Rudy Giuliani, mercurial, authoritarian and incompetent (and pro-choice and pro-affirmative action as mayor of Sin City, we're with you there, Rudy), has quite a large mailing list.
Giuliani is sending out his Tweleve Commitments to America that establish his rightwing bone fides and his myth as the mayor who braved 9/11, leading us to recovery. The Commitments are similar to Newt's 1994 Contract with America.
They have been out for a while, but one of the very recent recipients was my girlfriend in Madison, Wisconsin who, it may be disclosed, is no big fan of Rudy's (she hates fascists), and tries diligently to stay off marketing lists.
That shows that Rudy is reaching one hell of a lot of people, and raising a lot of money.
Rudy's Commitments
Among the highlights from Rudy's Commitments are:
- Reforming the legal system and appointing strict constructionist judges.
That's code for appointing Federalist Society judges who see their role as protecting Republican networks and chopping at the Bill of Rights liberty interests of ordinary Americans; that is the annoying freedom thing that radical Muslims hate us for and causes them to crash jets into our buildings and kill our people, in Bush's, I mean Rudy's mind. Strict constructionists also wish to make abortion illegal, and they see no right in the Constitution providing for a woman to decide what to do with her own body.
- Give Americans more control over, and access to health care with affordable and portable free-market solutions
That's code for rightwing thinktanks' free-market solutions that if you do not position yourself through your job(s) and provide your family with health care: Tough luck. Kids' having no health care: Too bad!
And, if you do have health care through work, it's likely gold-plated, and you should be paying for it by your self, and no health care should be guaranteed in the free market, because health care is a commodity to be brought and sold, and not a right of Americans.
That also code for obtaining campaign money, lots of it, from the health insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, HMO providers and the other moneyed health care interests who sell out the great majority of Americans.
Other commitments are code for capturing important electoral demographics on immigration, taxes, "school choice," and of-course security-conscious families worried about the terrorists (they gets two mentions in The Commitments).
No God
One word Rudy left out, significantly for his sake of garnering the Republican nomination, is the word "God." (Although maybe it's a conscious risk to appeal to the secular.)
That staff oversight will be corrected soon.
My own feeling is that Rudy takes God for granted because he sees him in the mirror every morning; well, at least a demigod.
###
No comments:
Post a Comment