Rudy Channels Reagan
Rudy Giuliani delivered the keynote remarks to the Hoover Institution's Overseers’ Luncheon at the Willard InterContinental in DC today. Although there were no rah-rah moments for the 9/11 hero, the crowd was instead treated to Giuliani as the champion of free market enterprise -- the tax-cutting, welfare-reducing, budget-balancing descendant of Ronald Reagan.
Giuliani was introduced by his camp's new dir. of policy/'02 CA GOV nominee Bill Simon, who called him "a friend, a mentor, a former boss, and a fellow Ronald Reagan Republican." And although Simon noted that he "comforted us, he inspired us on one of the darkest days in American history," Giuliani strayed from the ever-popular 9/11 storytelling session, and opted to focus his address on how the expansion of "freedom" creates the best policies in taxation, school reform, entitlement reform, and health care reform.
In each area, Giuliani consistently pressed the case that GOP policies will be successful so long as GOPers stick to the core belief that "free market principles are really the salvation." Giuliani, on the GOP: "We're not always right, we're not always on our game. ... [But] we have to go back to our core principles and build on them." And what are those core GOP principles? "Freedom. ... When we've been doing well, we've expanded people's freedom a little bit more," Giuliani said, citing a history of GOPers beginning with Abraham Lincoln, and including "our greatest and most effective presidents," Theodore Roosevelt and, of course, Reagan.
Never delving into specific policy proposals, Giuliani kept his talk to the general sweeping idea of promoting free market policy. Giuliani said that the health care system is "fractured" and "in trouble," but can only be fixed with "free market solutions, competitive solutions." Giuliani: "We work best as a party ... and it helps our country the most when we empower people." On the issue of school choice, for example, Giuliani went back to his experience in New York, and argued: "I don't know how you say no to that. ... I don't know why it's not one of the great civil rights issues of our time." Who do we trust with the education of children, he argued, the board of education bureaucrat or the parent?
Meanwhile, in the Q&A session, Giuliani was first asked about his foreign policy experience, to which he quipped to laughter: "What makes you think that the mayor of New York City doesn't need a foreign policy?" Admitting that the presidency is "primarily a foreign policy role," Giuliani called foreign policy "an area of great interest to me," and one that he has developed through 91 or 92 trips abroad, as well as through international work with his firm. Giuliani: "It's something I know as well as anyone who's running. ... I know the world."
When speaking about the war on terror -- or rather, as he has renamed it, "the war of the terrorists against us" -- Giuliani argued that we should be comparing the war not to America's struggle in World War II, but to the Cold War. In the Q&A session, Giuliani also took the opportunity to condemn the congressional non-binding resolutions as "a way to be safe. It was a way to not make a tough choice."
Although there were no standing ovations and a mere one or two applause interruptions, the audience seemed quietly receptive to Giuliani’s message. But were they convinced? As one audience member said: "I may be in love, we'll see.” [MAURA O'BRIEN]
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