Posted by
jarhead on Thursday, January 31, 2008 1:08:15 AM
“It bordered on science fiction to think that someone as liberal on as many issues as Rudy Giuliani could become the Republican nominee,” said Nelson Warfield, a Republican consultant who has long studied the former mayor’s career. “Rudy didn’t even care enough about conservatives to lie to us. The problem wasn’t the calendar; it was the candidate.”
I read this in an article on Rudy’s ending his bid for the Presidency. Now I know folks will say I’m taking this comment wrong but the only way I can read this is that this particular conservative would have been more accepting of Rudy if he’d at least lied about his positions. That’s the state of politics in America-If you aren’t really an advocate of my positions you have to at least lie to me about being an advocate and then it’s all right. Have we really become so jaded that we would accept the fiction that suits our needs rather than the fact that at least bespeaks integrity?
The Clinton’s have often been called Machiavellian in their campaign practices and I fear that with too much of that sort of thing we have come to accept being lied to as part of the political process; as Machiavelli would have it “Nevertheless our experience has been that those princes who have done great things have held good faith of little account, and have known how to circumvent the intellect of men by craft, and in end have overcome those who have relied on their word.”
I picked Rudy as my first choice for President because he got things done across party lines in New York. He also has stuck by his positions on those things, like abortion, that have the conservatives in a tizzy. I picked McCain as my second choice not because I agree with many of his positions, I absolutely do not, but I do trust him to be who he says he is on the stump, and I know he will prosecute the war on terror as advertized. Romney has so many self serving abuses of the truth to his credit that I have no way to believe him. That he has many conservatives promoting him proves him to be as Machiavellian as the Clinton’s at their worst. And Mike Huckabee, while well meaning and sincere, is still that Baptist minister at heart which explains why he pardoned more prisoners than his neighboring governors combined, why he believes public money should be used to educate the children of illegal’s and why he’ll founder badly inside the beltway when trying to deal the very Machiavellian leadership of the Senate and House-be they Republican or Democrat.
McCain may not be a classic Reagan Republican but Romney is surely not the man we need to put forth as the Republican standard bearer appearing as he does to this conservative much more like Gore and Kerry in his capacity for prevarications than that stalwart and bastion of integrity and truth Ronald Reagan. Character does count!