On Point: A serious option

Thursday, February 8, 2007

Conservative Republicans will make a huge mistake if they fail to treat Rudy Giuliani as a serious option for the 2008 presidential nomination. The former New York mayor may have a liberal record on abortion and gay rights - actually, there's no "may" about it - and his messy personal life includes three marriages, but his record as mayor was at times Reaganesque in its willingness to battle an entrenched liberal establishment along a host of fronts.

Those who have forgotten his record, or only followed it after 9/11, should read Steven Malanga's article "Yes, Rudy Giuliani is a Conservative" in the winter issue of City Journal (online at city-journal.org). It recounts his groundbreaking initiatives on crime, welfare and dependency, his relentless attempts to reform the public school system (his failure there persuaded him to embrace vouchers), his disdain for social engineering, and his understanding of how high taxes suffocate an entrepreneurial culture.

Giuliani also appreciated the critical role that intact families play in maintaining a healthy society with well-adjusted children, even if his own behavior did not always bear this out.

But if you really want evidence of Giuliani's credentials as a credible Republican candidate, you need to know only this single fact: In the 1990s, the political left in New York despised him. They demonized him without pause, while peddling hysteria about the calamitous effects his supposedly mean-spirited policies would usher in (but didn't).

Put it this way: Even if Giuliani is unacceptable to the social conservatives who dominate the GOP's base, they ought to give the man his due. No candidate so far in the running has jousted more with their own enemies, and none boasts more victories to his credit, either.

Ex Post facto

Amendment 41, The Denver Post acknowledged Wednesday, was "plagued by vague wording, as citizen initiatives often are . . ."

Would this be the same Amendment 41 that the Post endorsed less than four months ago? Yes, indeed - and with nary a word of warning as to the muddiness of the text.

By the way, the amendment's chief financial backer, Jared Polis, is more direct. He now acknowledges the amendment is "poorly worded" (not vaguely worded), which is true. There is nothing whatever vague, after all, about an amendment that bars government workers, spouses and dependents from accepting any "gift or thing of value" unless it is "given by an individual who is a relative or personal friend of the recipient on a special occasion" (my emphasis). This is the draconian pure essence of the measure the Post freely chose to support, and which it now insists the legislature must defang by ignoring the plain meaning of its language.

An out for scholars

The Boettcher Foundation actually makes a decent case that Colorado students receiving its merit scholarships work for those benefits by maintaining a certain grade-point average and minimum course load in college. For that reason, those scholarships might well fulfill Amendment 41's requirement that a government employee or family member provide a "legal consideration of equal or greater value" for any benefit received.

But even if that's so, it doesn't begin to resolve the hundreds of other problems that 41 creates for government employees and their families, and for which no credible legal reasoning seems to offer relief.

Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.