Rudy Giuliani's daughter is supporting Barack Obama - Page 2 - Political Forum

superdude17* · 08-07-2007, 08:12 PM

and Alan Keyes’ daughter is a lesbian. So what?

I'm just saying that the fact that she might not like his politics means nothing. She goes to Harvard for crying out loud. I can't think of a more liberal draining school than that one.

goedel · 08-07-2007, 09:55 PM

Does anyone know if Barack Obama supported the October 2002 resolution?

I know he was not in the Congress at that time, but still he was a public figure in Illinois politics. Is there any record of support or opposition to a potential war in Iraq back then?

I know that a savvy pol keeps his mouth shut on controversial issues if he is not required to express himself.

Nevertheless, on matters of war and peace we should know what all of our pols think, in Congress or not.

What were Obama's opinions between 9/11 and October 2002 on invading Iraq? What is his record on this issue?

It is nice to say, "I did not vote to give war powers to Bush." But did he urge others not to do so? How do we know how he would have voted had Sen Obama been a senator in 2002?

prrriiide · 08-07-2007, 10:38 PM

She isn't the only one with misgivings...here are some pretty big GOP names with some doubts:

Quote:

Generational Tensions

The sons and daughters of some iconic Republicans (Ike! T.R.!) are contemplating crossing the aisle.

By Michael Hirsh
Newsweek

May 14, 2007 issue - Susan Eisenhower is an accomplished professional, the president of an international consulting firm. She also happens to be Ike's granddaughter—and in that role, she's the humble torchbearer for moderate "Eisenhower Republicans." Increasingly, however, she says that the partisanship and free spending of the Bush presidency—and the takeover of the party by single-issue voters, especially pro-lifers—is driving these pragmatic, fiscally conservative voters out of the GOP. Eisenhower says she could vote Democratic in 2008, but she's still intent on saving her party. "I made a pact with a number of people," she tells NEWSWEEK. "I said, 'Please don't leave the party without calling me first.' For a while, there weren't too many calls. And then suddenly, there was a flurry of them. I found myself watching them slip away one by one."
Story continues below ↓advertisement

Eisenhower isn't the only GOP scion debating if the party still feels like home. Theodore Roosevelt IV, an investment banker in New York and an environmental activist like his great-grandfather, Teddy, takes issue with what he says is George W. Bush's inattention to global warming (and Republican presidential contender John McCain's flirtations with the religious right). He's unhappy with the cost of the global war on terror and the record deficits incurred to finance it. Ninety years ago, former president Teddy Roosevelt attacked Woodrow Wilson's pro-democracy idealism, calling it "milk-and-water righteousness"; Roosevelt's great-grandson doesn't like how the current president is promoting values abroad, either. "I come from a tradition of pragmatic Republicanism," he says. "This administration has taken the idea of aggressively exporting democracy à la Woodrow Wilson and gone in a direction even Wilson wouldn't have considered."

The party might even be alien to Barry Goldwater, the 1964 GOP nominee who jolted the party rightward when he said that "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." Goldwater's youngest daughter, Peggy, who is active in GOP politics in Orange County, Calif., says she is a "moderate conservative," just as her firebrand father became later in life, irked by Republicans in Washington who embrace big government. "The government is taking on more than I feel they can handle," she says.

Granted, these are no ordinary voters. But their unhappiness with the GOP suggests there's a new middle up for grabs in 2008. George W. Bush, of course, campaigned as a "compassionate conservative"; he and Karl Rove dreamed of a new and lasting Republican majority. Theodore Lowi, however, the author of "The End of the Republican Era," says the nation's disaffection over Iraq and Bush is so great that 2008 could resemble 1932, when FDR exploited the collapse of the GOP under Herbert Hoover to create a new Democratic majority. (The return of Congress to the Dems in 2006 is a possible prelude.) Or, 2008 could look like 1968, when Democratic self-destruction after Vietnam led to Richard Nixon's election, and later to a realignment under Ronald Reagan.

Some Republicans, such as former secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, believe Republicans will always close ranks behind their standard-bearer, unlike ever-fractious Democrats, no matter how upset they are with the direction of the party. "Certainly, Hillary unites the Republicans when almost nothing else will," he says. But Lowi thinks today's GOP schisms are "deeper and harder to plaster over." That worries GOP mavericks like Sen. Chuck Hagel as well as moderate party loyalists like Brent Scowcroft, national-security adviser under George H.W. Bush, who says, "We lack an organizing principle for the party."

