Newsweek editor: Rudy victory would likely bring 'another war'

by Mike Aivaz and Muriel Kane - Oct 10, 2007

MSNBC's David Shuster and Newsweek's Jonathan Alter debated Rudy Giuliani's recruiting of prominent Neocons as campaign advisers on Monday's Countdown. In Shuster's view, with so many Americans having turned against the war in Iraq it is a significant mistake on Giuliani's part to rely for advice on the people who brought us that invasion and are now urging a war against Iran.

However, Newsweek's Senior Editor strongly disagreed, saying that Giuliani has no choice but to campaign on the issues of terrorism and national security because "he is out of step with Republican primary voters on a host of other issues, from abortion to gun control to gay rights."

Shuster asked Alter whether "betting that the American public is happy with the way the Bush administration has been doing things and wants more of the same" isn't "a risky strategy, if not an outright stupid one."

Alter agreed that it might be a problem in the general election, since "If Giuliani's elected president, very likely we'll have another war and a referendum on that could go badly for Giuliani, because the last war didn't go so well." But he stated again that it was Giuliani's best strategy for the primaries.

Shuster then wondered if perhaps nobody else had accepted the Neocons as campaign consultants because "these guys aren't exactly the most popular bunch."

"Their policy has been discredited," agreed Alter, but he emphasized that "Neoconservatism is the foreign policy of the Republican party," and that it is chiefly Democrats and independents who reject it. "The so-called 'values voters' are seeing Giuliani's hawkishness as a values issue," Alter concluded. "This is mostly a 9/11 campaign."