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Rudy Giuliani is running a new advertisement in New Hampshire that the campiagn has named “Ready” and is proudly touting on its websites. The ad, which uses a voiceover fresh out of a “300″ preview, shows images of angry crowds burning flags, shouting in other languages, and protesting. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is suggested to be a madman, Bhutto represents democracy under attack, and an explosion rocks a busy intersection. To top it off, an image of Bin Laden fades into the silhouette of the World Trade Center rubble.
This is supposed to scare you into voting for Rudy. The ad claims that he is tested and ready. But it gives no reasons as to why he is ready. It also neglects to mention that part of the budget to defend the people of New York went to having police officers walk his mistress’s dog. There is a problem with priorities here that the American people may not (and if Iowa was any evidence, do not) like.
The ad also mentions nothing about why Rudy would be the best candidate for fighting terrorism. The only reason this blogger can imagine is that his reckless foreign policies will cause more terrorism, leading to more time spent fighting terrorism.
The politics of fear won in 2002 and 2004 (when Dean ran with a more hopeful message), and the Republicans benefited from it. But if the success of Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama are any indication, hope will be the winning message in 2008. Could we see an end to the politics of fear? Probably not entirely, but polls are showing the Republican national security advantage over Democrats is going away. Voting through fear may loose traction to hope and vision this cycle.
January 6th, 2008
After Sam Brownback dropped out last week, speculation immediately started as to which candidate the prominent social conservative would support. It was generally assumed that Brownback would lend his endorsement to a candidate shared his socially conservative views. However, as the Politico reports, Rudy Giuliani, who is pro-choice and pro gay rights, has been courting Brownback. While Brownback is not giving it up on the first date, he said he was “much more comfortable” with Giuliani’s position on abortion and gave Giuliani a chaste kiss on the cheek, describing him as a “wonderful candidate.”
If Giuliani gets the Republican nomination, he will need to have a prominent social conservative on the ticket to keep the right wing of the Republican Party happy. Prominent religious fundamentalists and extremists like James Dobson have declared that they would never vote for Giuliani, although at this stage, it’s just posturing. Giuliani would to do everything he could to appease them and have a Vice Presidential nominee would perform that task. It would be a role that Brownback would be perfectly suited for. That is why Brownback is meeting with Giuliani and making such a public display of it. Giuliani is the only candidate who needs Brownback and would put him on the ticket. (After all, Kansas isn’t a swing state). Brownback is a failed Presidential candidate who knows what he wants and is not afraid to go get it.
October 26th, 2007
I’ve written before about Rudy’s penchant for bullying and his contempt for civil liberty. And New Yorkers have long known that Rudy is, well, abrasive.
Here’s a favorite moment of mine from the Mayor’s radio show:
Gravel-voiced Joe from Dutchess County asked in 1999 why the mayor did not attack President Clinton at a fund-raising dinner. When the program returned after a commercial break it sounded as if Joe still was on the line. It was the mayor, imitating Joe’s dese-dem-dere voice.
”This is, uh, Joe from, ahhh, Dutchess County. I unnerstan’ youse went too easy the other night because people applauded or they didn’t applaud for ya or sumthin’–I don’t remember.” Mr. Giuliani giggled. Then he speculated that maybe Joe was a long-term resident of a state prison.
”I think you should go back to making license plates, Joe.”
But Rudy’s contempt for the public is endearing when compared to his pugnacious plans for our country’s foreign policy. The team America’s Mayor has assembled to advise him on foreign affairs is downright frightening. Take a look at this TPMtv segment on Rudy’s minions. It looks like if Rudy becomes the President, he’s going to treat the rest of the world like a bunch of ferrets:
October 16th, 2007
Cross posted at Iowa Independent
Jerry Falwell died two days ago. Will the Christian Right soon follow? That is certainly one of the questions being debated amidst the 2008 presidential contest. The front-runner for the GOP nomination, Rudy Giuliani, is pro-choice. But he has come under fire; recently for these views and his lead is shrinking nationwide and in Iowa.
Will the Christian Right try to stop Giuliani from winning the nomination? Could they if they tried? In this sense, perhaps the real legacy of Jerry Falwell won’t be known until the GOP has its nominee.
The cover story of the New Republic’s current issue is a lengthy (and intriguing) tribute to the idea that Giuliani can win the GOP nomination. Nestled within, however, is this paragraph:
Then, of course, there is the religious right. Though their power is on the wane, Christian conservatives are not going to allow Giuliani to have the nomination without a bitter fight… Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, put it this way: “If he wins, he’ll do so without social conservatives.” Then he added that a Republican presidential candidate can “no more win without conservative voters than a Democrat can without overwhelming support from blacks.”
Earlier today, James Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family, and one of the leaders of today’s Christian conservative movement announced he would not support Giuliani if he were the Republican nominee:
Speaking as a private citizen and not on behalf of any organization or party, I cannot, and will not, vote for Rudy Giuliani in 2008. It is an irrevocable decision. If given a Hobson’s – Dobson’s? – choice between him and Sens. Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, I will either cast my ballot for an also-ran – or if worse comes to worst – not vote in a presidential election for the first time in my adult life.
