Let me say from the outset that Rudy Guiliani was - and is - my preferred candidate on the Republican side. However, his speech at CPAC yesterday, which I witnessed, was not the speech of a serious presidential candidate. It was a rehash of a speech given to business audiences about how to turn round failing organisations - in his case New York City. It had its moments but in general was too wooden, too conversational and too centred on the past rather than offering a vision for the future.
It also contained very little for the very conservative audience. They were seeking reassurance on their litmus test issues if gun control, what they call 'traditional marriage' and abortion. Reassurance came there none. Now from my point of view that was a good thing, but he needed to find someway of walking a socially conservative tightrope but failed to do so. He made a vague reference to the 80 per cent of things which united him and them, but that was about it. A profoundly disappointing performance from the front runner.
If organisation was anything to go by Governor Mitt Romney and Senator Sam Brownback would be the two frontrunners. They blitzed CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) with their stickers and posters leaving the others in their wake. John McCain not only did not speak but didn't even have a stand any supporters there at all. Giuliani had no campaign organisation there either - his supporters had to draw their own posters themselves.
Mitt Romney was the candidate to emerge from the event with the 'Big Mo'. His speech hit all the buttons, he seems to be able to attract support from all parts of the Republican Party and he seems to be pushing the same message of hope and optimism that Barack Obama is espousing on the Democratic side. Just as important, Romney looks the part, and he has a good record in Massachussetts. He was also the candidate who attracted some negative advertising at CPAC, partly in the form of Flip Romney, a flip flopping dolphin! Romney has a, shall we say, an inconsistent record on many social issues. I left CPAC wanting to know more about Mr Romney. He could be a dark horse worth watching.
Senator Sam Brownback needs to change his name. No one has won the presidency with a surname of more than seven letters since Eisenhower, and he campaigned as Ike. It's a weird thing in this race that there are so many people with immigrant surnames. Ironically the bizarrely named Tommy Tankredo - an immigrant name if there ever was one - is campaigning on a single issue anti immigration platform. Can you imagine a President Tankredo? No, me neither.
All the candidates are trying to hitch themselves to the coattails of Ronald Reagan. Giuliani mentioned him at least 20 times in his speech and Brownback's literature is littered with references to him being a 'Reagan Conservative'. This is fine as far as it goes, but they really do need to start articulating their own visions.
My conclusions? McCain's bungled campaign announcement on Letterman left him looking old and fighting a different race to the rest. Giuliani needs to reassure the right if he is to win and Romney needs to develop a policy platform which will put the flip-flopping to rest.
But Mitt Romney emerged from CPAC as the candidate to watch.
28 comments:
It's Tancredo. And he's known as 'The Tank'.
There isn't a Reagan among 'em, but Romney, provided he is faithful to his new-found beliefs, would be good.
So many people with immigrant surnames? Surely all have immigrant surnames, unless a "Three Bears", "Crazy Horse" or "Dances With Wolves" has entered the race.
Romney is a Mormon. I don't see that going down well with a lot of voters, including the evangelicals. Pat Robertson is upset, to say the least.
PS, is O'Bama really Irish?
It's interesting you mention McCain's announcment on Letterman. Unpolished and awkward, such a contrast to Obama's display. Maybe McCain is stuck in an Old Media mentality and no one on his team has the knowhow to make the switch to New Media.
Also interesting to see a new rise in Conservative thought and appreciation, both in America and here in the UK. Enough time has gone by to take a serious look at the merits of Thatcher and Reagan.
Maybe it's still too soon for Cameron to campaign as a Thatcherite!
Romney is a Mormon, Kerry was a Moron .. doesn't bode well
What will Romney do about the budget deficit and the national debt? Bush could have vanquished or at least seriously reduced it by now if he had any fiscal discipline. Sad to say it but even Clinton was more fiscally conservative in his later years.
"Maybe it's still too soon for Cameron to campaign as a Thatcherite!"
No. If Cameron were a Thatcherite, one couldn't have held him back from stating the case for capitalism, freedom of speech, the yanking off of the iron yoke of the state and the unions.
He's not a Thatcherite. He has no concern for her magnificent legacy.
He doesn't understand it and doesn't believe it. Dave doesn't get it. Dave has never lived in the real world and is not fit for purpose. He cannot relate to ordinary British families.
