The republican speeches - theme: change; tone: anger

I watched Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin give their speeches last night. Rudi seemed angry about something, and got angrier as he spoke. I thought it was interesting when he said that Sarah Palin was qualified to be vice President because she had been a mayor (implied - like he had been mayor of New York.) Somehow the mayor of a village of 6,000 people automatically has all the skills of a mayor of a city of 8 million. He essentially said that because Palin had been a mayor of the 6,000 person village of Wasilli, she could have stepped in and done Rudi's job as mayor of New York and will be able to handle the Presidency from day one is something happens to the ancient John McCain.

Then Sarah Palin came on. She sure loves the limelight, and it loves her. She speaks well. What she said was written for her, so it more reflects what the McCain camp thinks the Republican delegates wanted to hear than what Sarah Palin knows herself. But she delivers the speech rather well, though with an overall tone of sarcasm. I'll let the experts dissect what her speechwriters had her say, but she delivers it well.

I'd say the theme of the night was "Washington is broken and we need change!" but this has been delivered by the same guys who broke Washington and currently run it. It would have been nice if they had figured out that they had broken Washington and started to fix it instead of just having a convention to complain about it.

The anger and sarcasm set the tone. What are they angry about? I think it's like they know they have been right all along, but someone has blocked them from succeeding in creating their conservative Paradise. They haven't failed, someone has sabotaged them. They blame some strange group they call "Liberals" - like that upstart Senator Barack Obama. So they are angry. They are going to change the things they've been running for eight years.

As Kevin Drum said this morning

AND MORE: Josh Marshall's take: "To riff on the brilliance of the immortal Molly Ivins, I think I preferred this speech in the original German."

Giuliani - worst Presidential campaign ever

I have to admit that Rudy Giuliani has absolutely amazed me.

Last November 28 I made a prediction that Rudy would be the Republican nominee for President. It is now slightly more than eight weeks later, and Josh Marshall has posted a comment which describes Rudy's effort to become the Republican nominee for President as

Rudy’s collapse is the mark of the worst presidential campaign in history.

Having watched the disastrous efforts of both John Connolly and Phil Gramm to become President, I thought I had seen the worst of the worst, but Rudy Giuliani has left them far behind in the dust of disaster.

Of course, I had previously written off John McCain last summer when he went broke, too. Now he's back with a vengeance. The Republican candidates for the nomination may be drinking Zombie Water this year, so I'm not yet ready to simply ignore the end of the political candidate from the Mafia.

We need to watch him carefully to make sure he really is politically dead. Perhaps holy water and a stake through the heart will be required, but as good a job as Rudy has done committing political suicide, those items may just be wearing a belt with suspenders.

Giuliani's lack of efforts to provide radios killed Firemen on 9/11

Let's not forget that the radios that the New York Fire Department was issued had failed in 1993. Rudy Giuliani was mayor during the period after that and was directly responsible for obtaining radios that worked. Here is the story from Think Progress.

the firefighters on 9/11 were forced to use old equipment that had malfunctioned eight years earlier, during the 1993 attacks on the World Trade Center.

But it wasn’t “impossible” to get new radios to these firefighters, as Giuliani tried to claim. After the 1993 incident, Giuliani gave Motorola a $14-million no-bid contract. Despite this exorbitant sum, the radios were faulty and had to be taken out of service in March 2001, after a “distress call from a firefighter trapped in a burning house” went unheard. A New York City Council report on the fire department’s radio procurement process concluded:

Thus, despite its acknowledgment two years earlier that several manufacturers were developing technology that might meet FDNY’s CAI specifications, and in apparent disregard of its pledge to evaluate new technologies and products, the FDNY appears to have elected to accept a radio representing an entirely new communications technology from Motorola rather than conduct a competitive review of products and prices.

Brave New Films has put together a video on Giuliani’s record on the 9/11 radios HERE.

I posted on this earlier, and someone commented that the decisions were those of the Fire Department, not Rudy.

Sorry. Rudy was Mayor. He was responsible for everything his people did or failed to do. That is leadership 101. Rudy is running for President as a proven leader, and a leader can't take credit for his subordinates successes and then blame them for the failures.

Those roughly two hundred firemen who died in the North Tower because their radios failed were the direct responsibility of Rudolph Giuliani, and he can't duck the responsibility for their deaths. They died because he failed.

Break up of the alliance of Repub econo/cold-warriors and Repub evangelicals?

Eric Kleefield over at TPM Election Central writes about how the polls of Republicans in the primary states consistently show a sharp drop for Rudy Giuliani coupled with a rapid increase for Mike Huckabee. When we look at the utter horror the Republican pundits are displaying at the growth of Huckabeemania, then it seems likely to me that we are seeing signs that the traditional econo/Cold-Warrior Republicans and the evangelical Republicans are each going to go their own, separate, way in November 2008.

The Republican Party since Reagan has been an uneasy alliance between the econo-Repubs (which includes the foreign policy Repubs - mostly left over Cold Warriors) and the Evangelists, with the Evangelists generally getting federal judges and a lot of lip service from the party, while the econo/cold-warriors have gotten most of the economic and foreign policy power. This has worked as long as the Republican alliance had a reasonable chance to win the Presidency - that meant both sides got enough from the alliance to be willing to put up with the idiocies of the other side. As long as the followers felt that a Republican win was possible for the Repub alliance, they stuck together.

With the Republican primaries starting in three weeks, the rank-and-file Republicans are taking a serious look at the Republican prospects for 2008. No one thinks that the Republicans can win the Presidency, and the possibility of that Presidential power has been the glue that held the alliance together. So the evangelical followers are looking for someone - a purist - who can represent what they believe. Under the old rules Rudy or Romney, representing the econo/cold-warrior branch, could talk Southern religious racism and the Evangelical leaders could convince their follower that since they have no strong candidate of their own in the fight, the econo/cold-warrior candidate offered the evangelicals their best shot at national influence. But that becomes a much harder sell if the Republican candidate has no reasonable chance to win the Presidency. Why should the evangelical rank-and-file vote for and work for a loser who doesn't even represent the religious values that have motivated them to work in politics in the first place?

Neither Rudy nor Romney can deliver a Presidency, and Rudy has come to look worse and worse on a daily basis. Romney still isn't viewed as a Christian by a lot of evangelicals, and for a lot of them that is a deal-breaker. Enter Huckabee, a Southern governor who speaks true evangelical as a native language and who has truly awesome political skills.

With nothing to tie the the evangelical followers to the econo/cold-warrior candidates who have severe religious and moral baggage, the evangelical followers are leaving the Repub alliance and moving towards Huckabee. I think that's is what we see in these statistics, with Rudy collapsing, Romney dropping and Huckabee doing a rocket imitation going up.

Does this present an opening for McCain? Maybe with the econo/cold-warriors, but the evangelicals didn't like him in 2000 and the feeling was mutual. The enmity is not something that McCain can paper over by sweet-talking the evangelical leaders, particularly since the econo/cold-warriors are at best luke-warm about him and he has shown no indication that he can win in November. With Huckabee in the race, the evangelical followers are not going to switch to McCain.

I think we are watching the evangelistic Republicans as they decide they have nothing to win by voting for the econo/cold-warrior candidates. If Huckabee gets the nomination (unlikely) the econo/cold-warriors will sit at home in November. If Romney (or, much less likely, McCain) gets the nomination, the evangelicals will sit at home or run a third party in November. If that happens then the Republican alliance will have broken apart by November 2008. The leadership will try to keep the party unified, but without any hope of winning the Presidency, the leadership has nothing to offer their followers.

Then, just for fun, consider Ron Paul. Dr. Paul is running for the Republican Presidential nomination because it allows him to present his Libertarian philosophy on a national scale. When he ran for President as a Libertarian in 1988 no one ever heard of him. His effort this year has made him a household word. But neither the econo/cold-warriors nor the evangelicals are going to vote for Dr. Paul. Dr. Paul is the greatest hope that the Libertarians have ever had. Ron Paul is going to run as a third party candidate. That will split out the Libertarian Republicans from the econo/cold-warriors.

