I suppose that it’s satisfying for one or two of the posters here to get all riled up over immigration policy all over again ... but this part of the thread seems to have started when I took issue with Pasadena Phil’s assertion that Rudy Giuliani is an “open borders guy”, which is clearly not the case. Giuliani has the strongest record by far of any candidate, Dem or Pub, in the business of law enforcement. He never declared NYC a “sanctuary city”, as that BS artist Mitt “I was the guy in charge of the Big Dig” Romney lied about last week. Rudy did what he could as the leader of the largest metropolitan government in the USA to deal with the problems that are caused by out of control illegal immigration ... a situation not of his making, and one that only the Federal government is responsible for fixing.
Rudy simply could not simply deny all services, including emergency medical care, vaccinations, and public school education to illegal immigrants ... at least not without bringing the City to its knees with massive disease epidemics, a massive increase in street crime, and probably the equivalent of what was going on in Bagdad prior to the Surge. The knuckleheads who say that that is the way to deal with illegals already here in America ought to go join the Taliban in the mountains of Waziristan, so that they can preside over the armed purification of the people with complete confidence that seventh century medieval governance is fully appropriate for the 21st century. It worked so well for the the Afghans, you see.
In any case, Rudy is no open borders guy. He does not support national gun control - he was dealing with firearms in the context of the nation’s largest and densest city that had already banned handguns in its ordinances, and his policies reflected the needs, opinions, and demands of his constituency within that city - but he says what is good for NYC is not necessarily what’s good for the entire USA. He has said over and over and over again that he is a strong believer in Federalism, with most of the policies that affect each of us on a daily basis being determined by the individual States and not by the Congressmen and bureaucrats in D.C.
Phil kept throwing lots of stuff at the wall about Rudy, and none of it stuck. According to Phil’s fevered imagination, Rudy is not even a RINO, but an all out DEM ... from my point of view as a lifelong Republican, center-right, Cold War veteran, husband and father, and entrepreneur, Rudy says everything I want to hear an American President say. And he’s backed up his words with his documented actions and proven successes in a lifetime career of service as a chief law enforcement officer, mayor of America’s largest city, and a proven hero of 9/11 who won’t take #### offa nobody, nowhere. My kinda guy.
And if Phil doesn’t like that, he is entitled to rant all he likes and stay at home in November 2008. Even without Phil’s vote, however, I still believe that Phil is going to be sorely disappointed to see our future President Giuliani kick Hillary’s ass come next November. Because most Republicans aren’t as willfully ignorant and obtusely brain dead as Phil would like us to act.
