Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani is widely viewed as having eclipsed rival John McCain as the Republican best equipped to deliver the “straight talk” craved by restless conservative voters.
“McCain’s ‘straight talk’ always seemed more aimed at the news media than the GOP grassroots, but Giuliani is very effectively reaching Republican voters who are deeply worried about the prospects of a Hillary Clinton presidency,” said Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
Giuliani senior political adviser Tony Carbonetti said his boss was coming across as “the real deal — an authentic, gutsy leader.”
For example, when a questioner at Sunday’s GOP debate in Orlando, Fla., suggested Giuliani was too much like Clinton, the former mayor deadpanned: “You have got to be kidding.”
As the audience roared, Giuliani questioned Clinton’s professed allegiance to the New York Yankees and derisively quoted her as saying, “I have a million ideas; America can’t afford them all.”
Giuliani bluntly added: “No kidding, Hillary — America can’t afford you.”
Debate moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News Channel then asked McCain about his differences with Clinton over the Iraq war. But the Arizona senator went out of his way to praise Clinton.
“I know and respect Senator Clinton,” he said. “The debate that I have between me and her will be based on national security, on fiscal conservatism and on social conservatism. It will be a respectful debate.”
That was not what the audience wanted to hear, although McCain partially redeemed himself with what many pundits called the best line of the night.
While railing against runaway federal spending, he noted that Clinton supports taxpayer funding of a museum on the 1969 Woodstock rock concert, which he called “a cultural and pharmaceutical event.”
“I wasn’t there,” said McCain, who was in the midst of a 5 1/2-year stint as a prisoner of war in Vietnam in 1969. “I was tied up at the time.” The audience gave him a standing ovation.
The line was called “lightning in a bottle” by Sabato, author of the new book “A More Perfect Constitution.”
“That was priceless,” Sabato said. “But clever quips alone can’t put money in the bank or votes in the ballot box.”
