Rudy: Live from the Room

The CPAC bloggers are covering the Mayor’s speech admirably, so I won’t belabor each point of the speech. But here are some initial impressions from the room.

Rudy packed ‘em in. The doors closed 20 minutes before he began speaking and I’m told the poor CPAC interns were locked arm to arm keeping more people from the capacity room. (Erick Erickson and Rob Bluey got the short stick in all this — let’s say that their 12:30 new media panel definitely didn’t get the attendance it richly deserved.) 

This final snippet from George Will’s introduction captures the Mayor’s appeal perfectly:

Your next speaker’s conservatism is the flavor of Margaret Thatcher’s, of whom it was said she could not pass a government institution without swatting with her hand bag. Your next speaker grew up in Brooklyn when the Dodgets were still there, and nevertheless rooted for the Yankees. [This really got the crowd going.] Obviously your next speaker is someone who is spoiling for a fight. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you a man for whom pugnacity is a political philosophy, Rudy Giuliani.

The initial reception to “New York, New York” was rousing and the speech thoughtful. The impression I was overwhelmingly left with was this was not a candidate with one-dimensional appeal. His lines on crime and education in New York got applause just his lines on terror did.

I should have more a bit later.

Tagged: cpac rudy giuliani

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