Rudy

At NRO's The Corner, Rick Brookhiser writes

Kathryn, I yield to none in Rudyphilia, but this [his history of supporting gun control] is a problem. Having a house over the hill from a gun club in the Catskills has sensitized me to it. Active gun owners may be a smallish minority, but they are passionate.

In NYC we all know of the third rail, which it is lethal to touch. Rudy has five third rails—abortion, gay rights, guns, immigration, and drama (personal). All he has going for him is that he is the only candidate who has done anything significant in public life. That, plus he's made of brass.

So Air Marshall doesn't like his gun positions, I don't like his take on social issues (abortion, gay rights) and so on. But Brookhiser is right. Rudy actually accomplished something phenomenal as a conservative using conservative principles. I remember what NYC was like before him. I lived there in the summer of 1992. Every previous mayor was a complete failure (Dinkins, Lindsey) or just somewhat of a failure (Koch). It was a dangerous filthy pit, and everyone but Guliani (including me) thought that this was simply the inevitable fate of a large American city. Guliani changed everything. My friends who lived there were (and are) simply ecstatic. The murder rate in NYC went from over 2000 per year to under 600. Normal people who wouldn't take the subway during the day would now take it alone at night, even twentysomething women. He cut taxes every year and got businesses to move back to the city when before they had been leaving in droves. He not only changed NYC, but every large American city by eliminating the excuses for every other city administration. He showed conservative principles work.

Rudy is a no-nonsense conservative. Further, the stuff we disagree with him on have little to do with the powers of the President of the United States. Rudy has said he agrees with Roberts and Alito as the kind of Justice he would appoint. Other than that, the President has nothing to do with abortion or gay marriage or any other social issue likely to come up. Same is true for guns. Beyond judges, guns are a state issue, and the Democrats are not so stupid as to make a big push on it on the national level. They've been burned too many times before. The gun issue has been, for the most part, already won. State after state has issued "shall issue" laws while crime has been dropping. The American people know this.

Finally, as Brookhiser writes, Guliani is made of brass (or what he really meant to stay, they clank when he walks). We're in a global war. We need this.