So we are looking at the strong likelihood that the national Republican Party is headed for a major crackup in November.

That makes the likelihood of a strong win for the Democratic candidate for President very likely. He or she is going to have coattails, too. Add the Presidential coattails to the drag Republicans will face from the now inevitable recession and from the continued fighting in Iraq, and it looks like the Democrats can be expected to win big next November.

Would I expect a Democratic win as big as in 1964? I wouldn't bet on that his far ahead of the election, but if nothing breaks favorably towards the Republicans by late Summer 2008, then I wouldn't want to bet on much Republican success next November. I do think, even now, that the Democratic nomination for President will decide who our next President will be.

2008 is going to be an interesting year.

Which is the real Rudy? I know! I know! Ask me! Ask me!

Now that the Press is confronting Giuliani on what he has been saying, all of a sudden the good will towards the press has disappeared. MSNBC has the story:

OKATIE, SC -- Giuliani refused to take questions here today about allegations that travel expenses were picked up by obscure city offices when he was mayor of New York City.

“We’ve already explained it,” he said, walking past reporters after a town hall meeting.

Giuliani, who is normally friendly to reporters, bristled past them, and campaign staffers were unusually physical in keeping the press away. Several campaign aides told campaign reporters to return to the press area, and some of his security detail manhandled reporters. On other occasions, reporters have been free to video Giuliani as he is shaking hands and signing autographs after events, and he often informally takes questions from reporters.

He'll say anything as long as you let him and don't question his facts and his narrative. Confront him and you are cut off.

Make you suspicious? It would me, if I didn't already know about the lies and the lurid personal history of serial polygamy and infidelity. For me it is just confirmation.

Guiliani lies - again and again

Various blogs have been hammering away on the many falsehoods that drip from Rudy Giuliani's lips each time he stands in front of a microphone, but now the New York Times commits a rare case of journalism and lays it all out.

Discussing his crime-fighting success as mayor, Mr. Giuliani told a television interviewer that New York was “the only city in America that has reduced crime every single year since 1994.” In New Hampshire this week, he told a public forum that when he became mayor in 1994, New York “had been averaging like 1,800, 1,900 murders for almost 30 years.” When a recent Republican debate turned to the question of fiscal responsibility, he boasted that “under me, spending went down by 7 percent.”

All of these statements are incomplete, exaggerated or just plain wrong. And while, to be sure, all candidates use misleading statistics from time to time, Mr. Giuliani has made statistics a central part of his candidacy as he campaigns on his record.

Go read teh article for the details.

So why is the New York Times actually committing an act of journalism? I can only assume that the New York Times editors have decided that Rudy is already political toast, so they no longer feel too threatened to get in and actually expose what a slimeball and fruitcake he really is.

This demonstrates that the New York Times is now a repository of yesterday's news. It is often a place we find news that was first reported by blogs, but the New York Times almost never will give credit when they are rewriting and reprinting stories first reported in places like Talking Points Memo or other blogs. We already know from the Judy Miller disaster that the NY Times is the place to find an unquestioned report of today's Republican spin. Looks like they have established the niche the NY Times should fill in this, the new age if Internet news.

Whither the Republican nomination contest?

Not a single vote has been cast in a primary and the nearest caucus is at least six or eight weeks away, so We have only polls and news reports of isolated comments to base any conclusions on regarding who the Republicans will nominate for President. So such predictions are probably quite risky.

That won't stop me from throwing out my opinion.

Josh Marshall was reviewing some charts of approval polls for each of the Republican candidates for the nomination, and reported his 'epiphany.' [Click through to TPM, click on each of the charts, and then go down to the charts by candidate for the most interesting view.] The polls show that Giuliani has been dropping continuously since 2006, while Romney has been increasing in approval. Josh's 'Epiphany' was that Romney was going to go into the actual primaries with surprising power. Josh considers it most likely that Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee.

I don't. I still think it will be Giuliani. Here's why.

I think that the evangelical Republicans will look at the threat of nominating a non-Christian, a Mormon, and as a block, reject him. I think that enough of the evangelicals will shift over to Huckabee to throw the nomination to Giuliani. The New York Times today has a report that the Mormon issue is hurting Romney in Iowa, and the beneficiary is Mike Huckabee, the ordained Baptist minister from Arkansas.

I think that Huckabee will draw enough evangelical votes from Romney to throw the nomination over to Giuliani.

But then Huckabee is going to suffer the same fate as Reverend Pat Robertson did when he ran for President in 1988. Huckabee is going to look good in Iowa, as Robertson did twenty years ago, but when he runs out of evangelical voters and people take a serious look at him he won't go the distance to the nomination. It's still a Romney - Giuliani race. So Rudy is going to pick up the evangelical vote as the least of all evils.

The only other Republican of any interest is Ron Paul. The Libertarians love him, and they have a large on-line presence. Dr. Paul is, however, the favorite of a small constituency, and when they run out he peaks out. The average Republican is not going to vote for him, and he has zero chance at all in any general election. Dr. Paul also ran for President in 1988 and attracted very little interest. He gets more interest today because Libertarians and the Internet seem made for each other, but a quick review of his record of bills presented in the House of Representatives show that he is not a viable candidate for President. I described Dr. Paul as a fruitcake in an earlier post and I stand by that description.

The only other two candidates of any interest, McCain and Thompson, have both seen their campaigns collapse over the Summer. McCain can't interest enough Republican voters favorably to fill a school bus, and his inability to raise money means that isn't going to change. The graph of Thompson's approval shows that the interest in him as a candidate peaked about the time he announced he was going to run and has gone downhill since.

So that's it. The only two real candidates remaining are Romney and Giuliani. Both are acceptable to the Republican money donors but they seem to prefer Rudy. Texas and Southern Republicans already appear to be coalescing around Rudy. Rick Perry, Republican Governor of Texas has come out strong for Guiliani.

If there is to be a real surprise that changes this evaluation, I think it will appear in the South Carolina primary. That primary is going to clarify all the muck and the Republicans will then know who to coalesce around to avoid a brokered convention next Summer.

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Addendum 6:37 PM CST
Looks like I posted my opinion a few hours too early. From TPM election Central we get a report that Rudy is way down in South Carolina.

"On the heels of polls showing Rudy dropping fast in New Hampshire and out of contention in Iowa, a a new poll finds him sinking fast in a third key state: South Carolina. The Clemson University poll finds Mitt Romney now taking the lead with 17%, followed by Fred Thompson at 15%, Mike Huckabee with 13%, John McCain at 11% — and Rudy at only 9%.

It's definitely not a good result for Rudy, especially in light of recent polls showing him in third in both Iowa and New Hampshire. And it's great news for Romney, who apparently now leads in all three of the key early contests.

So it looks like the winner of Iowa, New Hampsire and South Carolina will be Mitt Romney. Rudy is going to find it difficult to convince Republican voters that they should nominate the guy who lost the first three contests.

I still see the size of the vote for Huckabee to be an indicator of how many evangelical Republicans will sit out the 2008 Presidential Election and not vote at all rather than vote for a Mormon. Also, I still DON'T see the Econo-Republicans supporting Huckabee. They have no hold on him and he is frankly too populist for their taste. Almost any other Republican candidate would be preferable to them outside of Ron Paul. I also see Huckabee as being fatally subject to TV ads that point up his flaws. I previously posted on some of Huckabee's flaws in " Huckabee - from an Arkansas reporter "and "Huckabee - more to confirm Brantley's report", both posted Nov 13, 2007.

