Friday, September 21, 2007

RUDY GIULIANI

The Big Show: Rudy Meets the NRA

The short version: Rudy did pretty well for himself - judging by the applause lines, gentle laughter at some points, and standing applause as he exited, the NRA delegates will walk away respecting him, and maybe even liking him, but not loving him. (By comparison, I would say they adore Fred Thompson.)

Rudy began by saying, "It's great to be in England." It was a joking reference to his London trip, and it got some laughter, but to this crowd, England isn't the land of Thatcher and Tony Blair isn't a great guy. To them, England is the national warning, the country that confiscated its citizens' guns and then found them suffering from a massive crime wave.

He mentioned his twelve commitments. (Jeff Greenfield of CNN did a live shot during the speech, irritating the rear left corner of the ballroom.) But the meat and potatoes of Rudy's speech was about his experience in law enforcement, crime prevention, and the importance of strict constructionist judges, and most of these points hit their marks. The line, "Haley Barbour told me that the most important of social conservative values is crime control," got applause.

Rudy got some gentle laughs when he mentioned that when he first became mayor, a tourism bureau in London had printed up brochures of "How to Avoid Being a Crime Victim in New York City", with tip number ten being "avoid eye contact." Rudy joked, "How would you like to be trying to convince people to visit your city, when you have to warn them not to look at the people?"

But the NRA crowd is a staunch tough-on-crime crowd, and so Rudy's pledges of "No plea bargains, no exceptions, you go to jail" for violent offenders resonated well.

In a press conference yesterday, Rudy punted on a question about a lawsuit he helped file in 2000 against gun manufacturers. Today he shifted a bit, saying the lawsuit "had gone in different directions since then, some of which I don't agree with." He also said that 9/11 "cast the importance of the Second Amendment in a different light, it illuminated the need for it some more" and said that the Parker decision (which struck down the Washington D.C. ban on handguns) had also influenced his opinion since then. It was a major concession from Rudy's past anti-gun stance, and yet the audience didn't greet it as enthusiastically as I would have expected. He concluded that the lawsuit was "not necessarily what is needed now."

Rudy closed by noting he was shifting from the delegates core issue a bit, but he felt he had to address yesterday's Senate vote on MoveOn.org's ad asking "General Petraeus or General Betray Us." He said, "you don't have the right to impune his integrity and expect us to take you seriously... It passes a line that no American political organization should pass." Hinting he would go after Hillary Clinton on this issue, he said, "It defined the left wing of the left wing... You don't get to vote like that and expect us to forget about it."

I had thought, going into today, that this might be one of the make-or-break moments of the Rudy campaign; that if he could defuse the tension with gun owners, he would make a serious inroad with a major, socially conservative Republican constituency. I think he did enough today, or at least I get the feeling the NRA members in the crowd will not be adamantly opposed to his nomination.

Rudy's cell phone rang during his speech; he said it was his wife, Judi. The debate among the press folks afterwards is whether that was a pre-arranged stunt/joke.

09/21 12:00 PMShare