on December 31, fine, but when the ball drops in Times Square, the tax goes from nothing back up to 55! You better not be on a respirator!

The man certainly can sound like a winner.