Update: Oreo, Dog Thrown Off Building, Was Euthanized
People Wait For Tomorrow's UWS Apple Store Opening
Emily and Sarah Kunstler, Filmmakers
Cheap Chicken Wing Deal Ruined by Gunslinging Teens
FIT Students Busted For Drug Dealing Get Probation
As he stumps for various Repubican candidates vying for win durings the 2006 elections, Rudy Giulaini is, more than ever, bandied about as a possible 2008 presidential candidate. The NY Times has a big article about Giuliani - and the GOP - riding his September 11 coattails. Given that Giuliani is a difficult hybrid of stances - pro-gay rights, pro-gun control, pro-choice, very divorced (and Italian, to boot!) - focusing on September 11 is all there is, and supporters do seem to love Rudy because of "9/11" and, uh, fighting crime. But beyond that, they don't know much about him - one of Iowa's leading Republicans said he didn't know anything about Bernard Kerik or toxic dust at Ground Zero.
And have you wondered how much Giuliani talks about September 11? Reporter Richard Perez-Pena had this illuminating passage:
“I don’t want to get in the way of 2006,” he said recently. “These are important elections that are coming up.”Maybe it seems much worse to us because we've heard him discuss it so many times. The point is, Giuliani won't talk about presidential ambitions but he will talk about the event that burnished his legacy. We're doubtful the rest of the GOP will be able to embrace Giuliani as a candidate, but if there are any more Republican scandals in the next year, Giuliani probably won't look so weird to the party.But when he is asked about 9/11, he talks effusively. Regarding Cristina Sauceda’s question [“How did you feel when they destroyed the towers, and what did you do to make people feel better?”], Mr. Giuliani gave an answer that, even for an adult audience, would have been extremely long (10 minutes), grim (“We had to figure out how many body bags to order”), and emotionally wrenching (“Every time I was told” that someone he knew had been killed, “my heart would take a beat, and I would say to myself, ‘I can’t think about that right now’”).
After his convention speech in 2004, speculation grew that Giuliani would be a leading candidate for President. But could the problems with post-September 11 air be his "swift boat?" And yesterday, Newsday's Wallace Matthews made an interesting statement while writing about the shift of baseball power moving to Flushing: "The Yankees are the privileged New York of Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump and Billy Crystal and Goldman Sachs, the exclusive New York that can always get a table at Elaine's or Rao's."
Photograph of Giulaini with Republican Senate candidate Mike Bouchard by Paul Sancya/AP
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
pro gay rights is anathema to a republican. You can make midwesterners vote for osama if he was running against Ellen degeneres. The republicans hate gays more than anything in the universe.
I like how you guys worked in the whole reference to "Giuliani Time."
Neither you nor the Daily News' Ben Smith appear to understand what "swift boat" means in terms of politics. Swiftboating doesn't merely mean the organized attack of an opponent targeting a perceived strong point. It means the ad hominem attack of an opponent based primarily on subjective opinion. It's a form of character assassination.
The problems with air quality in lower Manhattan were known by both Christine Todd Whitman and Rudy Giulaini immediately after the attacks. The people who didn't know were the public and the rescuers. These are facts. To suggest that organized opposition to Giulaini based on this issue would be swiftboating diminishes the seriousness of the air quality issue.
this is Rudy's one and only campaign platform:
http://www.oldamericancentury.org/gopconstrm.mov
And don't forget the other black mark against him in the GOP- he is a Papist.
j is yet another Democrat that just doesn't understand politics. Republicans are not one mass of people that all share the same beliefs about every issue. For every neo-con there are about a dozen moderates. Most are simply "small government" Republicans that continue to vote for the GOP regardless of the current leaderhship's runaway spending. These voters tend to be located in the midwest and mountain states. The religious voters the Gothamist posters love to ridicule tend to be from the South. But you guys like to paint everyone with one broad stroke so you end up insulting about 50% of the registered electorate. And after you lose you wonder where it all went wrong. Rather than use you self-proclaimed better educated brains you simply declare the voters to be stupid. and tehe cycle repeats.
'buy a clue' makes some valid points, but in the end we still know Republican voters to be pretty fucking stupid - (aside from the rich who more than likely attained their status by stomping all over others so they have no problem with a lack of scruples.)
The rich aside:
How the pro-small-government reconcile voting for Bush is beyond me. These people reviled Clinton, all the while he mollified the fuckups of Bush Sr. and left Jr. with a surplus. We all know how that turned out.
How the Christian right votes for the warmongering party of greed escapes all logic. I'm sorry, but Clinton was a hell of a lot more "Christian" in his values than every Bush alive put together (with the exception of his one major misstep with M.L. which is apparently unforgivable.) Bombing the holy hell out of tens of thousands of people for no reason, lying, torturing, enacting fiscal policies that make the rich richer and the poor poorer...sorry, those aren't particularly Christian values.
How poor southerners continue to vote for the party that has continually forsaken them is, again, just baffling. Katrina? Federal tax policies? Cutting of benefits for the poor?
In summary: a pretty fucking stupid group of people who obviously haven't put much critical thought into their own self interests.
buy a clue, I don't think Republicans are stupid. Just hatemongering hypocrites who are in constant denial.
j and anonymass just made my point.
Of all the things said by anonymass I'd like to pick on two: the rich continued to get richer during the 1990s and they pretty much have been since the late 1960s. The post-WW II boom years is about the only time in US history the middle class has expanded. And the "surplus" was a result of a bubble in the economy and in the stock market. Yes, taxes were increased but don't forget the cuts in military spending post-Cold War. If you doubt the effects of the stock market on tax revenue you should check out the recent government revision of the projected deficit. Tax receipts are becoming more difficult to project.
As for hatemongering, again, you missed the point. If you continue to assume that all GOP voters are neo-cons just because the current leadership is you will continue to misunderstand voter patterns. And furthermore, the most intolerant people I interact with on a daily basis are far left Democrats in NYC that refuse to discuss anything rationally and paint their opposition in broad strokes. The Columbia University students drowning out the Minutemen comes to mind. J does as well.
I don't think that all Republican voters are neo-cons. I went out of my way to agree with your premise that the GOP voter base is segmented and voting on issues that are against their own self-interests as a collective group - whether their interests are economic or ideological.
As for the rich getting richer, yes, that will probably continue, but Bush's tax cuts have exacerbated disparities in wealth. And due to the machinations of the Republican-led Congress, the poor have serious restrictions for bankruptcy, white collar crime is at an all-time high, corrupt government contracting is rampant(Halliburton's no-bid sweetheart contracts, for example) and so on. Please tell me you don't *really* think the GOP is doing a single thing to protect the poor or the working class in this country.
Lastly, the surplus under Clinton was not due in large part to a bubble in the stock market, it was due to sound fiscal policy first and foremost. The Dow set new highs last week and we're sitting on a huge debt and deficit under Bush. Explain that.