Like the sleazy Blair in his just published photo - not only making an obscene gesture, but looking curiously like Cherie, don't y'all think? - the socialists want the destruction of society and the uber-control of the state for everything, including what people eat, what they learn, how they bring up their children.
George Orwell, 30 years prescient, gets our attention these days, but let us not forget Aldous Huxley and 'Brave New World'. Children born in test tubes.
The socialists have to be stopped and David Cameron is not the cove to do it.
Is he any relation to Tommy Tancredo?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tancredo
nadders, your post was wonderfully ignorant.
Unlike you, George Bush was brought up in the drawing rooms of DC. His dad was the head of the CIA and then VP. He got degrees from Harvard and Yale. He served as a jet pilot in the Reserves.
Tell us, what is it about GWB that you don't like?
Guiliani is not presidential material. He was a good CE of NYC. That was then. He did an effective job in a discrete area. He is not a world player.
Well nadders, what is the real politics of the yanks status? How about the (continually maligned) defender of the free world for the last 60 years? Make no mistake, had America not been around in that time, or had decided to become isolationist, we would (a) be dead or (b) be living under Soviet masters.
OR (to answer your second part)
What is this 'fantasy' of which you speak? That there *aren't* guys around who want to take the entire world back to the 7th century, and don't much care how it happens, or how many people die to make it happen?
America is in the position it is in (and to make it perfectly clear what that position is, it is the pre-eminent beacon of hope, freedom, innovation and individual rights in the entire World) because no European nations have had the balls, gumption or will to do what America does. They have been content to suckle from the tit of American military might, safe under the nuclear umbrella that the US provided and continues to provide. And what have these magnificent countries done with the money they've saved in this way? Why they've created a Socialist paradise (always an oxymoron) where the iron laws of Economics are somehow held at bay (look at what Segolene Royal is promising - unreal), where individual rights are subsumed to the will of the State, essentially making people mere State chattels, where the rampant stupidity of Multi-culturalism is allowed to destroy hundreds of years of tradition and indigenous values and where it has become de rigeur, almost a badge of honour to lambast, to ridicule and to hobble the United States at almost every turn.
All 'European' countries are a joke. They are pathetic parasites on the back of the US giant, who stands on the wall, making sure the barbarians are kept at bay.
If you haven't guessed by now, these anti-American tirades don't agree with me. I find them pitiful, like seeing a petulant child rage at the adult who won't give them the ice cream *and* the chocolate bar. The Americans live in the real world; where people are responsible for their own lives, where Governments cannot be trusted (by virtue of their very existence), where progress is something to be welcomed as it will make life better and where there really are monsters in the night, and so they have guns to kill those monsters. Big guns.
By the way, I'm English, *not* 'British' - that word means nothing to me any more, and I am proud to call myself a friend of America.
David Anthony - "Unpolished and awkward, such a contrast to Obama's display. Maybe McCain is stuck in an Old Media mentality and no one on his team has the knowhow to make the switch to New Media."
Opposite. Your comment is naive.
Tone MCD - Quite.
Nadders, Mitt Romney isn't from Utah and the assumption that he would be simply because he is a Morman is bigoted and crass. He grew up in Michigan and served as Governor of Massachusetts which is about as coastal as you can get. Romney is also fluent in French, well travelled , has had a hugely successful business career independent of his father and was a Baker scholar.
Did you not hear Anne Coulter who spoke at CPAC after Mitt Romney?
“I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot–so….’"
What a lovely woman.
Tonemcd,
Right on!
Re Guiliani-looks like he had a David Davis moment and we all know how impossible it is to recover after that. I am inclined to agree with Verity about him and from what I know about my fellow citizens - he won't wash with Middle America - no way, no how. I also think that the Republicans have had it - people there just want a chnage - very similar to what is happening here.
It is pitiable that Guliani is not taking this seriously. I think America is so divided at the moment that they will need a leader who can trancend and lead everyone. Rudy is that only guy.
As for Mitt? The mormon thing will be a huge liability. Sam Brokeback? America's had enough of that crap.
Look for Chuck Hagel. You heard it here first.
