Romney Knocks Giuliani For Liberal Views

Althouse thinks this line of critique will be ineffective, as everyone already knows where Giuliani stands on these issues.

Not so. A majority of Republicans, for example, either don't know Giuliani's position on abortion or incorrectly believe he's pro-life.

The attack will be somewhat less effective due to the fact that Romney himself held these views just a few years ago. Giuliani can suggest he may "evolve" as Romney did in just a few short years.

Social con candidates like Brownback and (presumably) Gilmore are entering now as dark horses, in case the front-runners falter.

But Giuliani may not falter after all. I hope this isn't telling tales out of school, but Eric Erickson of RedState related a story about his wife's Bible study club. His wife is strongly pro-life, as are the other ten women in the group. And they're all supporting Giuliani -- enthusiastically, in most cases. Why? Well, they think he'll win the war.

The plural of anecdote is not "data" and all that, but still, Giuliani pretty much seems to be the talk of CPAC, and even strong social cons aren't rabidly against him. In fact, most of them seem to approve of him as a candidate, if not enthusiastically so.

On the other hand, there's the hapless John McCain.

Here's an NYT piece on yesterday's speeches.

Spot the lie:

Mr. Giuliani focused on what has been one of his electoral strengths: his performance as mayor after the attacks on the World Trade Center. Mr. Giuliani departed from a standard criticism of President Bill Clinton by Republicans, who have faulted him for not recognizing the emerging terrorist threat after the first attack on the World Trade Center and the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole.

“I don’t blame people for that,” he said. “ I don’t think it’s instructive or helpful to do that.”

The deliberate deception here is that Giuliani immediately followed this statement up by saying (paraphrased), "But for those who continue to support the same pre-9/11 law-enforcement responses to terrorism after 9/11 -- they can and should be blamed for that."

But the NYT reporter apparently only caught the part of the quote that seemed to absove his heroes for their sleepwalking through the escalation of 90's megaterrorism. How he managed to miss that this entire passage was about the Democrats' desire to go back to the pre-9/11 Clinton paradigm of law enforcement plus half-hearted and haphazard missile strikes is beyond me.

But then, I guess we all hear what we want to hear.

They're simply dishonest. And they wonder why their subscription base is dropping so precipitously.

Not Sure If This Is True:

Mr. Giuliani arrived to a rousing reception, but the room grew silent and restless as Mr. Giuliani wandered through a speech that lasted 40 minutes. By contrast, Mr. Romney arrived to a much more subdued reception but left to rousing applause.

I can't tell, because I wasn't in the room, alas. Certainly the applause kept coming for Giuliani -- I noticed no "restlessness," and everyone in the auditorium was glued to the TVs -- but it did seem that Romney delivered a livelier, more rousing speech.

But the speeches were different -- Giuliani's speech wasn't a full-blown stump-speech; it was more of a discussion of issues as other, noncandidate speakers delievered. Romney's speech was also SRO, but not everyone in the joint was glued to TVs to watch him speak.

NYT Full of... It: So says Fausta, who was in the room when Giuliani delivered his speech. She notes the speech ended with a standing ovation.

JackStraw points out that most people spoke glowingly of Romney's speech. It was a strong, rousing speech. I certainly thought it was miles away better than his NR speech. Eric from Red State is one of those greatly impressed by Mitt, and has a transcript of his full speech.

I still think I preferred Giuliani's -- partly because of my obvious bias, but also partly because I'm still kind of annoyed the presidential campaign has already begun, and preferred Giuliani's more low-key, I'm-not-really-a-candidate-just-giving-a-talk-here style, at least at this point in early March 2007.

By the way, the whole Red State crew is covering this thing amazingly well.

posted by Ace at 04:25 PM

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