I'm having an early night. My alarm clock will go off at 5.58am tomorrow. I'll reach for my radio and anticipate the headlines of the Today programme. One of those headlines will almost certainly be that McCain or Romney is the presidential choice of Florida's Republicans. That will also mean the end of Rudy Giuliani's road to the White House. Rudy has been my choice for a good twelve months although I have been more and more open to a McCain candidacy since last November.
I don't approve of Rudy's private life or his support for abortion but his transformation of New York made him, for me, the preferred candidate. He offered a proven record of executive leadership. He cut taxes. He cut welfare numbers. He cut crime*. After the Bush years he offered a return to proven competence. His promise to appoint Supreme Court judges like Roberts and Alito should have reassured social conservatives. His security credentials are impeccable and, unlike McCain, he's not a europhile. Nor has he sold out to the climate change lobby.
This video encapsulates what he offered but which looks set to be rejected:
PS If, by any small chance, a Floridian is reading this post and hasn't voted: Please read this.
* He cut crime by setting limits to toleration and liberalism. That really matters. Nearly all of the great post-1979/1980 conservative achievements have been about liberalising - cutting taxes, reducing government. Rudy's achievement was to set limits to freedom for some in order to enlarge it for the many. Zero tolerance policing was the great public policy triumph of the 1990s.
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