Feel free to disagree with me. I'm just trying to read the tea leaves and use the results to predict which way the voters in the Republican primary are currently trending, and which changes are likely to expect. The tea leaves themselves (various news reports) may or may not be good indicators of voter sentiment, so I have to use my judgment to try to "weight" each report for consistency with the others, then see what is suggests.

I have tried to link to the reports I am basing my guestimates on, so go look. Weight them yourself and draw your own conclusions. Then, if you disagree with my conclusions, I have more to learn from disagreement than I do from agreement. Maybe I'll learn to do a better job. (And maybe trying to predict the future is just a fool's game.) In any case, feel free to disagree, but I want to know why. What do you see that I don't. Specifiy if you have evidence, or just a different judgment in weighting the evidence.

And do go look at the charts Josh Marshall refers to. As far as I can tell, that's the best relatively unbiased trend data currently available, all nicely wrapped up in a presentation that permits each comparison between candidates. Note that it does not include data from the last couple of weeks.

Personally, I think that watching politics beats watching a good poker game - and as the war in Iraq has proven, the stakes are a lot higher.

Kerik's strange loan

What do you call a $250,000 loan given by a foreign billionaire who does business with the U.S. government to a well-connected American political operative? Does it help to know that it was a loan with no interest, no conditions, and no apparent date to be paid back, and was first passed to a Brooklyn businessman who then passed it to the political operative.

Does the term "bribe" quickly cross your mind? Does it help to know that the recipient of the "loan" was the Republican friend-of-Rudy Bernie Kerik? It was given to Bernie during his period of time in Iraq, but Bernie did not include it on his financial disclosure form for some reason.

Paul Kiel presents the story at TPM Muckraker.

White House knew of Kerik's mob ties before he withdrew for Secretary of DHS.

The indictment that the feds have just brought against Bernard Kerik shows that it was his mob ties that caused him to withdraw his names from consideration for Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, not nanny problems. This from TPM Muckraker:

On December 2, 2004, President Bush announced that his pick to replace Tom Ridge as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security was Bernard Kerik. On December 10th, a Friday, at 8:30 p.m., Kerik suddenly withdrew his nomination, explaining in a statement that he'd discovered that his former housekeeper and nanny might not be a legal immigrant and that he hadn't paid taxes on her. It was the sole reason given for his withdrawal, both in his statement and in subsequent comments by White House officials.

But Kerik's indictment last Thursday indicates that the White House was dealing with bigger problems: Kerik's ties to the mob.

The centerpiece of the indictment was Kerik's acceptance, from 1999 through 2000, of $255,000 worth of apartment renovations (including a marble rotunda) from executives with Interstate Industrial Corporation, a company with ties to the Gambino crime family. The feds say that Kerik, who was NYC corrections commissioner and then police commissioner during the time in question, worked on Interstate's behalf in return for the money, work that included attempting to convince city investigators that the company was free of mob ties so that it could get city contracts.

Unfortunately for Kerik, the secret of his ties to Interstate began to unravel just about the time of his nomination. On December 2nd, the same day that Bush announced Kerik was his pick, The New York Daily News, which had been digging for six weeks on Kerik's ties to Interstate, sent him a list of questions about those ties.

On December 5th, the indictment alleges, Kerik "made various false and misleading statements about his relationship with [Interstate and it's top executives]" in an email to a White House official (who remains unnamed). It was one of several allegedly false and misleading statements that Kerik is charged in the indictment with making to White House officials. However, unlike the other false statements, which appear from the indictment to involves sins of omission -- like failure to disclose -- the language of the indictment suggests that the December 5th email was an affirmative misrepresentation. In other words, in the thick of the vetting process, the White House was asking Kerik about his ties to Interstate.

Five days later, he announced that he'd uncovered his nanny problem. Two days after that, on December 12th, the Daily News first reported that Kerik's brother and best friend had been hired by Interstate -- on Kerik's recommendation. Kerik had never responded to the list of questions, the paper reported.

So Kerik was taking payoffs from Industrial even as he worked for Giuliani as head of New York City jails and then as Police Commissioner. Also, Industrial could not get New York City contracts because of its mob connections, so Rudy would have known that anyone working for Industrial was mob-connected.

But Kerik wasn't the only Guiliani aide who worked for Industrial. Tom Robbins, investigative reporter for the Village Voice reported December 17, 2004 that Giuliani's former former deputy mayor Randy Mastro, who served as Giuliani's top gun in chasing down mobbed up outfits doing business with the city.

Mastro's hiring came as the construction firm was desperately battling for the right to hold city and state contracts despite allegations of mob dealings made by several oversight agencies—including a business integrity panel that was launched by Mastro when he was still at City Hall.

Interstate was also facing a tough challenge by regulators of New Jersey casinos who said the company should be barred from Atlantic City because it had a long history of conscious involvement with organized-crime figures.

So apparently Mastro's employment by Industrial was legitimate and above board, even though Mastro says he never told his former boss, Rudy, who he was working for. Kerik's was not similarly legitimate.

The New York Times reported March 30, 2007 about the investigation into what Guiliani knew about Kerik's mob connections and when he learned of it.

Rudolph W. Giuliani told a grand jury that his former chief investigator remembered having briefed him on some aspects of Bernard B. Kerik’s relationship with a company suspected of ties to organized crime before Mr. Kerik’s appointment as New York City police commissioner, according to court records.

Mr. Giuliani, testifying last year under oath before a Bronx grand jury investigating Mr. Kerik, said he had no memory of the briefing, but he did not dispute that it had taken place, according to a transcript of his testimony.

Mr. Giuliani’s testimony amounts to a significantly new version of what information was probably before him in the summer of 2000 as he was debating Mr. Kerik’s appointment as the city’s top law enforcement officer. Mr. Giuliani had previously said that he had never been told of Mr. Kerik’s entanglement with the company before promoting him to the police job or later supporting his failed bid to be the nation’s homeland security secretary.

In his testimony, given in April 2006, Mr. Giuliani indicated that he must have simply forgotten that he had been briefed on one or more occasions as part of the background investigation of Mr. Kerik before his appointment to the police post.

So the question is whether Giuliani was less than candid in what he claims he knew about Kerik's mob connections, or is it that Rudy has no real concern about whether one of his subordinates has mob connections. But consider this:

Mr. Giuliani, whose private company provides background checks for companies as part of its services, may have to explain his response to the information that was provided to him in 2000.

Is it reasonable to assume that a man who does background investigations for other people would not have done a similar job on Bernie Kerik?

Kerik is a real blot on Giuliani's work. It brings into question his judgment, his honesty in asnwering questions, and his fitness for any executive position.

Rupert Murdoch wants Giuliani as President says Judith Regan

The New York Post reports on Judith Regan's $100 million lawsuit claiming she was fired because she had dirt on Bernie Kerik that might derail Giuliani's campaign to become President.

In papers filed yesterday in Manhattan Supreme Court, Regan charges that she was disgraced and then dismissed from her prestigious position at the publisher because its parent company, News Corp., was worried about dirt she had on Giuliani's scandal-scarred pal Bernard Kerik, an ex-boyfriend.

"This action arises from a deliberate smear campaign orchestrated by one of the world's largest media conglomerates for the sole purpose of destroying one woman's credibility and reputation," Regan's suit says. "This smear campaign was necessary to advance News Corp.'s political agenda, which has long centered on protecting Rudy Giuliani's presidential ambitions."

The suit says a News Corp. executive, concerned about what Regan might know about Kerik, advised her "not to produce clearly relevant documents in connection with the government's investigation of Kerik," which resulted in his indictment last week.

But Regan's suit doesn't name the executive, or specify what those documents were, or offer any evidence to back up her claim.

Executives at News Corp., which also owns The Post, "knew they would be protecting Giuliani if they could pre-emptively discredit her," and supposedly saw their opening when a firestorm erupted over her planned Simpson book, a hypothetical confession titled, "If I Did It."

