12 July 2007

Rudy and Ronnie: the Outsiders


Newsflash: A Republican Presidential Candidate has compared himself to Ronald Reagan!

And he’s right - sort of.

Rudy Giuliani told 1450 AM WKXL in Concord, New Hampshire yesterday that if elected President, he would chip away at the Washington Establishment, not pour another layer of cement:

“I have a great example of not becoming enamored of Washington, should I get elected, and it was my boss, Ronald Reagan. When Ronald Reagan ran for reelection in 1984, they said he was still running as a Washington outsider. And when I ran for reelection as Mayor of New York City in 1997, they said I was still running against the government because I was still seeking to reform it. And I think it would be impossible to make me a Washington insider. Just go talk to any of the Beltway pundits and they can tell you for sure that I’m not a Washington insider.”

As President Reagan said, “Trust, but verify,” - or look it up on LexisNexis.

On October 26, 1984, The Christian Science Monitor’s Clara Germani and Marshall Ingwerson noted that President Reagan “‘runs against Washington, D.C. - [as an] outsider.’”

And on November 5, 1997, The New York Times’s David Firestone deemed the incumbent Rudy, “the Republican outsider.”

But Firestone also scribbled, “[Giuliani has] become the city's establishment, suddenly finding himself an undisputed national figure with far greater power to remake the government of New York City.” To Firestone, Rudy was an outsider when he was running for reelection, but he joined the establishment once he won reelection. So Firestone vindicates Rudy’s claim, yet trashes it; a feat only the New York Times could accomplish.

Still, Rudy is looking presidential according to the polls in Pennsylvania and Michigan.

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