The GOP’s Clinton by R. Cort Kirkwood • July 5, 2007 • Printer-friendly

During the Republican presidential debate on May 15, Ron Paul, the constitutionalist from Texas, flatly stated that the terrorist attacks on September 11 were retaliation for U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Rudy Giuliani shot back a mendacious rejoinder: “That’s an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don’t think I’ve heard that before, and I’ve heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th.”

So Giuliani told a double lie—the falsehood that Paul had claimed that the war in Iraq inspired the terrorist attacks of September 11 (a chronological impossibility), and the greater absurdity that he’d never heard of the blowback theory.

If the Stupid Party does not want to lose the 2008 election, not to mention its tenuous hold on solid conservative voters, it had better think twice about nominating “America’s Mayor” for president. A liar, an adulterer, and a leftist goon, Giuliani has already out-Clintoned Bill Clinton, and on many of the same low crimes and misdemeanors.

Topping the list of the goombah’s infamous deeds are his sordid marital monkeyshines. He dumped his first wife on grounds similar to those used by Henry VIII when he tossed Catherine of Aragon overboard. After 14 years of marriage, Giuliani “discovered” that his wife was a second cousin and received a declaration of nullity from the Church. He then married Donna Hanover, whose principal claim to fame is having wangled the lead role in an off-Broadway production of The Vagina Monologues. While married to Hanover, Giuliani jumped between the sheets with his next wife, Judith Nathan, the home wrecker who was prowling Gracie Mansion, the mayoral residence, before the mayor’s second marriage ended. Hanover learned of her forthcoming divorce when Giuliani announced it at a press conference. Not surprisingly, Hanover accused Giuliani of “open and notorious adultery” and received a restraining order to bar Nathan from the mansion. At least Clinton has been down the aisle only once.

Also like Clinton, Giuliani has parlayed politics into tremendous wealth. In December 2001, just three months after the terrorist attacks, Giuliani opened a consulting firm, Giuliani Partners LLC. The original principals included Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police chief accused of ties to the Mob and guilty of misdemeanor corruption; a former priest accused of covering up sex abuse in the Diocese of Rockville Centre on Long Island; and an FBI agent who pilfered souvenirs from Ground Zero. According to a recent article in the Washington Post, the firm collected more than $100 million in fees over five years, and Giuliani became a multimillionaire. His clients “have included a pharmaceutical company that, with Giuliani’s help, resolved a lengthy Drug Enforcement Administration investigation with only a fine; a confessed drug smuggler who hired Giuliani to ensure his security company could do business with the federal government; and the horse racing industry, eager to recover public confidence after a betting scandal.”

For “someone who lived through” September 11, Giuliani is rather soft on illegal immigration. In the City Journal, Heather Mac Donald wrote that the man who would be president went to the mat to stop the federal government from enforcing the country’s immigration laws. “Giuliani sued all the way up to the Supreme Court to defend the city’s sanctuary policy against a 1996 federal law decreeing that cities could not prohibit their employees from cooperating with the INS. . . . The INS, he claimed, with what turned out to be grotesque irony, only aims to ‘terrorize people.’ Though he lost in court, he remained defiant to the end. On September 5, 2001, his handpicked charter-revision committee ruled that New York could still require that its employees keep immigration information confidential to preserve trust between immigrants and government.”

Giuliani is also a staunch supporter of abortion. So wedded is he to the cause of infanticide that he claims it for conservatives. To justify legally murdering the unborn, he observed that “a strict constructionist” Supreme Court, out of respect for precedent, would never overturn Roe v. Wade. Of course, Giuliani is of the “personally opposed, but” persuasion, a reformulated version of the famous Clintonian locution “safe, legal, and rare.”

Giuliani’s personal life and leftist politics may explain his conduct when he was U.S. attorney in Manhattan. In that job, he railroaded “junk-bond” king Michael Milken and others for crimes they did not commit. As Paul Craig Roberts wrote, “Giuliani was unknown until in search of name recognition he staged a stormtrooper assault on the financial firm Princeton/Newport involving fifty federal marshals outfitted with automatic weapons and bulletproof vests. On another occasion, he had two New York investment bankers hauled off their trading floor in handcuffs. Giuliani’s victims had done nothing and were exonerated.”

This is the man the “Hannitized” Smear Bund of conservatives thinks should be president. So they mauled Ron Paul, the only candidate who understands the Constitution and what it was meant, and not meant, to do. The conservatives who backed George W. Bush for president can be excused, at least partly, because he, as McCain and Romney do today, told them lies to get elected.

To his credit, Giuliani hasn’t done that. He’s a liberal, and proud of it. So the conservatives who back him cannot be excused. If the GOP nominates Giuliani, “a small man in search of a balcony,” as columnist Jimmy Breslin called him, the party may be more stupid than anyone thinks, but at least it would reveal the GOP for what it is and likely spell the end of its undeserved reputation as the political home for conservatives.

Come to think of it, maybe nominating Giuliani isn’t such a bad idea after all. It would leave American conservatives homeless and give candidates such as Ron Paul a serious chance to compete for their votes.

R. Cort Kirkwood is the author of Real Men: Ten Courageous Americans to Know and Admire (Cumberland House).

This article first appeared in the July 2007 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

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