Considering my previous post (“in theory, America wants to vote for a Republican over Barack Obama, but in practice, theory loses out to reality”) it was a bit of a shock for me to see that there actually is one Republican who actually beats Barack Obama in the polls:
Rudolph Giuliani.
Amazing. The guy is not in the race, and he could not win the GOP nomination if he was. The Republicans don’t like him. Yet a majority of Americans do.
Got that?
A majority of Americans would rather have Rudolph Giuliani as president than Barack Obama.
I would too, but that seems rather irrelevant to the point, which is not who a majority of Americans would rather have as president, but who the biggest plurality of Republicans would have as their nominee.
Beating Obama becomes secondary. That’s the nature of the primary.
Comments
4 responses to “A secondary concern”
Interesting – shut up, stay out of the news, and you stay popular.
Actually, I suspect that because of 9/11 he’s got an image as a good leader. And that’s what we need.
I also suspect that if he’d been nominated in 2008 that we wouldn’t have Obama as president now. The SoCons would probably have stayed home, but I think more of the Independents would have held noses (sorry – don’t like his gun control stance) and voted for him.
Back in 2008 Guiliani was my first choice. He ran a very indifferent campaign and resigned from the race after a short while.
My initial take is that he doesn’t deserve a second chance, given the slipshod way he ran last time.
Giuliani is a pretty harsh law and order type – not any kind of libertarian. Just sayin’.
I have no illusions about Giuliani. He is a drug warrior, and even wants to ban ferrets! I would have to hold my nose to vote for him. But I see goal number one as beating Obama, not ideological purity. I would vote for any of the GOP pack over Obama (even though some of them make me vomit), but I hope the GOP has the sense to select someone who can win a majority of ordinary voters. Otherwise, the GOP base will make the perfect into the enemy of the good.