Smug Bastard Cabal

By and large, I'm one of those people who can be classified as highly sympathetic to a Giuliani White House run. I generally find myself in agreement with a lot of his opinions, and can at least appreciate where he's coming from where I don't agree (Plus I wouldn't be too averse to seeing some Al Queada members take a little trip to Giuliani-town). My wife, on the other hand, doesn't like Rudy very much. She thinks he's a bully. As a Republican, I've got to say, for inter-party matters, that's precisely what I think my party needs. Right now, we've pretty much let interparty discipline fall into the crapper. Pretty much half of the party's leadership is abandoning the party at whim, positioning themselves as "a maverick" or a "different kind of Republican", and, well, pretty much acting like Democrats, with pretty much no repracussions. So, we have John McCain saying infringing on free speech is just fine in his book, Chuck Hagel taking up with the Democrats on Iraqi liberation, and any Republican from New England acting like the Democratic Party is okay, just too conservative. Whatsmore, and this is the part that genuinely pisses me off, they do so very publicly and in a way that seems to most directly contrast themselves with the rest of the party. This is understandable in that the national media pretty well sides with the Democrats and is always willing to reward a Republican for "coming out of the darkness". But, it leaves the party pretty well screwed. To add insult to injury, the Republicans have been pathetic in punishing this sort of defection behavior, as I note in my last post. Look, I'm all for a big tent party that allows multiple perspectives. But when you position yourself against your own side, and market your opposition to your side, you've got to know you're screwing the side you're ostensibly on. Precisely because Giuliani might be able bully defectors into either not contrasting themselves against their own team, or at least punish them when they do so, he might not be a bad choice to head the RNC if we lose in '08.