Rudy the gun grabber.
Romney the gun controller.
Good people can, and do, disagree on levels of gun control. The question remains: Do gun grabbers like Rudy Giuliani (NY) and Mitt Romney (MA) stand a chance in a GOP primary?
The question is not addressed to the merits of gun control (a tired debate), but the political horse race itself: Can a Republican candidate win the GOP primary if they have a long and strong record in support of gun control (and no record at all as hunters or shooters)?
Fred Thompson, the still-undeclared putative rival to Giuliani and Romney, is not only pro-gun and pro-hunting, but he is also not shy about it, and even holds an annual Fred Thompson Celebrity Skeet Shoot to benefit juvenile diabetes.
Will the NRA keep its powder dry in the primary, or will it blast Giuliani and Romney with both barrels?
Time will tell.
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2 comments:
I'm fond of Fred Thompson. He's not the President, but he plays one on TV. The essential appeal is the same as those soap opera inspired ads featuring actors giving medical advice. See: Cult of Personality.
Right wingers have been waiting for the second coming of Reagan (the Bush dynasty has disappointed us all in countless ways and their success has tainted Reagan's legacy due to his poor choice in Vice Presidents) and Thompson certainly has the whiff of Reagan. Whether that smell is potential greatness or morbidity has yet to be determined.
As for my long bet, Hillary will win the Democratic nomination, will win the Presidency by at least 15% and the expectation of such will drive the stock market down in anticipation of revoked tax cuts and increased scrutiny. I'd dread the thought of 4 or 8 more years of a Clinton except that it's much more fun to complain about someone you didn't vote for than someone you did.
Seems to me that the fundamental difference between the right and the left is that left believes that government would do good, if we could only get good people to run it, while the right thinks that politics attracts corruption like shit attracts flies.
So to those on the right, they're all of them politicians. So they look at a Romney or a Giuliani and think that of course, they said they supported gun control, running in Massachusetts or New York. And of course, they now say they oppose it, seeking a national GOP endorsement.
Were they lying then? Are they lying now? They're politicians - of course they're lying. If they were able to tell the truth, they'd never have run for office in the first place.
So the question isn't what they've said, past or present, but what they're likely to do. And what they're likely to do is to do what is most politically expedient.
So the determining factor, for the gun vote, is who would be most dependent upon the gun vote, were they to win the office. Who is least likely to follow the advice of a future Lee Atwater?
And that may not be Fred Thompson.
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