This could, of course, just be a counterattack by a disgruntled fired ex-employee, but for someone as well-known as Judith Regan to be fired for alleged anti-Semitic remarks has never really passed the smell test. Harper Collins knew that they had hired someone who had been a National Inquirer reporter. Such things normally require more that a single such incident, and then are handled a lot more quietly. It is extremely unusual for a company to make such personnel matters so very public, since it reflects badly on the company as well as the employee.

Her relationship with Bernie Kerik and the threat that Kerik clearly presents to Giuliani's presidential ambitions is a better, if itself suspicious, reason for her dismissal and very public character assassination.

Ms. Regan's allegation does, however, totally fit the extremely partisan right-wing character of News Corp and FOX News. Anyone who watches FOX News recognizes that they are the propaganda wing of the right-wing Republican Party. It is easy, then, to accept the allegation that they have chosen to support Rudy Giuliani as President and will use the full power of News Corp to promote him and to remove threats to his elevation to the Presidency.

There is also the fact that Bernie Kerik is a major threat to Rudy Giuliani's Presidential ambitions, and since Judith Reagan was apparently his girl friend (while he was married to someone else), someone who wants Rudy elected President can certainly expect her to be a threat to him. Publicly discrediting her in advance of Rudy's campaign could well be seen as a good preemptive move for handling an anticipated threat to his campaign.

Should we buy Judith Regan's allegations? They certainly are reasonable given the individuals involved and the overall situation. I'd like to see some evidence beyond just her assertion, but I'm not going to discount it.

[ h/t to TPM for the referral since I would have no reason to read the NY Post if not referred. ]

Video's documenting Giuliani's racism

Videos about Rudy's racism:

Rudy's foreign policy - perpetual war

One of the many shocks I have gotten during the Bush regime has been how often I have found myself agreeing with Pat Buchanan. Pat himself has not changed. Only the circumstances have changed, so that his extremist rhetoric has extremist situations to describe. Here is Pat's description of the foreign policy team that Rudolph Giuliani has created to advise him in what is clearly Giuliani's weakest area of policy and experience:

If Rudy rivals McCain as the hawk’s hawk in the Republican race, the foreign policy advisers he has signed up make the Vulcans of Bush look like Howard Zinn and Ramsey Clark. Arnaud de Borchgrave titled his column about them “Dogs of War.”

Team leader is Charles Hill, a co-signer of the Sept. 20, 2001, neocon ultimatum to Bush, nine days after 9-11, warning the president if he did not attack Iraq, his failure to do so “will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender to the war on international terrorism.”

Yet Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11.

A second member of Rudy’s team is Martin Kramer, an Israeli-American who, according to Ken Silverstein of Harper’s, “spent 25 years at Tel Aviv University and whose Middle East policy can best be summarized as, ‘What’s Best for Israel?’” Silverstein calls Rudy’s eight-man advisory group “AIPAC’s Dream Team”—AIPAC being the Israeli lobby, two of whose leaders go on trial in January for espionage against the United States

According to The New York Times, another key Rudy adviser is Daniel Pipes, “who has called for profiling Muslims at airports and scrutinizing American Muslims in law enforcement, the military and the diplomatic corps.” Another is AEI’s Michael Rubin, “who has written in favor of revoking the United States’ ban on assassinations.”

Best known of Rudy’s advisers is Norman Podhoretz, who wrote in June, “The Case for Bombing Iran” in Commentary, thinks we are in “World War IV” and writes that “as an American and as a Jew, I pray with all my heart” Bush will bomb Iran. Podhoretz sees us at Munich in 1938 and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Hitler.

“Like Hitler,” writes Podhoretz, Ahmadinejad “is a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international order and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism.”

Pat ends his article by focusing on the insane Podhoretz and his relationship to Rudy, the candidate, with this statement:

After meeting with his candidate, Podhoretz emerged happy to assure us, “There is very little difference in how he (Rudy) sees the war and I see it.” If true, a vote for Rudy is a vote for endless war.

And, as James Madison said, wars are the death of republics.

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I have taken the liberty of adding some links to explanatory sources to some of the names in Pat's article. Editor, WTF-o

Rudy's racist history in New York

It's time for a deeper look into the history of Rudolph Giuliani. Here are excerpts from an article by KEVIN BAKER in Harper's Magazine. The article describes Giuliani as a politician who took over control of the city of New York when the major problems had already been solved, and the solutions merely had to work their way out. He did it by using a blatantly racist campaign to attract the racist vote, while at the same time trading on his reputation as a U.S. Attorney who also prosecuted white collar criminals, breezing over the fact that the largest percentage of those convictions were overturned on Appeal. So here is how Kevin Baker presents the narrative.

Like Bill and Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani was also a Democrat for McGovern in 1972. The Clintons built a new, post-ideological Democratic Party over the last thirty years. Rudy wants to do a similar rebuilding of a post-ideological Republican Party.

The post-ideological party distinguishes itself from its rivals not through any particular program or deep moral conviction so much as by the character and the charisma of its particular leader—its Sarkozy, or its Berlusconi, or its Clinton—and by its brand-selling strategies.[Snip]

Giuliani drew a different lesson than the Clintons in his early political experiences. He watched the winning side in the 1972 election and internalized a strategy that was honed by the likes of George Wallace, Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan over the course of nearly two decades. That strategy can best be described as a sort of "anti-populism," a worldview in which the well-off are continually beset by the poor, the privileged by the disinherited, the white by the black. The remarkable accomplishment of Giuliani was how he was able to use this narrative of disorder to gain power in New York.

By the time David Dinkins became the first African-American mayor of New York, the city had been written off by most people as ungovernable. Mayor Dinkins began the turnaround of the city by adding 6,000 more police to the streets.

He also hired a pair of dynamic new leaders, Ray Kelly as police commissioner and William Bratton as head of New York's transit police. During Dinkins's term the city's murder rate fell by 13.7 percent, robbery fell by 14.6 percent, burglary fell by 17.6 percent, and auto theft fell by 23.8 percent. The city's crime rate dropped in all seven FBI major-felony categories for the first time in nearly four decades.

Similarly, the notorious porn shops and movie houses along 42nd Street that Giuliani would later claim to have closed himself had in fact already been shuttered as the city began the transformation of Times Square into a Disney fantasia. Indeed, the last graffiti-covered subway car had been taken off the line in 1989, under Mayor Ed Koch. Even the "squeegee men"—homeless individuals who wiped the windshields of cars against the owners' wishes and then hassled them for payment, and whom Giuliani would make the emblem of New York's perpetual disorder—had been removed from the streets by the time Giuliani took the oath of office on January 1, 1994.

Thus nearly every major accomplishment that Giuliani points to today either had already been achieved or was well on the way to being achieved by the time he became mayor.

Mayor Dinkins' successes did not suit Rudy. If New York was not "ungovernable," why would the voters elect Rudy to clean up the city? So Rudy ran an under-the-table race-based campaign designed to appeal to racists without losing the Liberal vote.

Giuliani countered the encouraging statistics with a ruthless campaign designed to reaffirm New Yorkers' worst fears about their city, what The New York Times Magazine would call "the race race." In part this effort was viciously, relentlessly personal, designed to challenge Dinkins's very legitimacy as mayor. Often the dirty work was done by surrogates, such as Giuliani crony Jackie Mason, the comedian, who publicly dismissed Dinkins as nothing but "a fancy shvartzer with a mustache." The same Times article noted a more harrowing incident in the fall of 1992, in which Giuliani gave a profanity-laced speech that inflamed a mob of some 10,000 "raucous, beer-drinking, overwhelmingly white police officers" who had just finished a march on City Hall to protest a Dinkins-backed proposal for civilian oversight of police-misconduct complaints. Many in the mob spewed racial epithets and carried signs condemning Dinkins in grossly racial terms, including one that read, "Dump the washroom attendant!" Giuliani's complicity in this disgraceful incident was dutifully condemned by the media ...which nonetheless validated the same stereotypes. Hence Janice C. Simpson's noting in Time magazine that "Dinkins comes off as a courtly but unimaginative bureaucrat with a taste for fussy clothes and fancy ceremonies." What right did this black man have to nice clothes, civic ceremonies, or facial adornment—or to be mayor at all?

