Tuesday, August 14, 2007

"We can end illegal immigration. I promise you, we can end illegal immigration."   [Rich Lowry]

When Rudy says that, you can believe it. As I've said before, the way Rudy has handled immigration has been nearly flawless. In fact, as J-Pod would have predicted but I wouldn't have, he's running the kind of campaign that McCain projected to run. He's a candidate with problems with the right who's reaching out to conservatives and winning some of them over; benefiting from the perception that he's the best candidate to beat Hillary; raising lots of money; and running with the kind of gusto associated with McCain 2000. The key turning point was the Senate amnesty bill: McCain chose to immolate himself with it, Rudy got out of the way and can now make a plausible play for the tough-on-the-borders right. If you want to lead a party, you have to be where the party is on the biggest, most urgent issues. Rudy realized that when McCain didn't. What Rudy has done on immigration gives me hope on abortion: he still has room to move right on it while staying pro-choice. To the extent he does, he becomes an even stronger candidate for the nomination and a stronger candidate in the general election where he will have to be firmly to Hillary's right on cultural issues or he'll kick away a key Republican advantage. 

While I'm praising candidates, let me say that Romney, on an operational level, has run an extremely good campaign. Perhaps we'll look back and think he wasted his early money on advertising and Ames, but there's no way to know that now. It is clear in the meantime that he's put together a top-notch organization that testifies to his strengths as an executive. 

Rudy and Romney are now engaging on immigration (see this ABC News story), and it's a contest between two impressive and worthy candidates.

08/14 06:00 PMShare