Disclaimer- This may be a little more biased then I would have liked; I am just very tired, having had a long day with an abnormally cranky 2 month old and therefore could not help but throw in some jokes that are not funny at all. Enjoy.
I had been thinking of doing Huckabee next because he was the other winner of the Iowa Caucus, but I thought that since tomorrow is the New Hampshire Primary, and this is the first state that Giuliani put any effort into, I would write about the mayor. Giuliani’s team is trying a new approach this year. Rather than put everything into Iowa and New Hampshire and hope to get top three so they can get the money to go onto South Carolina etc., Team Rudy has a different idea. For the first time in many years the primary schedule is different. There are 20 or so states voting on Feb 5th; some of these states never had primaries before June (like NJ), so really had no say in who was going to be elected president. (By June everyone had either dropped out or there was a clear front runner.) It is up to a state legislature to schedule a primary. The DNC and the RNC wanted to allow Iowa and NH to keep their titles as first caucus and first primary (NH state law actually says they MUST be the first primary in the country, and therefore they moved their primary from the end of the month to the 8th when MI moved their primary to the 15th.) The DNC and the RNC are punishing renegade states like Florida, MI etc. for having primaries before February 5th by stripping them of most or all of their delegates at the convention. In other words, MI might be trying to be more influential by moving their primary, but they wont have a single vote at the Democratic National Convention.
Anyway, on to Rudy…….
Foreign Policy and Israel- Giuliani was voted by HaAretz as the best candidate for Israel ( http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/759119.html )
He wrote a piece called “Towards A Realistic Peace” that was very well received by the American pro Israel community. You can read it here: http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070901faessay86501/rudolph-giuliani/toward-a-realistic-peace.html
Regarding the war in Iraq, Giuliani feels that we need to stay the course, not give a withdrawal date, and work on creating a stable Iraq.
Domestic/Economy- Like Obama, Giuliani wants to simplify the tax code, in hopes that this will help bring down spending. He wants to get ride of the “Death Tax” (also known as the “I’m coming to get your children tax”…….ok, sorry, that was my one West Wing flashback; but it is really the estate tax). He feels this will help keep money in families and help pass the wealth down from generation to generation. Rudy would also work on lowering corporate taxes to help stimulate the economy and create jobs.
Health Care- I am putting health care right after taxes because Rudy’s heath care plan is directly linked to taxes. He wants to expand tax free savings accounts that could then be used to help pay for medical costs, as well as give working families a $15,000 income tax exclusion (i.e. $15,000 of one’s income would not be taxed; a person making $40,000 a year would only pay taxes in the $25,000 a year tax bracket, which is much less then $40,000) to help them pay for health insurance if their company does not provide for them. He would try to lower the cost of health care in general by working on getting rid of fraud and frivolous lawsuits so that malpractice insurance won’t need to be so high. (For an OB/GYN in NY state one must pay over $200,000 a year….imagine how many babies that is.) And lest we forget, Rudy is a bread and butter Republican, he wants to help open the health insurance market up so that there is more competition and award states with block grants that come up with their own innovative solutions. States’ rights and free market…what’s more Republican than that?
Again, there is much more info on JoinRudy2008.com; this is just a taste for you to see if you are interested in even reading about him. He has a lot of videos and stuff on his website; you get to see what people in New Hampshire see everyday.
Now, rest assured, if you are a Rudy fan and he does badly tomorrow night, don’t worry. That’s not his plan. His plan is to ROCK on Feb 5th, and to make Iowa and NH feel and be less than important. Howard Dean did that, and he lost so badly they felt bad for him and made him Chair of the DNC. Ok, really he lost Iowa because he went on the record saying that the caucus system is not a good way to pick a president, and he is right…but don’t say that the week before the Iowa Caucus! Ok….tomorrow….Huckabee and Richardson (my personal fav…..Go New Mexico!!)