We aim to please, M'Lady Finchley
Giuliani was always known for being wooden; he makes Al Gore look like Mick Jagger when he gives a speech. How he pulled it together for his 911 moment of glory I do not know, but he's been unable to replicate it since that time and his campaign will consist entirely of laurel-resting. Regardless of his impact on the City of New York, his primary achievement since that time has been marrying his mistress.
McCain daily gives more reason to believe that he's simply past it. Ten years ago, he'd have been miles out front of the rest; now he bumbles along, bereft of his legendary charisma, saving his energy for capitulation to the extremists. I'm not a Republican but I have a lot of respect for some of the things he's done, particularly the way he reached out to help a friend of mine who was a military widow, despite the fact that she was a senior Democrat in a key area. He was able to transcend simple ideology and labels then, but now it seems he has turned his back on fairness or original thought. So much for the rebel.
So Iain thinks US voters may replace a Moron with a Mormon?
Hmmm.
Ronald Reagan: Is a braindead actor with as much substance as a Barby Doll.
Margaret Thatcher: Is a Nazi bent on destroying freedom and has hated for the ordinary people and working classes of Britain.
Tony Blair: Conservatives should not fear him as he will not last more then 5 years, and is a closet Tory anyway.
Joe Stalin: Is just a big cuddly teady bear.
To give just 4 very quick examples.
These are the sort of things that many said about these people before and during their periods in office. All things that history has shown us are not or were not true.
When people say the David Cameron is just like Tony Blair and does not understand ordinary people it shows one of two things.
Firstly they are just speculating with no real information or knowledge to back it up. which is good fun but that is all.
Secondly they have direct political motivation to simply make up lies. Working this out is generally very easy outside the internet.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Its about time we stopped listening to what politicians and paid political pundits say too much, and started judging our politicians and their governments on what they DO in office.
This is at least one thing that the last 10 years should have taught us by now, surely.
Politicians lie to get into office and lie when they get their to stay in power. Get over it, grow up, its called the real world.
For all we know Romney could be Ronald Reagan Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill all rolled into one. All the public can do is hope.
Nadders, neoconservatism is not a "central belt" movement: its members are exactly the sort of peopel whom you seem to favour, and taht si a key part of the problem with it, here as well as in the US.
I think you are right about Guiliani. I would prefer to see Ron Paul get the nod to be honest. Alas, I think the statist element to the Republican Party probably would not be so keen on him.
When it comes to true Conservatism, Ron Paul is the absolute Man. It's both too late and too early for the GOP to regain their soul, though, I think.
Nadders
R vs D matters a lot, especially after looking at the D's current offerings, all lefties tho' Hillary is trying to pretend otherwise. Do we want her or a junior Senator short on experience or an ambulance chaser multimillionaire ?
I say none of the above.
If Pat Robertson were really against Mitt Romney, would he have invited Mitt to speak at his school's graduation ceremonies? It sounds like a lot of people aren't learning the facts before they report. Sounds like they are listening too much to the left-wing media.
I saw this on the conservative American blog The Corner (on the influential National Review website):
"Rudy Giuliani may have been the real winner of this thing though — that he did as well as he did with a self-identified conservative crowd. His speech had both an overarching theme and great moments — that frankly surpassed anyone else at one moment in particular. No one but Giuliani can give the defense of the Patriot Act and NSA surveillance that he did — comparing it to prosecuting the mafia. But I also had the sense he didn't put a tremendous effort into his appearance — whereas Romney and Brownback had both people and signs, there were no Giuliani signs — and I even had the sense his speech was half-hearted, maybe because of fatigue. Imagine had he put in a full-fledged effort. That said, there would have been something off-putting about Rudy winning a conservative straw poll. But coming in second, without bussing anyone in — that's not nothing."
Iain, I think you HEAVILY over estimate the importance of CPAC. It is little more an inside the beltway side show. The current administration adopted this organization early on and year-in year-out panders to its membership.
I am confident that whoever wins the '08 nomination will have their preferred politic action committee / organization of choice and that it will most likely not be CPAC.
Romney might have the CPAC "Big Mo" but McCane and Giuliani are heavily courting Schwarzenegger's Bigger Bi-partisan Mo. I know which I would rather have going into next year’s primary season.
Nadders, your foreman said you can put down your jackhammer now and have some energy drink. But no more than five minutes.
Pat Robertson wishes he were Romney, no doubt.
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