Why Rudy?

Why am I still considering supporting Giuliani, when he's nowhere in the early state polls and "has lost his mojo?"

One reason is because Fred Thompson is no longer an option.

Another reason is Mitt Romney's inability to finish the sentence "The reason I want to be president is..."

But sometimes I forget that there are people who've already joined the Rudy team for the most obscure reason of all: He's a good candidate.

Here's a reminder from one of his most thoughtful supporters

Giuliani has only been a mayor, but the city he was mayor of had more people in it than Tennessee, Arizona or Massachusetts. It was also one of the most afflicted places in the country. Giuliani found the handful of cops and academics who had some new ideas, he put what they knew into practice, and he maintained it athwart the furioius opposition of the local political culture, led by the New York Times. Thousands of New Yorkers who would otherwise have been murdered are alive as a result.

Giuiliani’s second accomplishment was his performance after 9/11. It would be tedious to elaborate what is universally known, except to point out that we do have a counterexample of failure: the local, state and national response to Hurricane Katrina. Some people took more flak than they deserved, for politically opportunistic reasons, and other people — Mississippi governor Haley Barbour, the Coast Guard — performed superbly. But imagine a 9/11 response team consisting of Michael Brown, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, and Ray Nagin, and you have some notion of what we missed, even on our day of disaster.


Rudy's got many problems, not the least of which is his treatment of Donna Hanover. But he also did what he did. Results aren't spin, and they shouldn't be spun away.