Jonah Goldberg gets it completely wrong on Giuliani

I generally like Jonah's writings, even if they are not as heavily number intensive as I normally like them, but on this piece I have to say I wonder if he actually read

So Giuliani went the way of many of his rivals by ditching his principles to appease the crowd. First, though, he tried a little comedy — very little. He answered a call on his cellphone from his wife in the middle of his speech, a stunt about as well received as Flounder’s query of the poker players in Animal House: “You guys playing cards?” . . . .

But if you read what Giuliani actually said I think that you have to come to a different conclusion:

Take his answer to a question about gun control:

"My position is the law should be left the way it is now. Given the level of crime in this country, I think the emphasis and the energy should be spent on enforcing the laws that presently exist, and if changes in the law are necessary later, that'll respond to other social conditions.

"I think the single most important thing that the next president has to do is to organize an effort in the Department of Justice and with state and local law enforcement to work in a cooperative way to enforce the laws that presently exist. After we do that, and we see the impact of that, then we can take a look at whether new laws are necessary; they may or may not be. "

"Given the level of crime in this country?" Would his position change if crime increased? It would certainly seem so. Surely Giuliani has frequently claimed that gun control reduces crime. Indeed, he has claimed that most of the reduction in New York City’s crime rate during the 1990s was due to gun control: "the single biggest connection between violent crime and an increase in violent crime is the presence of guns in your society...the more guns you take out of society, the more you are going to reduce murder. The less guns you take out of society, the more it is going to go up." . . .