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Although best known for his leadership on 9/11, Rudy Giuliani’s best attribute is probably how well he ran New York City where he lowered taxes, reversed the budget deficit, cracked down on crime, etc. Now he is trying to position himself as the small government candidate among the Republican Party’s contenders for the presidential nomination.

On issues from taxation to healthcare he is pushing for free market reforms in order to ensure the nation’s prosperity while he accuses the Democrats of advocating a “nanny state”. From the AP: 

Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani on Monday accused Democrats of favoring a controlling “nanny government” as he continued his bashing of the rival party.

…

Giuliani argued that he favors less government and lower taxes.

“That’s what makes America great, not this nanny government that Democrats want to give us, where government controls your entire life,” he said.

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On Tuesday, Giuliani intends to outline his health care plan. Giuliani’s goal is to give individuals more control over health care decisions and to encourage state officials to come up with innovative solutions.

Key to his plan is a $15,000 tax deduction for families to buy private health insurance, instead of getting insurance through employers. Any leftover funds could be rolled over year-to-year for medical expenses, under Giuliani’s plan.

Even on social issues, which tend to be very polarizing in American politics, Giuliani offers a unique, constitutional alternative:

Giuliani argues that the best way to reduce tension about social issues is to allow states, rather than the federal government, to take the lead in responding to them. That would allow socially conservative and liberal states to each set rules that reflect the prevailing values inside their borders. Rather than perpetual combat in Washington, he insists, the nation could reach a new equilibrium as different states gravitated to different solutions.

In an interview last week, Giuliani said the key to resolving cultural arguments “where our society on a national level ends up being very divided” is to apply the “principle of federalism.” Questions on topics such as gun control, gay rights or aspects of abortion, he continued, “are issues that I think the founding fathers would say should be consigned to state and local governments, experimenting, deciding, having different views, and the federal government having a more limited role.”

The fact their top primary candidate is arguing for free market and federalist reforms in Washington should give comfort to Republicans who have witnessed the GOP descend from the modern party of small government, pioneered by Reagan and Goldwater, to become the other party of big government in the past 12 years. So much is put on the fact that Giuliani isn’t pro-life, nor pro marriage amendment, nor religious that no one has even bothered to look at his positions which would have a far greater impact.

Although I am supporting Ron Paul–who is the truest advocate of limited domestic government–I concede that I would support Rudy Giuliani out of the top four GOP contenders (Giuliani, Thompson, McCain, and Romney). And furthermore I urge those Republicans who long to stop the advance of the nanny state to support Giuliani in the face of the most popular alternatives.

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The Giuliani Positioned As GOP’s Small Government Candidate by New School Politics, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.