On the other hand, Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition, urged social conservatives to give Giuliani a chance. According to the Hotline, Reed told viewers of the Christian Broadcasting Network that Giuliani “can still potentially win over pro-family voters” if he focuses on issues where they agree. Giuliani had campaigned for Reed last May when Reed was running in Georgia’s lieutenant governor primary; Reed went on to lose the election, but has maintained an affinity for Giuliani, apparently talking him up in January at the National Review Institute.
Here in Iowa, Giuliani has the support of former Congressman and failed gubernatorial candidate Jim Nussle, who was conservative on social issues while in Congress. However, Nussle’s running mate, the more conservative Bob Vanderplaats, in addition to the very conservative Danny Carroll, has endorsed former Arkansas governor and pastor Mike Huckabee. Iowa Republicans–especially the grassroots–are well known conservatives. Two polls taken in 2000 showed that about 60 percent of likely GOP caucusers thought abortion should be illegal, according to the Des Moines Register. The Register reported in the same article that Giuliani hasn’t decided yet whether to participate in the Ames Straw Poll, a crucial test of Republican support in Iowa.
Whether Giuliani will win the Iowa caucuses or the nomination remains to be seen. But what is clear is that a Giuliani victory would be a crushing blow, perhaps a fitting epitaph, for the movement that Jerry Falwell helped create.
May 17th, 2007
Iowa Independent, which is the web site I have been spending most of my time on, has the story. Former Republican Governor Terry Branstad criticizes Presidential frontrunner Rudy Giuliani for “some baggage” he carries as a candidate:
“I think he’s got some baggage both from his multiple marriages and from his stand on some of the social issues,” Branstad said in a recent interview in Carroll.
Go read the full story at Iowa Independent. And bookmark it while you’re there, because there’s a lot of excitement to come out of that site, I promise.
May 3rd, 2007
Rudy Giuliani has a new campaign staffer and his name is Jim Nussle. According to the AP, Giuliani is the first client of Nussle’s new consulting business and hired Nussle to work on his Presidential campaign. The strange is that these two have what the AP article describes as “deep philosophical differences.” Giuliani is a relatively liberal Republican, pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-stem cell research while Jim Nussle is a standard and rather uninteresting conservative Republican who, in his 16 years in Congress, would have striven to avoid even the slightest taint of Rockefeller Republicanism. So, why is Nussle working for Giuliani? Once again, the answer is hinted at the article with the cryptic but all-telling phrase, “Giuliani and Nussle declined to discuss terms of Nussle’s employment.” In other words, Jim Nussle is getting paid a lot of money to support Giuliani. Not that there’s anything wrong that. After all, Nussle still has to pay his alimony somehow.
January 16th, 2007
From Taegan Goddard:
A new Research 2000 poll in Iowa shows John Edwards and Sen. Barack Obama tied among likely Democratic caucus voters with 22% each. Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack trails with 12%, followed by Sen. Hillary Clinton at just 10%.
No other candidate broke 10%. Top three Republicans are John McCain (27%), Rudy Giuliani (26%), and Mitt Romney (9%). I think this just reinforces my post from yesterday, “Why the Iowa Caucuses are Still Wide Open.”
December 21st, 2006
Via Hotline On Call, we learn that Rudy Giuliani will be campaigning for Republican gubernatorial hopeful Jim Nussle and Republican congressional candidate Mike Whalen in the days leading up to Election Day. There’s no question that spending time with Iowa Republicans is good for Giuliani as he mulls a presidential run in 2008, but what could be the effects on these two Iowa races?
Sure, Giuliani brings a lot of star-power with him, and he conjures up memories of 9/11 — we all know how good Republicans are at wrapping themselves in the flag — but he is also widely known as a liberal Republican, particularly for his pro-choice views. Should we be surprised that two pro-life candidates like Nussle and Whalen have attached themselves to the Giuliani teat? I don’t think so.
We’ve watched Nussle do his hustle on choice since the beginning of the campaign. And in such a split electorate, it should come as no surprise that he is trying to pivot a bit to the left; in fact, that has been a nationwide trend among GOP gubernatorial candidates according to the New York Times.
Whalen’s pro-life cred has been questioned as well. Last April, the Krusty Konservative noted Whalen’s “general ignorance and his lack of interest” in the issue and that he once told people that he was only pro-life “because his consultants told him he had to be.” But again, we shouldn’t be surprised of his posturing; he is running in unfriendly territory, a district that Kerry and Gore both won.
But therein lies the rub! If Nussle and Whalen go too far off the right-wing reservation, the base will be less enthusiastic about the election, perhaps not volunteering or not voting at all. Besides, as we have learned these last few years, when voters have a chance to vote for a Republican or a Republican-lite, they go for the real Republican. As we’ll likely find out in a mere two weeks, the same goes for Democrats.
October 24th, 2006
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani was in Iowa this week to speak at the “Get Motivated” seminar in Des Moines, raise cash for Lamberti and Nussle, and help sap 50,000 dollars of the state’s cash (what, do you think George Forman was drawing traffic?).