Seeking to elide the steadily dropping crime statistics, Giuliani resorted to more racial code, charging in a speech that Dinkins "might as well have held a ceremony in which he turned the neighborhoods over to the drug dealers. As far as I'm concerned, there is no future in surrender." The very slogan of his 1993 campaign, "One Standard, One City," implied that somehow black New Yorkers were getting away with something under a black mayor. Sure, crime might be falling, but what really mattered to New Yorkers was something called "quality of life"—a nebulous state of grace that was thwarted by all signs of disorder on the streets, from open drug dealing to aggressive panhandling to uncollected trash, and of course those darn squeegee men.

"Quality of life" provided Giuliani a more nuanced appeal to a group who were rapidly becoming the racially divided city's most sought-after swing voters. These were white liberals, more generally caricatured in New York as "Upper West Side liberals." Open race-baiting secured Giuliani's base only in what might be called the "red states" of New York, the outer boroughs of Staten Island, Queens, and parts of Brooklyn, where he had already captured large majorities among white ethnics during his previous run for mayor. Yet race-baiting remained repellent to the relatively affluent, white social liberals who inhabited much of Manhattan and the trendier sections of Brooklyn. Even though many of these voters had become more conservative over the years—or had been replaced by younger, more conservative voters—they still would not countenance an openly racist appeal.[Snip]

In his second run for mayor, Giuliani's "quality of life" appeal brilliantly bundled together any number of the quotidian irritations of living in a large and turbulent metropolis. And with the use of select code words—such as the "surrender" of the streets or "One Standard, One City"—Giuliani was able to subtly link these frustrations to a racial root cause. In this, Giuliani was aided by Dinkins's maladroit handling of a number of searing racial incidents, including the boycott of a Korean-American grocery in Brooklyn, an anti-Semitic race riot in Crown Heights, and the ongoing hate-mongering of black racial extremists such as Alton Maddox, Vernon Mason, and Sonny Carson. Giuliani used such incidents to create a sort of siege mentality, in which whites, already harassed at every turn by squeegee men, trash storms, and peddlers, were on the verge of losing control of the city entirely—maybe were even at the precipice of some sort of apocalyptic racial massacre.

So what about the improvement of crime statistics during Rudy's time as Mayor. Does he deserve any credit?

It is true that crime continued to drop precipitously during Giuliani's mayoral reign—as it did all around the country, for many reasons. Giuliani credited the decline mostly to a "CompStat," computer-driven system brought in by his new police commissioner, William Bratton—originally a Dinkins hire—then forced Bratton out when he began to steal some of Giuliani's own spotlight. Meanwhile, police response time actually increased by 24 percent in his first term, and the percentage of felony arrests leading to an indictment dropped by almost one third.

The city's public schools, a perennial source of despair, continued to decay, while Giuliani forced out three different chancellors over various trivial disagreements. He removed 600,000 New Yorkers from the welfare rolls, with methods that the courts repeatedly struck down as illegal and arbitrary. What happened to most of these people, how they managed to live and where, is simply not recorded—just as it is not recorded what happened to the more than 8 million people who were thrown off the rolls by Bill Clinton's national "welfare reform."

What Giuliani relied upon to rule were regular authoritarian gestures. He screamed at reporters during press conferences and ranted at callers to his radio show; tried to cut off city funding for a nonprofit AIDS hospice that had dared to criticize him; attempted to censor controversial art; and exuberantly picked fights with unpopular out-of-towners, such as Yassir Arafat, or the entire state of Virginia, which had balked at accepting New York's garbage.

Race never went away either. Without quite saying so, Giuliani made it clear that white people would no longer be on the defensive in his city. His administration was punctuated by a series of ugly incidents, including the fatal shooting of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed man mistaken for a rapist by four plainclothes police detectives who fired forty-one unanswered bullets at him; the fatal shooting of a club security guard, Patrick Dorismond, after he was approached at random by undercover narcotics officers who insisted that he sell them crack; and the brutal rape of a suspect, Abner Louima, by police officers armed with a broken broom handle.

Any protests over such actions were usually greeted with indifference or renewed shows of force on the part of the mayor. Giuliani confronted mourners of the world's AIDS victims with police snipers on the roof of City Hall, intimidated demonstrators by ensuring that they spent as much time as possible being put "through the system," and summoned an unnerving array of heavily armed police, complete with hovering helicopters, to virtually "lock down" part of Harlem when a noxious black nationalist dared to hold a rally there. In the case of Dorismond, the murdered guard, Giuliani went so far as to illegally open and leak the contents of his juvenile police file to the public.

So we know that Rudy is a hot-tempered man with strong authoritarian tendencies who surrounds himself with yes-men, ignores contradictory advice and has poor judgment in who he appoints as subordinates (Kerek and Harding.) What we have to add to that is that he won his only elected political office, Mayor of New York, by running a blatantly racist and dishonest campaign, then coasted through his terms of office based on the successful efforts of Mayor Dinkins to clean up the so-called "Ungovernable" city of New York.

That sets up a scoreboard for Rudy as no wins, all losses, and really poor character. He is not a man who should ever even be allowed near the White House, let alone elected to enter it as President.

---

[See also my earlier post What is Giulianni running on? Racism disguised as killing Arabs.. ]

Russell Harding - another Giuliani "mistake"

Another individual Giuliani plucked out of obscurity and appointed to a high management post in New York City is Russell Harding.

Russell Harding? Who's he? Just the college drop-out son of the New York Liberal Party who Rudy chose to lead the Housing Development Corporation, who several years later was convicted of living high on funds he looted from that agency. As you read this, remember that Harding was a city employee. Contrary to the clear directives in the City Charter, Rudy Guiliani had directed "the Independent Budget Office of the City of New York to route all requests for records through City Hall." (according to Rachel Morris' article Rudy Awakening. This was the only agency which might have reined in Russel Hardy's misuse of taxpayer funds.

Here is the story from the Village Voice:

In a series of articles that led to the investigation, the Voice reported ("Lush Life of a Rudy Appointee," April 10-16, 2002) that Harding spent hundreds of thousands of dollars at posh resorts from San Diego to Hong Kong, and that he used an agency credit card to buy expensive presents for friends. [Snip]

Last week, [The article is dated March 22, 2005] three years after his extravagant spending on the taxpayer's dime was exposed in the Voice, former Rudy Giuliani aide Russell Harding pled guilty to fraud and conspiracy charges in Manhattan federal court. Harding admitted to stealing more than $400,000 from the housing agency he once headed, as well as to possessing a disc, imported from Belgium, filled with pornographic images of children. In his deal with prosecutors, he agreed to serve up to 63 months in prison.

So what skimming of funds did Harding do? In an earlier article dated June 10th, 2002 the village Voice described a few things:

In one instance, Harding said in a Web chat that close ties between his father, Liberal Party leader Raymond Harding, and former mayor Rudy Giuliani, had helped his father win legal representation of a firm seeking to manage the city's airports.

On another occasion, Harding allegedly said that he "made a few extra dollars" from contractors he had helped on a Bronx renovation project funded by the housing corporation. [Snip]

Making money was par for the course, Harding revealed in his chats with Sawyers. In a June 2001 exchange, Harding spoke about his father's working relationship with the mayor.

"My dad is always helping the mayor with projects for money making," typed Harding. Writing in his characteristic three-dot style, he added, "And the mayor is always helping my dad as well . . . he had my dad go over some contracts a while back about a company taking over the airports here . . . so not only in the long run will the mayor profit from it . . . but my dad already has with doing the contract . . . they both have a wash each other's back thing going."

