We should have nominated Giuliani, then none of us would be in this mess. Rest assured, Giuliani wouldn't need a teleprompter or any other kind of crutch to speak coherently, about foreign policy, about America's economy, about his staff selections. Obama actually used a teleprompter just when introducing some lesser cabinet appointee. I mean are you kiddin' me.

As for education, do those that are leftists even concede that there's a "problem" that needs to be addressed?

Dan, you know the answer to your last question. They will only concede that there is a problem if they think that, in so doing, it will bring them more money to spend on what they are pleased to call "education."

And about Giuliani . . . you know I was a big fan of his potential as a general election candidate. But you must concede that he did a lousy job of it in the primary. Yes, there was a stubborn hesitancy to support him on the part of too many conservatives who were either afraid to push the war issue or were afraid (and not without reason) that he was too liberal on the social issues. But Giuliani did not make a compelling case in going after their votes. He failed to persuade. If he had talked during the campaign with as much force as he showed at the convention, it might have gone a different way. But we will never know. I do hope he runs for governor of New York. That could be interesting.

Julie, he dominated most of the debates, other than the first one. He had stratsopheric support throughout most of the run-in to the primary season. Yet for reasons more mysterious than discernable, his numbers started turning south. Now Republicans, especially those inclined to seriously participate in GOP primaries, weren't in any doubt where he stood in relation to abortion. It was no closely held secret; Giuliani wasn't playing fast and loose with the facts, as was Romney for instance.

But then his numbers started turning south.

I'm increasingly of a mind that it wasn't his abortion stance that changed his numbers as it was his Roman Catholicism. I think our party has serious probs giving a Roman Catholic the nomination.

Could he have campaigned more robustly, or as you observed, more "persuasively?" Perhaps, but there would have been a downside to that as well, for the media would immediately have taken that as evidence of Giuliani "going negative." To make the case that had to be made necessarily involved going after the positions of the Democrat party. Once that kicked off, the media would have started howling. Giuliani was trying to preserve whatever positive ratings he had with those beyond the Republican fold. What I'm trying to suggest here is that there were reasons he didn't start going after Democrats.

Should he have gone after McCain? There was a little problem there though. He considered McCain a friend, and a man he respected. It was personally difficult for him to campaign aggressively against McCain. And after McCain blew up during the immigration battle, -------- it seemed perfectly reasonable just to ingore him as much as possible. Which is why he {and Romney too for that matter} allowed McCain to swan around taking sole credit for the surge.

I concur with you that Giuliani could have run a better campaign. But regardless of his campaign, what that man had to offer positively dwarfed every other Republican candidate, and it wasn't even close. Those other candidates didn't even belong on the same stage as Rudy Giuliani. He was smarter than them, accomplished more than them, in the face of opposition that most of them would have folded before. He was clearly the most articulate, as well as the most witty, {though Huckabee made his presence felt when it came to that...}. McCain had a compelling biography to be sure, but when it came to time to measure actual accomplishments, Giuliani did more simply as US Attorney for Southern Manhattan than McCain did in his whole career. Moreover, the little that McCain managed to accomplish was problematic to say the least, at least for Conservatives, as well as most Republicans.

Romney? The less said the better. Likewise the rest of them.

The moment we rejected Giuliani, --------- we deserved to lose. He very well may have been the most qualified candidate for the Presidency in American history. That's how much he had going for him. And our party just tossed him aside, --------- and for what? Can you imagine what Giuliani would have done when confronted with Obama's vagueness, his studied turn-of-phrases that were intended to conceal his real agenda, intended to conceal his lack of understanding, his want of historical fact. We all knew that economics was going to be THE issue during the general. And yet after closely observing how ill-prepared McCain was on that issue during the primaries, we nominated him anyway.

We had a chance to let all of America see what an Italian-American could do, a guy who was knighted for his steadfastness in the aftermath of 9/11, a man who had nothing given to him, a man who fought to save his city from corruption and crime, and to the wonder of many, did save a city that most had already written off as "unmanageable." What that man accomplished was amazing, and then while enduring radiation treatments, he dragged himself out there to attend funerals of 9/11 victims. Just imagine how grueling that must have been, physically, emotionally. But he did it, because he thought that as Mayor he had a duty to be there.

And yet the GOP rejected him.......... What in God's holy name were they thinking!

They were thinking they couldn't put over a guy with published photos of himself in a dress with lipstick on, looking like Mae West on a rough night. They thought a guy on his third wife, with all of his personal baggage, could not carry the social conservative vote. Apparently, they were right.

In most ways, I like him. What he did in NYC was amazing. Yet, I see his problems and he made some major missteps in the primary. It's too bad. But wouldn't you take just about any one of those GOP guys running right now?

I hear you Dan (though I don't follow the Catholic thing . . .) but this is a very dead horse. You're just making me depressed.

When it comes to domestic political accomplishments, Giuliani led the field by a mile, but he wasn't a social conservative and that really hurt him. He didn't flip/flop as much as Romney but if you are a social conservative he wasn't your guy there. He was solid on foreign policy but McCain had an edge in that category both based on his military service and on his early criticism of the conduct of the Iraq War and his championing the surge from Washington. I remember him being good on the economy but don't remember him saying things much different or better than most of his opponents. He didn't get much traction on the economic issues. So from a conservative position, McCain was actually better on the social issues and at least as good on foreign policy. McCain also gort to be the "maverick" in the race despite Giuliani's record of centrism (if not outright liberalism) on social issues. Wow, it really was a bad campaign. But Giuliani was always going to have trouble finding a good strategic fit given the GOP primary electorate and his opposition.

But then again, resume (as in a record of real accomplishments) often does not get you very far in the primaries. Tommy Thompson was one of the pioneers of welfare reform and a competent, tax cutting governor of a swing state and his campaign is hardly remembered. I seem to recall a guy with few real accomplishments doing quite well though.