When Rudy Giuliani’s former New Hampshire campaign chair Wayne Semprini asked what he would do differently in a potential primary bid this year, Giuliani had a ready response.

“I’ll give you a Ronald Reagan answer: I would win,” he said.

The former New York mayor has not yet announced whether he will run for the Republican nomination in 2012, but he sure sounded like a candidate as he addressed a crowd at One Liberty Lane in Hampton during a lunch hosted by the Seacoast Republican Women on July 14.

Giuliani was initially considered a serious contender for the Republican nomination in 2008 but suffered disappointing election results, finishing fourth in New Hampshire behind John McCain, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee.

If he enters the race this time around, he said, he will run a very different campaign, focusing less on fundraising and more on talking directly to voters. He said he would prioritize small, intimate appearances like the one in Hampton versus large, orchestrated events like the ones he held in ’07.

Although Giuliani is not yet a candidate, he offered a brief summary of what he would do to fix the economy if he were president. His top priority, he said, would be to dramatically cut government spending.

Giuliani leveled harsh criticism on President Obama, saying he has made the economy worse since taking office.

“No American president, at least in the last 70 or 80 years, has had as poor a record at handling our economy as President Obama has,” he said. “He got elected to straighten out our economy, and it is much worse than the day that he got into office.”

Republican candidate Mitt Romney has been criticized for making similar accusations recently, as some fact-checking organizations have pointed out that the recession ended six months into Obama’s presidency.

Giuliani also accused Obama of building up the government while damaging the private sector, which has resulted in job losses. He tacitly compared Obama’s policies to those of communist or socialist countries in the 1960s.

“Government doesn’t exist to command the private economy. Those are the governments that used to exist in Eastern Europe,” he said. “I think that model, unfortunately, is in the mind of the president and his advisors.”

He also lashed out at Obama’s timetable for removing troops from Afghanistan, saying military personnel should remain until the objectives of destroying Al Qaeda and the Taliban are accomplished.

“I think it is a terrible mistake to announce when you’re pulling out troops,” he said. “You can’t fight a war with a deadline.”

He accused Obama of invading Libya without a clear plan or purpose, but added that the military should maintain a presence in the Middle East. Other than Iraq and Afghanistan, he said, Yemen poses the most significant threat to national security.

“We need a strong military presence in the Middle East for a long time,” Giuliani said. “We just should become patient about it and understand that we need it, and we should support it properly.”

Asked what he would do to protect the borders at home, Giuliani answered simply that he would stop illegal immigration. He did not specify how he would do so, but indicated it could easily be accomplished within two to three years.

“If you deployed the border patrol in the right way, you could stop illegal immigration. It would be easier than a lot of other things we’ve done. The only reason we don’t do it is we don’t have the political will to do it,” he said.

Giuliani called Congressman Paul Ryan’s budget plan “one of the best things that has emerged in the last year,” although he added that he does not completely agree with it or understand it. Many have criticized Ryan’s plan for targeting cuts to programs that serve the poor while lowering taxes for the rich. But Giuliani said cuts to social services programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are necessary, and he criticized other Republican candidates for not supporting Ryan.

Regarding the debate over whether to increase the nation’s debt ceiling, Giuliani advised Republicans to be flexible and make compromises in order to avoid a financial default by the government—as long as those compromises do not involve tax hikes for wealthy citizens and big businesses, as Obama has requested.

“I don’t think we should go into default, and there should be some flexibility and some compromise on the level of spending cuts,” he said. “We should not be responsible for the country going into default. I think it will hurt our political party for 10 years if we’re responsible for it. And, beyond politics, it would be the wrong thing to do.”

Giuliani served as mayor of New York from 1994 to 2001 and was recognized as a national hero for his response to the 9/11 attacks in the city. He said he could do for the nation what he did for New York, which had an unemployment rate of over 10 percent and a deficit of $2.5 billion when he began serving as mayor.

But we’ll have to wait to see if Giuliani seeks the presidency in 2012. He and Sarah Palin are considered the only two major potential game-changers who have not yet decided whether they will run. Romney, the current New Hampshire frontrunner, was in Portsmouth at the same time Giuliani was in Hampton.