The confusing language may just have been Russell Harding's bragging to someone who says he knew nothing about the issues.

"I really must admit I don't understand half of what you just said," responded Sawyers, "but I guess it makes sense."

"LOL," typed Harding, using the cyber-ese for "laugh out loud." "Trust me Fred . . . it makes perfect sense for the line of work my dad is in . . . as well as with my job . . . we all help the mayor and he helps us."

This second Voice article goes extensively into Harding's on-line efforts to find young boys to have sex with, but that does not directly involve Rudy Giuliani. It merely goes to demonstrate the character of the people that Rudy surrounds himself with and chooses for high management positions. Then, from a Village Voice article dated April 10 - 16, 2002 there is another description of Ray Harding's expenditures on the City dime:

On January 16, with just two weeks to go until his last day on the job, Russell Harding, president of the New York City Housing Development Corporation—a small but powerful city agency—picked up the phone and called the corporation's travel agent.

He booked a $10,700 trip that would take him to Singapore, Thailand, and Bali. Through the agent, Altours International, he also ordered a pre-paid, open ticket for $7500, destination unnamed.

Unlike other departing aides to the administration of former mayor Rudy Giuliani who may have been planning post-employment vacations, Harding ordered the bill sent to his agency for payment. That same day, the travel agent faxed an invoice for the trips to HDC, where an official vendor-payment request was immediately prepared. Six days later, on January 22, Senior Vice President Luke Cusack, a close friend who was hired for his job by Harding, signed off on it. A check for the full amount was promptly issued and the invoice stamped "Paid."

Harding, the son of one of the state's most powerful political figures, Liberal Party boss Ray Harding, resigned as scheduled on February 1. But records released in the wake of his departure show the planned Southeast Asia trip was just the cap on a virtual nonstop, three-and-a-half-year spending spree during which Harding and Cusack traveled literally around the world at city expense.

Records show that after Harding was appointed by Giuliani in 1998, he and Cusack racked up more than $250,000 in travel, dining, and entertainment expenses—ranging from $1000 dinners at the Four Seasons to a Hong Kong junket. Even Harding's morning bagels, purchased for $1.25 each, were charged to the agency.

The records also show that Harding dipped into the agency's pocket to shower presents on at least one friend who hadn't the remotest connection to city affairs, at the same time bragging about his ability to file personal expenses—including gambling debts—with the agency as business costs.

A trip to Singapore, Thailand, and Bali is very probably a sex tour of Southeast Asia.

So Russell Harding's appointment was a payoff by Rudy Giuliani to Harding's father, powerful Liberal Party leader Ray Harding. Ray Harding had placed Rudy Giuliani on the Liberal Party ticket for mayor, a move which allowed Rudy to win the job. As described above, Ray Harding and Rudy Giuliani worked together to steer city contracts to favored contractors and Rudy let Ray's son run hog-wild spending taxpayer money in exchange for the favors.

Berine Kerek was not Rudy's only failure in judgment. So was Russell Harding. In both cases competent people (including members of the Press in the case of Russell Harding) warned Rudy in advance against making the appointment, and in both cases Rudy told those who warned him that in his judgment they were wrong and he, Rudy, was right. So what we have in Rudy is a many with poor personal judgment who refuses to listen to people who warn him that he is going to make a mistake.

Rudy is not a man we want for President.

Who is the greater fruitcake - Giuliani or Ron Paul?

Actually, the good Dr. Paul is at least the Fruitcake Rudy Giuliani is.

The difference is that Rudy is an meglomaniacal authoritarian fruitcake with severe narcissism and its accompanying grandiosity.

Dr. Paul is an ultra-Libertarian almost Anarchist fruitcake who has been infected by Ayn Rand, Von Mises and Hayek and with his education consisting of nothing more than physician's trade school, he doesn't have the necessary education to understand the fallacies of those writings (and doesn't want to learn.)

While both are fruitcakes, Giuliani is the much more dangerous one. He is the one with no ability to judge people (as a prosecutor he put away high ranking members of the Mob. As mayor of New York he appointed a mobbed up cop, Bernie Kerek, to the top police position in the city after being warned about him), the man who will tell any lie to get higher office and repeats the same lies even after being caught in the lie, and a man whose tenure as New York Mayor was marked mostly by corruption, incompetence, and ignoring the law and legally prescribed procedures.

In comparison, Dr. Paul is simply a passive fruitcake. His idea of the proper jobs for government are ....... (hear the wind whistling through the leaves as you listen for something to be there?)

Why Pat Robertson is supporting Giuliani for President

Speculation as recent as several months ago was that the Republican Religious Right would not accept Rudy Giuliani as the Republican Presidential nominee because of Rudy's "soft on abortion and gays" beliefs. So why has fundamentalist broadcaster Pat Robertson just endorsed Rudy? David Kurtz at TPM reports what Walter Shapiro at Salon noted during the press conference.

The Washington press conference announcing the Robertson endorsement was carefully constructed to make it all look like an alliance of strict-constructionist legal philosophers. Introducing the televangelist was not the campaign's director of evangelical outreach, or a political figure known for sharing Robertson's literal reading of the Book of Revelation. Instead the task fell to Ted Olson, the former solicitor general in the Bush Justice Department, a leading conservative legal thinker. The message was clear: This melding of minds was about putting more Antonin Scalias on the Supreme Court, not about Giuliani's personal life and beliefs.
[Highlighting mine - editor WTF-o]

Pat Robertson's support of Giuliani has nothing to do with his beliefs and probably nothing to do with Giuliani's perceived capabilities to protect Americans from terrorism. It's about getting more Scalia's onto the Supreme Court.

Robertson's endorsement will chip into the potential Republican Christian Right voters who were going to sit this election out rather than vote for someone who is Mormon or someone is pro-abortion rights and pro-gay. The question will now come down to how unified behind the Republican nominee the Republican Christian Right will be, and how actively they will work for the election of a Republican President who does not fully share their religious beliefs.

I expect that the campaign once the two party nominees have been determined will be one of vilifying the Democrat in order to unify the Republican base and excite them to get out to vote against the threat. The under-the-radar vilification (such as the viral email already making the Republican rounds that alleges that Barak Obama attended a Madrassa and is a secret Muslim - The Republicans have a load of attacks waiting for Hillary) is going to be truly fierce. Since Bush is a failed President, the Republicans have nothing positive to run on, and will take every opportunity to distance themselves from Bush and Cheney.

As I wrote previously, I think this election is going to be between Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani. Pat Robertson's endorsement of Rudy seems to be a recognition of this, and Robertson is now working to get the Republicans to unify behind the potential nominee most likely to win the nomination and with the best chance to win the Presidency. If Rudy were to win the Presidency, Robertson wants him beholden to the Christian Right. The only realistic alternative to Giuliani is Mitt Romney, and Romney's Mormon religion will cause too many Evangelistic Republicans to sit out the election for him to possibly win.

Even if Rudy does not win the election, the fact that the Evangelistic Republicans have been a power, probably representing the largest Republican voting block, in helping him get the nomination will permit them to retain a presence on the national political stage within the Republican Party. It means that potential Republican Presidential nominees in 2012 will be expected to go to the Evangelistic Republicans hat-in-hand to get the nomination, much as John McCain found it necessary to do in his effort to win this nomination.

Robertson's endorsement of Giuliani also represents the Republican Social Conservatives beginning to try to unify behind their preferred Republican nominee. The goal is control of the Supreme Court as the aged Liberal Justices retire after this next election and retention of their power to pick the Republican Party's top leaders.

Giuliani and his mobbed up chief of police, Bernard Kerik

The New York Times, Giuliani's hometown newspaper, has a long story Saturday about Rudy's relationship with "the mobbed-up former jail warden who nearly became the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security."

