Rudy 2008

This is the website of a man who is running for the White House.

Comments

[Voice from the South West]

Hurrah! Pity he'll never win the Republican Primary though. :(

[Andrew Kennedy]

No - but he will likely win 400+ delegates from the North East and the Great Lake states and have enough influence to be king maker.

My own view - McCain / Giuliani 2008.

[Editor]

When do you think is the earliest day that ConservativeHome can start running its US Presidential race blog?

[Peter Franklin]

McCain '08!

[Editor]

Congress will never let a President McCain pass climate change legislation, Peter - not of a Kyoto kind, anyway. That's an 'inconvenient truth' you Kyoto fundamentalists need to remember!!

[Gildas]

"My own view - McCain / Giuliani 2008"

Which would pretty much guarantee the Democrat winning. Especially if they pick Mark Warner, who would be (slightly) more attractive to conservatives than those two. [And I like Giuliani a lot, but he'd only win as part of a balanced ticket].

[Editor]

Santorum - social conservative and Pennsylvania - would be an ideal balanced-ticket running mate for Rudy, Gildas, but first he has to win his Senate race this November and faces a double digit deficit currently.

Rudy can reassure social conservatives if he promises to appoint exactly the same sort of Supreme Court justices that Bush has nominated (if not for exactly the same reasons).

[Gildas]

"Santorum...". I've thought the same thing myself. His statewide ad launch just happened so we will see if he can make up the shortfall.

Judges are a key component, as they are the issue that unites all elements of the GOP, from social conservatives, libertarians and business types. He'll need to do something for gun owners too, as he is highly distrusted there.

[Cllr Iain Lindley]

Giuliani would be one of the few Republican politicians who could pry me away from willing the Democratic candidate to victory in 2009. I very much doubt he'll win the nomination, though.

[Andrew]

Giuliani must know the heartland crazies will never accept him. Many of them detest him more than the Democrats.

[Andrew]

Oh, and yes - I had Santorum as my long shot bet as the Republican candidate, although at 80/1 it was pretty easy to stick £20 on him.

He's not enormously convincing, but the problems McCain/Giuliani will have in winning the primaries are fairly obvious, which doesn't leave a fairly large field left. Romney? Allen? Surely not Bill Frist?

[Morten Fjeldberg]

Actually I think that both Rudy Giuliani and John McCain are likely nominees, but the GOP is run largely by a very conservative faction. Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker, is back in the spotlight, and has won many socalled straw-polls occuring on several state conventions. Outgoing Majority Leader Bill Frist and outgoing Masachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is also considering standing.

My bet is either Giuliani or McCain for the GOP. Who will they face?

Hillary Rodham Clinton or Joe Biden.

I will however recommend www.politics1.com, a very good site

[Deputy Editor]

Romney? Allen? Surely not Bill Frist?

Romney possibly (big CH debate about him here) - I can see Republicans going for his fiscal conservatism but not his Mormonism.

Allen - he was very unimpressive when I saw him speak once, he seemed to get a lot of right-wing approval in the audience but I don't think he is president material. He does looks like he's really going for it though, he had all sorts of Allen 08 merchandise and I've seen his ads on sites like Instapundit.

Frist - like the other two is quite hawkish but also has a gentler side being a doctor and big supporter of AIDS and Aid programmes. The southern states would definitely go for him, as would most evangelicals for his bioethics(his support for expansion of stem-cell research is probably balanced out by opposition to abortion and his intervention in the Shiavo case.)

[Gildas]

"When do you think is the earliest day that ConservativeHome can start running its US Presidential race blog"

Final week leading up to the mid-terms. Now is too early, but you'll want to start by covering those results, as they'll give a good insight into the internal attitudes of both parties.

I think doing a US blog for a British audience is a very good idea. Coverage of US politics in the British press is appallingly simplistic. US Correspondents either go and write feature pieces on some interesting ephemera, or they read through the New York Times and Washington Post and then report back the conventional wisdom - completely missing everything the MSM misses.

[Peter Franklin]

"Congress will never let a President McCain pass climate change legislation, Peter - not of a Kyoto kind, anyway. That's an 'inconvenient truth' you Kyoto fundamentalists need to remember!!"

Then why is wingnut central putting so much money into heading off something which (you say) can't possibly happen?

The threat from CO2 emissions is real. Each nation has to do its fair share. Only a WTO style agreement will stop countries trying to cheat on each other.

[Andrew]

"Romney possibly .... I can see Republicans going for his fiscal conservatism but not his Mormonism."

That point interested me also. The conventional wisdom was always that the base would consider that sort of background as "old-fashioned moral steadfastness", with the particular brand of regligious belief not of enormous importance.

Having said that, this isn't a mainstream religion - Mormonism is just bizarre, and some of their beliefs are plain batty. The question is: would mockery of specific points be muted? My instinct is it would - at least enough not to be important compared to the multitude of other issues in primaries.

[Peter M.]

McCain and Giuliani are both soft liberals!

JEB BUSH & MITT ROMNEY 2008!!!

or CONDI RICE!