I Endorse Rudy Giuliani

It's time to come out and back someone in the GOp race and I've decided that former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani is the man.

In 2000, I was a McCain man, he was the guy who appealed to me with his history and his stand on social issues. He started losing me a bit because he had this irritating habit of strictly sticking to his talking points and never seemed to be able to ad lib effectively--almost as if his staff told him to stick to the talking points regardless of what happens. Al Gore had that same problem, where Bush could joke and laugh and seemed...well, real.

Fast forward to the present. I was one of the the earliest proponents I could find on the web in support of Fred Thompson. I pushed hard for him to get in and waited and waited and waited...and he flamed out (I, and my colleagues wrote extensively about Fred at AOL including this one, which ranks as my personal favorite). He lost all his momentum by being a dud. Not that I can't change my mind in a month or two, hell, Hillary changed her mind in 30-seconds in the last debate.

But I digress.

Rudy Giuliani is the candidate that most reflects my views on the issues--he's a fiscal conservative, strong on national defense, understands the danger of Islamofascism, is not too rigid on social issues like abortion and homosexuality and has the ability to crack jokes but also take them, be self-deprecating and shoot back with humor. I know you may be saying that humor is not a quality that one looks for in a president and I would give you two names: Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon. I do have issues with Rudy divorcing his wife and the way that was handled but everything in NYC gets publicized and I for one wouldn't want the nightmare of the media printing every sordid detail if I ever was unfortunate enough to go through that experience.

As an example of how loose Rudy is, take a listen to this podcast of Rudy talking with Michael Smerconish who has a local morning talk show in Philly and you can hear that he nows where he stands on issues, is not afraid to say what he thinks and doesn't come off too politicianish (a made up word I guess).

Again, I reserve the right to change as circumstances warrant but my guy right now is Rudy.