Lather, Rinse, Repeat: Why Rudy is the New Bush

Posted by Rob Rabies on 05.23.2007

As if 8 years of BushCo weren't enough. Rob Rabies explains why a Republican favorite will be cut from the same cloth as 72% of the country's least-favorite Texan

It didn't begin with the jingoistic grandstanding during the second Republican debate, but Rudy Giuliani's excoriation of Presidential candidate and U.S. Representative Ron Paul showed who pulls the strings behind the GOP's third-runner (check the new Iowa polls). After Paul had the audacity, not to mention the common sense, to say that U.S. foreign policy helped contribute to 9/11, Giuliani was the first to grab the mic and exclaim, "how dare you!" as though the mere mention of the connection was tantamount to slamming a 767 into a high-rise office building.

Most of us are willing to admit that our Commander in Chimp has benefited from September 11 more than any other politician. Rudy is the clear #2. Last week's comments only reaffirm that fact, as Mr. Giuliani took Paul's comments as a direct affront to his largest reservoir of political ammo. Without 9/11, what is Giuliani? Willie Brown, Emmanuel Cleaver, Gavin Newsom, minus the over the top attention whoring?

Without 9/11 Bush is a One-Term President and Giuliani is a forgotten politico

What is George W without the War on Terr' and 9/11?? His longest-lasting domestic policies will end up being the Patriot Act (which is largely despised by the non-Hannity crowd) and the Department of Homeland Security (which he originally opposed, but not because of its oh-so-Orwellian name).

Giuliani mouthpieces will tell you that his tenure as New York mayor was marked with a return to law and order in New York City along with a streamlining of the city bureaucracy. He kept cops on the streets and teachers in the school, cutting taxes while slashing unnecessary rolls all around the metro area. Sounds like a paleocon's wet dream, but what is the reality behind this?

Firstly, New York's improving economic situation had a large part to due with the improvement in the overall country. New York is not an island in the metaphorical sense. It's ironic how much Republicans like to decry the Clinton boom as nothing more than the coincidence of the technology bubble. If one believed their rhetoric, they would emerge from the conversation believing that Amazon, Yahoo, and Reagan (yes, that crusty old bastard) had everything to due with the burgeoning economy, and the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (which raised taxes among the upper class and yet still spurred economic growth) was a footnote in history that had no effect on the improving budget and economic situation of the country. So why is it then,that one lawmaker's policies can directly affect the economy of a city, but another's (spread out over the entire nation) cannot affect the economy of the entire nation?

Republicans should either be graceful enough to acknowledge the affect of Clinton's policies, or consistent enough to admit that Giuliani's, like Clinton's, were nothing more than a consequence of the tech boom. Anything else is intellectually dishonest.

Bush's largest question mark prior to his first term was his lack of foreign policy experience, ditto for Rudy:

What does this spell? For Bush, it meant elevating Dick Cheney to the VP spot in order to lend some much needed "gravitas" to the ticket in terms of international relations experience. As a former Secretary of Defense and cold-hearted bastard who voted to cut Head Start funding, Cheney provided balance in delicate foreign issues that Bush was believed to be too inexperienced to handle effectively. From an architectural standpoint, that makes sense, but in hindsight most people realize that this pairing worked out about as well as trying to take a flaming shot without first blowing the damned thing out.

For Rudy, given his recent comments, it means that he's also likely to stuff his administration with neoconservative ideologues, just as Bush II did. Given that the neoconservative vision is ultimately one of a Pax Americana, and good luck trying to pull off world domination while maintaining good will, I'll let you connect the dots as to where a Giuliani administration would most likely lead us.

The "finest hours" of both are directly tied to a silencing of debate

9/11 is the great unquestionable in this country. No one can discuss why it actually happened; the only acceptable response in the political realm is that it was conducted by cowards who hate freedom and everything that "Mer'ca" stands for. If one has the stones to challenge this traditional line of thought, they are fired (a la Bill Maher), or shouted down in a forum of open debate, like our good friend Mr. Paul.

Bush's elimination of voices of dissent is well-chronicled, and going over them here in this space wouldn't be anything other than redundant, so we'll skip it. But for the sake of argument, let's take a look at Rudy's pratfalls during 9/11:

The same man who was lauded for putting more cops on the streets to help curtail crime was surprisingly absent from critique when the 9/11 Commission (in part) helped reveal that the lack of communication and teamwork among the various city departments (such as fire and police) as well as traditional obstinacy that led to rivalries within various departments had contributed to a largely impotent and ineffective rescue attempt at the site of the terrorist attacks. If someone is there to take praise for the policies which helped lead to a greater coordination of the city (such as more cops) wouldn't it stand to reason/logic that that same person, since they are the head of the local government, should also be taken to task for the inefficacy of the departments that fall under his/her ultimate supervision?

Additionally, one might ask why Rudy decided to relocate the office of Emergency Management to 7 World Trade Center, which was directly next to a site of a previous terrorist attack and a well-known terrorist target for its financial implications and capitalistic symbolism. Of course, there is also the ever-growing criticism of Giuliani's lack of response to the overtly hazardous air conditions immediately following the terrorist attacks. Instead of taking necessary precautions, Giuliani, much like Bush, played the cowboy and wanted to show the world that nothing could keep the United States down for long. This political saber-rattling had very real implications for the health of various workers in the cleanup effort around Ground Zero.

Furthermore, despite alluding to, or overtly mentioning 9/11 at nearly every conceivable stop, Giuliani has openly admitted to never having read the 9/11 Commission Report. Maybe Giuliani's a busy man, after all, kissing CEO…err, babies and negotiating oil deals with Venezuala is a time consuming occupation, but if you are going to constantly invoke the memory of an event for political gain, shouldn't you at least have the common decency to read the definitive report on why it actually happened? (Which by the way, agrees with Ron Paul's assertion of blowback) Of course that wouldn't mesh with Rudy's reality of 9/11, so I can imagine why he was so loathe to actually read it.

I'd settle for a compromise—Don't read the report and fix your Tiger Woodsian, Nancy Kerrigan-esque horse teeth. The man could chew through a Sequoia in 14 minutes. They're terrifying.

Then again, so is the prospect of another Bush in the White House. Even if his last name is Giuliani.