…for Rudolph Giuliani.

As I wrote in a couple or so comments here and elsewhere, while I’m most likely, at this point, going to vote for Mitt Romney, I am still considering going with Giuliani. There are a few things I have yet to consider.

For the most part, Julia Gorin is in lockstep with some of my own foremost thoughts in this column.

She is totally correct in her premise that Giuliani would be the first true friend of Israel to occupy the White House in a very long time. This is not to say that George W. Bush and Bill Clinton before him don’t (and didn’t) have good intentions where Israel is concerned, it’s just that both, like Ehud Olmert, are extremely naive when it comes to addressing the sort of pure malevolence that dominates the “Palestinian” side of the equation over there. Rudy, on the other hand, is infinitely more capable of calling a terrorist a terrorist and taking him to task for it. The former mayor of New York would take a hard-nosed approach to dealing with both Fatah and Hamas, rather than kissing up to the likes of Abbas or, in Clinton’s case, the late, unlamented Arafat.

Julia also opines, accurately, that one of the issues that has driven away conservative voters is Giuliani’s being pro-choice, and she believes that we should compromise on this in order to avail ourselves of his more powerful assets. When you come right down to it, such issues are more in the purview of Congress than they are of POTUS, anyway — and that, friends, shouldn’t even be. It is, after all, a social issue when you come right down to it; Spiritual, moral, however you want to package it, it should be a state’s right to make such determinations, not the federal government’s.

For the record, I am pro-life to the max, and don’t even see where legalizing open season on human fetuses (as Dubya once said, and I agree with him, fetuses have souls, just like the rest of us) should have ever been a topic for consideration, much less an enacted “right”. I believe that most of the alienation of any pro-abortion Presidential candidate by conservatives because of his/her beliefs on abortion rights is more a resentment thing than a logical reason to reject everything else the candidate stands for.

When I moved to New York in the second half of the 1990s (I had been living away from my home town since before Dinkins was elected to abuse the office of mayor, but friends living in New York had kept me abreast of the mess he was making of the city. Even under Ed Koch, during whose administration I did live in N.Y., the city was dirty and crime ridden), Giuliani was in his second term as mayor. The streets and subway stations were noticeably cleaner than I remembered, street crime was down by spectacular margin, as were the numbers of undesirables loitering about at all hours, city employees in positions of public contact were more polite, friendlier and more professional and as a whole, the city seemed healthier than it had previously. Rudy’s “quality of life” policies were working just fine, as was his overall management of the great metropolis.

“Giuliani supports same sex marriage” — I’m not sure where this story originated, but it is unfounded as the only comments the former mayor has made, on record, where the subject is concerned is that while he supports social unions (as does George W. Bush), he believes that all that is required for marriage is one man and one woman. Period. Another obnoxious rumor bites the dust…

There is, however, a single issue upon which will probably, ultimately hinge my “to vote for, or not to vote for” decision where Giuliani is concerned: Illegal immigration. He supported New York’s being a sanctuary city.

The excuses reasons he supplied in the above linked video were beyond flimsy: It would have cost little or no significant quantities of money and manpower for city and/or hospital employees to check the legal status of a questionable subject (a perfectly good use for a telephone or a computer network) and then, if said subject was found to be an illegal or a probable illegal, to call the immigration folks. We’re talking New York City here, where virtually every federal agency has an abundance of staffing! Granted, they’re all pretty busy, but by not investigating and reporting illegal aliens, the Giuliani mayoral administration was permitting ongoing felonies that have a direct negative impact upon both the U.S. economy and public safety.

New York City employees belong to unions. Most of them enjoy pay and benefits that the average working stiff would give his or her left (fill in the blank) for. As such, there are numerous people sitting around whose days contain more non-productive time than they do “nose to the grindstone” moments. I know this because I have several very old, very close friends who are employed by the City of New York whose boasts about the largesse of the agencies they work for are almost identical.

The Giuliani administration could have enforced immigration laws within the confines of their purview without making the fiscal and other sacrifices Rudy would have us believe this would have entailed.

Now…

Here’s the thing:

The candidate we nominate to run in the general election will almost certainly be facing Hillary, going toe-to-toe with the Clinton political machine. This will not be like playing checkers with Brother Juniper, it will be a no-holds-barred, back alley kind of fight facaded by a minimum of political niceties. The Clintons will also have the full and unmitigated support of the mainstream media.

I am of the opinion that Giuliani, who was toughened by years as a federal prosecutor and then District Attorney, City of New York — to say nothing of mayor of what is arguably the most intense city on earth — would have a better chance of beating Hillary than would any other Republican candidate.

Here is where the next question arises: The Republican nominee has won, now what will he do with the Presidency?