Last night my dad and I were talking about the Republican nominees, and there’s one guy that we couldn’t figure out: Giuliani. He doesn’t appeal to the religious nuts, and he doesn’t appeal to the libertarians. The rich, I suppose, like him, but it’s not like they make up a large percentage of Republican voters. So where does his poll support come from?
That’s when it hit me. There is a third portion of the Republican electorate that is ignored in the discourse about that party. The very, very scared. These are the people that would sell the constitution for an extra deadbolt on the doors to our democracy. Why you should really, really, worry, below the fold.
First of all, the media absolutely loves Rudy Giuliani. Chris Matthews gushes over him:
Giuliani is a front-runner because the voters like this guy because during 9-11 he was the one guy there on the street corner, not hiding like all the other pols did.
Or from a different broadcast (same link)
The issue in the country today is security. Who’s going to protect this country against the bad guys? Everybody agrees that’s the number one concern in the country today, and everyone agrees that Rudy has street cred on that issue. He can protect us. That’s the image he conveys.
Rudy is going to get the much-coveted “underdog” role all through the primaries, despite the fact that he has a firm grip on the nomination at the moment, because he happened to dress in drag a few times.
The other major warning sign is that Giuliani understands his strength, and plays to it better than any other Republican.
Giuliani called for a broadening of the war on terrorism into a war of ideology similar to the ideological battle of the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union.
“A much bigger part is about ideas,” he said, and “the hearts and minds of people. We’ve got to get better at selling our life, our economy.”
And there more than a few Republicans for whom feeling safe is more important than their Jesus.
“I’m a Christian, and his views on a lot of social issues are to the left of mine,” said Larry Stirling, a retired state superior court judge from San Diego. “But if you have to make a trade-off, I’ll make the trade-off for Giuliani. He’s been through a trial by fire. He’s got gravitas. The first thing a president has to do is protect us. The rest is a secondary consideration.”
This is going to be the mind-bending rhetoric that so many of the fear voters will be using to explain their vote for a man who is more than willing to use the bill of rights as a mop to soak up the blood of the oppressed. Never mind the fact that Jesus never asked for security from persecution, or encouraged his followers to trade off their beliefs for a safety blanket. Never mind that the first duty of a President, indeed the only duty, is to Preserve, Protect and Defend the CONSTITUTION of the United States of America. Never mind that Rudy Giuliani once said, and still believes, this:
Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do and how you do it.”
Let’s face it, you know a fear voter yourself. You know someone who will vote solely on whether or not a Presidential candidate will keep them safe from teh Islamistic Brown People.
No one is better at manipulating fears better than Giuliani. It’s how he got elected, and then reelected in New York City. It’s why he’s still popular despite being the first ever recipient of a Lifetime Muzzle Award from the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression for the following reasons, among others:
- Refusing to permit more than 20 taxi drivers to assemble for a protest against proposed city pick-up and drop-off rules (a federal judge ruled that action unconstitutional)
- Barring city employees from talking to reporters without specific approval – a policy which the federal appeals court found in violation of public workers’ free speech rights
- Directing the transit authority not to display on city buses ads bought by New York Magazine which contained a gentle if critical caricature of the mayor’s quest for publicity (an order held by federal district and appeals courts to be in violation of the First Amendment)
- Barring a Lutheran church group from demonstrating and conducting an AIDS education program in a city park (a ban which a New York state appellate court held in clear violation of free speech)
- Using city licensing power to terminate the franchises of certain newsstands and raising the fees for other newsstands on the basis of the content of publications they carry (a policy that was partly invalidated by a federal judge, ruling that newsstand operators do have First Amendment rights and that the city’s claimed too much discretion in the standards it had set)
- Refusing a permit for a parade or march designed to protest police brutality (a federal judge, ruling that the permit denial violated free speech, implied that the action had reflected the city’s objection to the subject matter)
- Barring most public events — starting with a rally to commemorate World AIDS Day — from being held on then steps of City Hall, which had long been a forum for such expressive gatherings (a policy promptly struck down by a federal district judge on free speech grounds)
And this, my friends, is all prior to 9/11. The censorship, the encouragement of aggressive police tactics, all the hallmarks of Rudy, were formed well before the current excuse for ignoring our Constitution came along.
For all of us who might think that Rudy might not be so bad as a President, let it be known that the censorship, the illegal imprisonments, the reckless war-mongering, the egregious violations against our own Constitution that have taken place under George W. Bush will seem like peanuts compared to four years of Rudy Giuliani. And it will be made possible by voters who are willing to throw away the constitution, and even their beliefs and their religion, for the sake of feeling safe from the Terra.