Don't Kid Yourself: Giuliani is a Right Winger

This article in The Washington Post lays it out clearly: the idea that Rudolph Giuliani is a liberal is a fundamental misconception based on a handful of issues. In most respects, Giuliani combines all the worst aspects of Bush and Cheney within himself. Excerpt:

You wouldn't know it from reading the papers, but the favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination is a confirmed right-winger. On issues such as free speech and religion, secrecy and due process, civil rights and civil liberties, pornography and democracy, this moralist and self-styled lawman has exhibited all the key hallmarks of Bush-era conservatism.

That candidate is Rudolph W. Giuliani.

As any New Yorker can tell you, the last word anyone in the 1990s would have attached to the brash, furniture- breaking mayor was "liberal" -- and the second-to-last was "moderate." With his take-many-prisoners approach to crime and his unerring pro-police instincts, the prosecutor-turned-proconsul made his mark on the city not by embracing its social liberalism but by trying to crush it.

To a New Yorker, the idea of Rudy as a liberal or even a moderate is unreal, topsy-turvy -- like describing George McGovern as a hawk or Pat Buchanan as a Zionist. The case for Giuliani's moderation rests mainly on three overblown issues -- guns, gay rights and abortion -- and even in those cases, his deviation from conservative orthodoxy is far milder than is usually suggested.

The "social" and "cultural" issues that divide Americans encompass much more than guns, gay rights and abortion. They include state support of religion; the legitimacy of dissenting speech; the president's right to keep information secret; the place of fair procedures in dispensing justice. The Bush administration's hard-line stands on these matters have polarized the nation as much as the Iraq war has. And on these issues, Giuliani is just as hard-line as the man he'd like to succeed.

Face it, folks--he's Rudolph W. Mussolini. He has nothing but contempt for this country's democratic institutions. He has a disturbing streak of megalomania. And he is willing to say or do anything to win, however dishonest or unethical. Stopping Giuliani from acquiring the presidency is fundamental to the survival of our nation. Don't let him get away with trying to sell himself as a moderate. He's about as "moderate" as Dubya--and even more ruthless.