I think Rudy Giuliani may well be the most authoritarian of the mainstream presidential candidates. The man loves power too much. Here he is in a speech from 1994, before 9/11 made people forget what an ass he is:
We look upon authority too often and focus over and over again, for 30 or 40 or 50 years, as if there is something wrong with authority. We see only the oppressive side of authority. Maybe it comes out of our history and our background. What we don’t see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.
I think Rudy Giuliani is so law-and-order that he’s Vlad Ţepeş waiting to be reborn. If you pitched the question to him in just the right way during a debate, I’m sure he’d enthusiastically support sending a message to would-be lawbreakers by impaling convicted criminals on the street corners and leaving their bodies to rot in the hot sun.
(Hat tip: Balko.)
But Rudy’s strength is that many people won’t go past 9/11.