David Kurtz at Talking Point Memo has a striking quotation from the NY Times article:

Mr. Kerik was a comic book hero come to life, a decorated undercover detective with a ponytail and earrings, thick biceps and a taste for four-letter words as nouns, verbs and adjectives. He cultivated relationships with powerful people, including an influential sheriff who five years earlier had made him the youngest jail warden in the history of Passaic County, N.J.

When Mr. Giuliani ran for mayor in 1993, Mr. Kerik organized his security detail of off-duty officers, reserving the weekend shift for himself.

When Mr. Giuliani became mayor, he gave Mr. Kerik a job in the Correction Department. A year later, the mayor asked him to drop by Gracie Mansion.

The two men sat upstairs and shared a bottle of red wine, a gift to the mayor from Nelson Mandela. Mr. Giuliani said he planned to appoint Mr. Kerik as first deputy correction commissioner.

Mr. Kerik, who wrote of this in his autobiography, “The Lost Son,” was taken aback; he was a year removed from being a police detective.

“Mayor, I appreciate your confidence in me, I really do,” he said. “But I ran a jail. One jail. Rikers is like 10 jails.”

Just do it, the mayor replied.

Mr. Kerik followed Mr. Giuliani downstairs to a dimly lighted room. There waited Mr. Giuliani’s boyhood chum Peter J. Powers, who was first deputy mayor, and other aides. One by one, they pulled Mr. Kerik close and kissed his cheek.

“I wonder if he noticed how much becoming part of his team resembled becoming part of a mafia family,” Mr. Kerik wrote. “I was being made.”

[Highlighting mine - Editor WTF-o]

Kerik was later recommended by Rudy to President Bush as the leader in Iraq for training Iraqi police, where he lasted a very short time with no distinction and no reputation for working at all. Then Bush tried to appoint Kerik as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and the resulting close inspection of his record showed how close Kerik was to the mob in New York.

Rudy has poor judgment in his subordinates. I comment on Norm Podhoretz at Giuliani - Clinton, the Presidential election and beyond, particularly under the heading of "Foreign Policy Rudy."

Giuliani - Clinton, the Presidential election and beyond

My bet bet is that the Republicans will nominate Rudy Giuliani for President. Romney isn't going to get past the 'Mormons aren't Christians' test with the evangelical Republicans. I expect to see more evangelicals move towards Rudy before Spring. Rudy's campaign geared towards the evangelicals will be a fear campaign as the 'counter-Hillary,' fear of the looming threat of 'IslamoFascism' and anger at the way Liberals have 'stabbed the troops in the back' and prevented victory in Iraq. First let's look at Rudy's campaign aimed at the social conservatives, then look at what he offers the economic Republicans.

Rudy and the social conservatives

Rudy will take the social conservative position towards women (Women should not be in charge of men and should defer to their husbands.) which will effectively counteract the charge that Rudy is too liberal on gay rights and abortion. This part will be conducted as a stealth campaign with rumors, viral messages and sermons in mega-Churches. The public campaign will be recycling all the anti-Hillary attacks from Bill Clinton's Presidency, and the usual anti-Liberal smears of demonizing Gays, African-Americans and immigrants and blaming the 'liberals' for permitting such abominations to exist outside ghettos or prisons.

Foreign Policy Rudy

Rudy has already shown what his foreign policy will be by his choice of foreign policy advisers. Chief among them is Norman Podhoretz. He laid out the Giuliani position towards Iran on the News Hour in his angry argument with the right-wing (but sane) Fareed Zakaharia.

Norm's argument, presented with anger and disgust that anyone would even dare to disagree with him, consists of conflating every bandit, partisan, Jihadist and ex-soldier who considers himself a Muslim as members of some fictional entity he calls "IslamoFascism," then equating that non-existent mob with the tightly organized and centrally controlled German armed forces led by Hitler, and calling this fictional entity the greatest threat the West has ever faced.

The rather insane rant presented on the News Hour by Podhoretz is just the first step in appealing to the Republican social conservatives, many of whom are milleniarists who think that the war in the Middle East is a prophetic event that precedes the second coming of Christ. It may also be a realistic reflection of the view held by Israelis of the Muslim threat to their small nation. Keep in mind, Norm Podhoretz is in line to become Rudy Giuliani's National Security Advisor if Rudy wins the Presidency.

The threat of IslamoFascism be being ginned up to conceal the failure of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Along with selling the fear of IslamoFascism and a woman as President (particularly Hillary), Giuliani is also going to run on the "stabbed in the back' theory to explain why the invasion of Iraq (which Podhoretz pushed hard to accomplish) failed. The intent is to focus anger on the 'Anti-War Liberals' who robbed America of its victory in Iraq. A sub theme here is that Iraq failed because Bush was not 'Conservative enough' so Bush is becoming a non-person in the Republican Primary debates.

[Addendum 12:57 PM CDT] Josh Marshall has a very good video on Giuliani's foreign policy advisers. [/Addendum 12:57 PM CDT]

All of this is aimed to get the social conservatives to get out and vote. The economic Republicans are a different group.

Rudy and the economic conservatives

Rudy offers the economic conservatives more union-busting, lower taxes, further removal of regulations, no Sherman Anti-Trust enforcement, and more outsourcing of government jobs into lucrative contracts to favored cronies. Selling toll-roads to private contractors creates overnight multi-millionaires, as does contracting out military logistics to firms like Halliburton and also contracting out prisons and hiring security firms like Blackwater.

Wall Street continues to salivate at the great pots of money that would be handed to them if Social Security were privatized. Universal health care is a similar bonanza if the government can be forced into using the private insurance companies to administer it.

These are all ways for Republican cronies to make a lot of money quickly, especially if there is no effective oversight of the contracts. Government oversight is a threat posed by incoming Democrats, probably a bigger threat than increased taxes on the wealthy.

I'm wrapping the 'Movement Conservatives' into the economic conservative category for right now. I see them as primarily economic conservatives, who cross over into extreme dislike for government interference in Race, Gender and Sexual Preference decisions in business. They are allies with the evangelist Republicans, but most movement conservatives are not, themselves, politically motivated by religious views. They are involved in politics to make money and gain power. I am open to disagreement on this, but I think that's how Rudy's campaign will approach the movement conservatives.

Rudy and the NeoCons

The NeoCons like Podhoretz are also outside the social conservative - economic conservative axis, but they provide the justifications for the wars in the Middle East which appeal to the social conservatives especially. They have been consistently wrong since they were the main force pushing Bush into the invasion of Iraq, but they have suffered no political consequences, as demonstrated by Podhoretz' interview on The News Hour. They have simply shifted to pushing for an attack on Iran. The provide Giuliani with his foreign policy, so he has to keep them.

Authoritarian Rudy

Rudy's campaign already offers a very authoritarian take on governance as demonstrated by his period as mayor of New York. Why is this important?

Authoritarian power of the President and freedom from restrictions on its use will be needed because enforcing the demands of the evangelical Republicans and letting the economic Republicans plunder government will create a major backlash. The institutions of the Unitary Presidency and of an authoritarian government will be required to repress the backlash and maintain 'stability.' Republican leaders and the right-wing think tanks are all fully aware of this. Power is more important than democracy, particularly if democracy acts to remove them from power.

They will use democratic institutions to gain power, but once they have power themselves they will weaken the democratic institutions for anyone else. As an example, that's why Tom DeLay used illegal contributions from corporations laundered through the Republican National Committee to fund the Republican take-over of the Texas House of Representatives in 2002, then had the new Republican leadership call three special sessions of the legislature in order to conduct a mid-decade redistricting the Texas Congressional districts. The result was the five Democratic Congressmen were replaced. Those Republican Congressmen were elected by the action of the Republican Texas Legislature (elected by corporate money rather than by voters), not by the voters of Texas.