Of course there was another not-so-secret reason America’s mayor was in town—to work Iowa voters and donors in the initial stages of a possible run for President. When asked whether he’s planning to run, he responded:
I’ve got a lot of places to go, and a lot of people to talk to; a long process of figuring out whether it makes sense to run for president in 2008. I don’t know the answer to that yet.
As a native New Yorker and now an Iowan, let me help answer the question—don’t run. Not now, not ever.
Sure, since September 11th, Rudy Giuliani has been getting more good press than Barak Obama (a tall order), and he’s often credited with cleaning up New York and helping to make it the safe city it is today (even though serious crime began to fall drastically during the previous Democratic mayor’s term), but few outside of New York know the other side of Giuliani; the Rudy who policed morality and speech, who flouted the constitution, and who gutted funding for the city’s poor.
At a time when our civil liberties are under attack, Giuliani, who, while Mayor, won only 4 of 26 first-amendment related cases in court, is the last thing the country needs. Here’s a sample of some choice Rudy moments.
In 1999, after the Brooklyn Museum of Art displayed a controversial painting, Giuliani tried to cut the museum’s public financing and terminate its lease. He then threatened to “cut off city financing to any other publicly supported cultural institution” that similarly failed to censor itself. Soon after, he proposed starting a commission on “decency” to review all of the city’s cultural institutions and make recommendations on financing.
In order to cut drunk driving, the Mayor attempted to institute a plan that gave police officers who suspected someone had been drunk driving “the authority to seize a person’s car, sell it and funnel the proceeds to the city — even if the driver turns out to be innocent.” Sure drunk driving is a serious offense and laws against it should be enforced aggressively—but selling a person’s property for a crime they haven’t been convicted of? Maybe Rudy forgot the law part of law and order.
As for helping the city’s poor, the Giuliani administration reduced capital spending on affordable housing by 44% and cut back on the creation of apartments for homeless households by 75%.
And those are just a few of the real winners. Thankfully, he supports a woman’s right to choose, gun control, and gay rights, so he’s socially liberal enough to flop in a Republican primary.
But if some cruel twist of fate gives Rudy a legitimate shot at being President, Iowans should keep in mind who Giuliani really is– a callous bully and a culture cop.
May 4th, 2006
It seems these days that as candidates begin to gear up for 2008, Iowa becomes a revolving door for those with aspirations of presidential glory. To wit, just today our fine state was graced with the presence of none other than Bill Frist, everyone’s favorite ultra-conversative surgeon and part-time senate majority leader. Apparently, Frist is in town to tout health care legislature to be proposed in Congress, which though it isn’t “the complete answer,” will “shrink the number of uninsured Americans.” One might surmise that when a medically trained doctor attains the leadership of the senate, we might see more aggressive health care legislation, but it seems Dr. Frist is more preoccupied with pandering to the religious right.
In keeping with Iowa’s status as a revolving door for 2008 candidates, the Washington Post reports that in a week none other than Rudy Giuliani will be in Iowa raising money for republican gubernatorial candidate, Jim Nussle. Does this mean Rudy has a huge affinity for Nussle and just wants to see a local boy do good, or does Rudy have machinations on sitting pretty in the oval office one day soon? Giuliani recently went through Pennsylvania and raised money for Rick Santorum, and given Santorum’s sparkling personality and credentials, one might postulate that the only reason for Giuliani’s visits is to broaden his visibility nation-wide? Rudy in ‘08? We shall see.
Next, on this page on The Post’s website, called The Fix, one can find blog style entries about national politics. Of interest is that Friday’s entry handicaps Iowa as the number 3 most contested gubernatorial election happening in ‘06. Also of interest is the fact that while the blurb on Iowa mentions that Ed Fallon is polling equal to Mike Blouin with a laughable fraction of the money, Fallon has no candidate profile on the Post’s page regarding Iowa.
A couple more things of note. Today Jim Nussle proposed an energy bill in congress featuring a mandate to increase renewable energy. This sure seems like convenient timing after virtually every democratic candidate Nussle is likely to face in November has already come out strongly for renewable energy. As well, this bill doesn’t cover renewable energy for electricity, but only renewable energy as a gasoline replacement. Iowa has the ability to be energy independent, and it’s perhaps time to realize that ethanol85 may not be the answer. Nussle is trying to turn E85 into what amounts to a hotbutton issue for Iowa, not recognizing the fact that E85 is still dependent upon gasoline, and that Iowans are abroad and dying in a misguided war to secure the future of our gasoline-dependent state. Renewable for Iowa does not mean just ethanol, and this legislation is a smoke-screen to get Iowans to think that Nussle is an energy responsible candidate.
In local legislature, the budget talks remain deadlocked, the contentious issues being pay raises for teaches (how in anyone’s right mind can they oppose this?) and tax cuts for seniors.
Finally: All Iowans between 18 and 22 are now eligible for Mumps vaccinations, regardless of whether they are enrolled in college. If you don’t have it, I’d recommend looking into getting vaccinated.
April 24th, 2006