Poll numbers don't yet reflect a massive moderate exodus. Still, Michael Dimock of the Pew Research Center says that Republican party identification has dropped "quite a bit." In 2002, 30 percent of Americans identified themselves as Republicans, 31 percent as Democrats. This year it's 25 percent Republican, 33 percent Dems. Independents, Dimock says, are leaning "much more Democratic." Even so, Eisenhower and other lifelong Republicans say they haven't heard much yet from the leading Democratic candidates that persuades them. "I can't tell you how many Republicans I've talked to who are thinking along radical lines" about deserting in '08 if they hear the right message, says Eisenhower. "It's a buyer's market. Make my day."

prrriiide · 08-07-2007, 10:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by goedel

Does anyone know if Barack Obama supported the October 2002 resolution?

I know he was not in the Congress at that time, but still he was a public figure in Illinois politics. Is there any record of support or opposition to a potential war in Iraq back then?

I know that a savvy pol keeps his mouth shut on controversial issues if he is not required to express himself.

Nevertheless, on matters of war and peace we should know what all of our pols think, in Congress or not.

What were Obama's opinions between 9/11 and October 2002 on invading Iraq? What is his record on this issue?

It is nice to say, "I did not vote to give war powers to Bush." But did he urge others not to do so? How do we know how he would have voted had Sen Obama been a senator in 2002?

I don't know what his views were between 9/11 and Oct. 2002, but his views while in the state house are clear. Here is a transcript of one of his speeches from Oct. 2, 2002.

Quote:

Remarks of Illinois State Sen. Barack Obama Against Going to War with Iraq
| October 02, 2002

October 2, 2002

Good afternoon. Let me begin by saying that although this has been billed as an anti-war rally, I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances. The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history, and yet it was only through the crucible of the sword, the sacrifice of multitudes, that we could begin to perfect this union, and drive the scourge of slavery from our soil. I don't oppose all wars.

My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton's army. He saw the dead and dying across the fields of Europe; he heard the stories of fellow troops who first entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil, and he did not fight in vain. I don't oppose all wars.

After September 11th, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this administration's pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again. I don't oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism.

What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income - to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics. Now let me be clear - I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He's a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars.

So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the President today. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's finish the fight with Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings. You want a fight, President Bush?

Let's fight to make sure that the UN inspectors can do their work, and that we vigorously enforce a non-proliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe. You want a fight, President Bush?

Let's fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn't simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil. Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair.

The consequences of war are dire, the sacrifices immeasurable. We may have occasion in our lifetime to once again rise up in defense of our freedom, and pay the wages of war. But we ought not -- we will not -- travel down that hellish path blindly. Nor should we allow those who would march off and pay the ultimate sacrifice, who would prove the full measure of devotion with their blood, to make such an awful sacrifice in vain.

SOURCE

Why is it Obama could see clearly that the bolded section would come to pass as a state legislator, but the administration, with the best intelligence available, could not? I submit that they knew as well as Obama what would happen, and did it anyway for political gain and monetary profit.

iTaliAN_ICe · 08-07-2007, 10:59 PM

Am I the only one who finds it weird that they blurred out her last name on her Facebook profile...?

Alun · 08-08-2007, 12:01 AM

It isn't Giuliani in facebook b/c the girl wants to avoid being harassed via connection with a political figure, so the reporter used discretion to respect her privacy.

superdude17*, did you notice the part about Rudy not attending high school events and being estranged from his children?

iTaliAN_ICe · 08-08-2007, 12:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alun

It isn't Giuliani in facebook b/c the girl wants to avoid being harassed via connection with a political figure, so the reporter used discretion to respect her privacy.

That makes sense.

superdude17* · 08-08-2007, 01:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alun

superdude17*, did you notice the part about Rudy not attending high school events and being estranged from his children?

Families go through troubles, however, always come together.

Sebelius for VP, not Hillary · 08-08-2007, 01:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by neorealist

1. It said she LEFT the group for Obama...how does that translate into she supports him

She left hours after word leaked to the press about the fact that she was in the group.

WEB

superdude17* · 08-08-2007, 01:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by W.E.B. Du Bois

She left hours after word leaked to the press about the fact that she was in the group.

WEB

She obviously did this for her dad. Deep down she does love dear ol' dad. After all he is paying for her schooling.