Election 2008 and after

Election year 2008 is going to be ugly. If Bush begins to pull troops out of Iraq in early 2008 and is seen to be effectively winding down that war, at the same time ratcheting up fear of Iran, I think there is a possibility - not a big one - of a Republican being elected President. That's not likely. That means that I expect to see Hillary Clinton taking the oath of office in January 2009, but it's not a sure thing. If she wins, though, the campaign will not be over for four more years at least.

The anger and lies demonstrated by the Clinton-haters from 1992 until 2000 and frequently expressed by the Bush regime are going to seem mild compared to what our next Democratic President faces through 2012. The Republican right-wing is not going to accept the finality of the election in 2008. The final vote count is not going to wipe away the fear and anger this upcoming campaign is going to unleash. Conservatives do not accept majority rule if it means they didn't win, and they will continue to attack Hillary (or any other Democrat) by fair means or foul as long as she is in office.

The Democratic candidates for President

I suspect that Hillary is ready for it, at least emotionally and intellectually. It will not surprise her. I seriously doubt that Obama has a real clue, and I know he doesn't have the experience to handle the upcoming social and political storm. That doesn't mean he can't learn on the job, but that was part of Bill Clinton's problem. He had to learn on the job. Obama is competent and ambitious, but too inexperienced to be ready to deal with being a Democratic President with a third of the country out to get him the way they were when Bill Clinton was President. Hillary clearly is sufficiently experienced. I'd prefer Edwards for his positions, but I haven't seen him go after anyone yet, so I don't know how well he can do it.

The next half-decade in American politics

The 2008 Presidential campaign has started a year early. It is taking form now, and I think that it will be Clinton - Giuliani, and if so, the Rudy is probably the nastiest, most authoritarian and most desperate (this is his one shot, and it is a real long shot) candidate for the Presidency in at least a century. The social conservatives are the largest block of the Republican party, and they have felt empowered under Bush, but now feel it being snatched away from them. They, too, are nasty and desperate. The economic conservatives and movement conservatives feel the same way.

One thing that is going to be interesting is the way the incoming President deals with the Press. Until the election, the candidates all need the Press, and FOX in particular is throwing all their weight behind the Republicans. But after the election the Press become dependent on the administration for news. The Republicans have used this dependence to restructure to reporting and opinions from the corporate media. An incoming Democrat cannot simply let the Press do as they wish with no penalties for favoring the other side. I rather hope the incoming administration cuts off access to all opposing reporters while favoring up and coming reporters who will support the Democrats. I'd also cut out any access to Chris Matthews and George Stephanopoulos since they were Democrats who now attack Democrats. The return of the "Fairness Doctrine" and anti-Trust applied to news conglomerates and radio and TV chains would also be very good. All of these things can be manipulated by the current administration, and clearly are being manipulated by the Bush administration. The Democrats would be fools to let the existing anti Democratic Party structures retain all the power given them by the Bush administration.

America has been living in that old Chinese Curse "May you live in interesting times" since at least the time of the Civil Rights Movement. Not only is it not slowing down, the right-wing idiots are out of the woodwork and pulling government levers like never before. (See the TV clip of Norm Podhoretz again if you don't think so.) With the failure of Iraq, they are losing power and they hate it. They are going to pull out all the stops to keep the Presidency or damage the incoming Democrat in every way possible, and Rudy Giuliani is there current best vehicle.

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This is the way things look to me today and most of the trends will not change. The primaries could throw in a surprise, but with the collapse of the Fred Thompson boomlet, that is looking less and less likely. Similarly, a terrorist incident in October 2008 might change the election if it changed the views of independent voters enough. If we are still heavily invested in Iraq, I doubt that the 2008 Presidential election will be that close.

An attack on Iran might change that and possibly shift the 2008 election, but I don't really know which way right now. The Republicans could gain IF the build up to the Iranian attack is effective, but it hasn't had much traction so far. A terrorist event in America that was blamed on Iran might, but anyone who believes the Bush administration needs to have their meds increased.

So while I don't rule out surprises, they are beginning to look less and less likely to me.

Who is going to be the Republican Presidential Nominee?

If I had to guess right now, it would come down to a contest between Giuliani and Romney, both of whom have real problems with the Republican Christian right. Giuliani seems at the moment to be the leading candidate. Keep always in mind that right now we are in the money-polls campaign, though. There has not been a single vote cast in any primary or caucus.

Given that caveat, My best guess is that answer to who the nominee will be revolves around Rudy and the social conservatives. I see three alternatives.

1. Rudy's opponents identify a single competitor they can agree on and nominate in Rudy's place. If that happens it will be a process that 'jells' as the primaries get started. My best bet at the moment for such a candidate is Huckabee. He is especially attractive to all Christian Republican groups, but just doesn't have the fundraising, name recognition, or national organization to bring him to prominence this year in the pre-primary fundraising primaries. He may look different (to the social conservative Republicans as desperation builds and Rudy's nomination looms. Yesterday's hit piece on Huckabee strongly suggest that he is anathema to the economic conservatives, and the story of his release of an Arkansas serial killer who went on to kill again probably makes Huckabee unelectable in the general election. For Huckabee to win the nomination would mean that the Republicans had given up on winning the 2008 Presidential election, but also that the takeover of the Republican Party by the religious right was total.

Assuming that no such contra-Giulianni Christian candidate takes hold in the first quarter of 2008, the second and third alternatives are:

2.that the social conservatives will hold their collective noses and tepidly support Rudy as better than the Mormon Romney, or

3. that the nomination will actually go into a brokered convention in which the hold-outs will still be praying for a miracle and refusing to compromise. Without a strong contra-Giulianni candidate (either Romney or a Christian candidate) a brokered convention would still nominate Rudy, with the argument being that he is the most electable candidate.

I don't think the party professionals will permit a brokered convention, particularly since Rudy will seem unbeatable by then anyway. That leaves alternatives 1 and 2 as most likely. Right now the contra-Giulianni forces are holding out trying to force Rudy to rigidly commit to the social conservative positions before they let him have the nomination, and are still hoping for a miracle in the early primaries.

These are the “before the primary votes” guesstimates. The actual primaries are going to quickly shake out the unknown factors here. Josh Marshall summarizes a New York Times article on how the primaries are likely to stack up.

It seems more than likely that Mitt Romney will win Iowa and New Hampshire. Nothing is for certain; but his leads there are substantial and consistent. But South Carolina is where the white evangelicals -- en masse -- come into play. If Rudy can't win there, the importance of his strong plurality showings on the national level probably fade quickly, both as an indicator and as a reality, since Romney will likely pick up the support of others who throw in the towel. If Rudy can win there it probably means the lifers will trade their principles on abortion for beefed up aggression abroad.

If the evangelicals won't go for Giuliani in South Carolina I think it unlikely they can field a credible Christian candidate of their own, so that makes the evangelical contra-Giuliani candidate extremely unlikely.

So then the question comes to whether the evangelicals will vote for a Mormon or just sit home.

The nature of conservatives in general is to follow the guidance of the leaders. Bob Jones, evangelical founder of Bob Jones University has publicly stated that while he does not consider Mormons to be Christians, he does recommend voting for Romney.

It looks like a lot of things will be made clear by the Republican primary in South Carolina.

Giuliani's authoritarian history

The Republican front runner for the nomination for President is Rudy Giuliani, by a long shot. So what kind of President would he be? Rachel Morris has looked at how he governed New York and reports on the issue.

The short answer is that he refused to follow any law that slows down getting what he personally wanted, and refused to provide accurate reports on how the city functioned. He refused to let the Auditors operate in city hall until forced to by the courts and refused to provide accurate reports on such things as crime statistics even after ordered to by the courts.

In short, Rudy practices all the worst management methods of the Cheney - Bush administration and could be expected to be a great deal worse than the current President.

Is America really ready for King Rudy the First? The Republican Party seems to think so.