Hey there, I’m just taking a quick break from reading all about the wonders of the Commerce Clause to say that I am THRILLED that Rudy only came in third in Florida tonight. Anyone who has the ego to assume that they can, for all intents and purposes, skip the first round of primaries and focus on states where they think they have a huge advantage and then assume that by winning in that state they’ll magically be propelled to the nomination is completely, totally, and unequivocally undeserving of the nomination of either party. The fact that this now sets the precedent for all politicians to come that you need to be the President of all the states and not just those that you feel comfortable with gives me joy enough to trudge though the intricacies of fringe benefit exemptions in my tax law class tomorrow.
So, thank you Rudy. Thank you for being such a pompous ass that you doomed your ill conceived and baseless run for the White House because you thought your balls were big enough to make everyone forget that you don’t care about what Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Wyoming, South Carolina, and Michigan care about when it comes to the next President of this country.
Please Rudy, drop out now and stop embarrassing yourself and spitting on those who lost someone on 9/11 by using it as nothing more than a cheap shill tactic. You thought you could swing around a national tragedy as an advertising gimmick and no one is happier than I to see that your hubris blew up in your face.
OK, so I didn’t get it right last time… But that’s water under the bridge. Let’s talk NH.
New Hampshire is a very different state than Iowa with 65% listed as Independents. This means that they can vote in either primary, but not both. The two big candidates with Independents are McCain and Obama which, I think, has a lot to do with why they’re polling ahead of the pack. Why New Hampshire should matter? The fact that Independents have a choice in which party to cast their vote means that it may be a good predictor about which way Independents will vote nationally come November. See, early primaries do matter!! On to business:
Democrats:
1. Obama
2. Clinton
3. Edwards
4. Richardson
5. Kucinich
Its hard not to take Obama in this race. He polls well with Independent voters, he represents change, he looks strong coming out of Iowa, and to be honest the other campaigns just aren’t doing it for me. The Clinton campaign is struggling, slipping now to 29% in the last Reuter’s poll. Edwards also is not doing as well in New Hampshire as he would have liked, remaining in third place in the polling even after narrowly defeating Clinton in Iowa. Obama will take New Hampshire and the Clinton campaign will just have to hope that they can make some serious gains come Super Tuesday as the rest of the early primaries will more than likely go Barack’s way as well.
McCain will take New Hampshire because voters are still convinced, no matter how many times McCain has supported everything Bush has done, that he is an Independent. A “maverick” as FAUX News has called him. McCain took New Hampshire in 2000 and he still has a strong presence there. He has also spent far more time and money in NH than he did in Iowa where he did better than expected. He has also now become somewhat of an underdog in the national race, which I believe will bring people out to vote for him. Romney beats Huckabee here only because New Hampshire doesn’t have the Evangelical vote that Iowa has. Don’t count Huckabee out of the nomination though. Right wing wackos who think the world is only 2000 years old have found their candidate and while Huck’s likely to finish third in NH he will likely rebound quite well in South Carolina.
As for the other candidates I think what happened to Kucinich is simply wrong. Shame on ABC for excluding him from their debate. This is not FOX, this is ABC and the fact that Dennis was left off the list of debaters tells me that ABC is endorsing candidates, not representing good journalistic view points and biasing the election. I, for one, will not be watching any ABC news for a long time.
Paul will be interesting to watch in this race for New Hampshire. This dark horse is likely to run on a Libertarian ticket once he’s out of the Republican race and that will cause some major headaches for Republicans, especially in Western states where much of Paul’s support lies.
Be sure and check back after the New Hampshire results for LCK’s analysis. I know my predictions are a little on the safe side, it might be exciting to be wrong once again.
Tonight will mark the real beginning of the 2008 Presidential race. Finally, we will have something to go off of rather than speculation and polling. That said, I wanted to provide one last bit of speculation from liberalcollegekid.com before the caucus results start coming in.
Before I get into the candidates, however, I think its important that we give Iowa the respect it deserves. While Iowa is seemingly a red state, in 2004 Kerry won 49% of the vote. The state is almost split in half and with all of the unrest and unhappiness in regards to Iraq, Iowa may prove to be a blue state come November. This, of course, flies in the face of Democrats who will claim that Iowa has no business determining who the next President will be. Onto the predictions:
I see this race being very close between Huckabee and Romney, however, I think Huckabee takes Iowa. Huck’s Evangelical message will resonate with the strong Christian vote in Iowa. As Huckabee himself put it, people in Iowa would rather vote for someone they could have worked with than someone who looks like they could have laid them off. Romney also has to struggle with his flip flopping on social issues now that he is running for the Republican nomination. I think McCain is going to be the big surprise in Iowa, however, and even just a strong third place showing will bode well for him leading up to New Hampshire next week. Finally, Ron Paul may prove to be a spoiler. Paul is very popular with rural America, a group that Iowa certainly has a lot of.
The Democratic race may be even closer than the Republicans, because of the caucus system the Democrats use, in which candidates with less than 15% of the vote must choose another candidate. This means that supporters of the second tier candidates may be forced to join up with one of the big three. Voters for Kucinich are likely to go with Obama, Biden and Dodd supporters will likely move to Clinton, and obviously some people will also move to Edwards. It is important to remember that Edwards finished second in Iowa four years ago at 34%. His populist message resonates with Iowans who are hurting under the Bush economy. All that said, I still think Hillary takes this one. She has the older vote with her, and no matter how much I want to believe that young people will come out and caucus, old people are who really vote every election.
This election and next week’s in New Hampshire will likely see the candidates list shrink. Among those likely to bow out quickly are Thompson and Tancredo on the Republican side and Dodd on the Democrat’s side.
Be sure to check back tomorrow for LCK’s reaction to the Iowa caucus results.
Rudy Giuliani is the Republican front runner nationally, but trails Mitt Romney in New Hampshire. Here is his first ad of the campaign which will air in New Hampshire. In the ad he discusses his great success as a mayor in pre- 9/11 New York.
He tells us we are not to expect perfection, which I can understand. In fact, I don’t think there’s a person in this country that has come to expect perfection from any President. Our current President is now the most hated since the advent of the Gallop Poll, and the one before that lost any chance of being regarded as one of our best Presidents because he hooked up with an intern and then lied about it. The notion that Rudy even needs to tell us he’s not perfect seems silly, so I’ll leave it at that.
The rest of his message is hard to argue with. New York really was a crime and drug ridden place when he became the mayor. Those who have read Freakonomics know there are several theories as to why crime dropped off in New York. But for argument’s sake lets just say Rudy led New York out of a dark time. He’s still a lousy candidate.
First of all, and I hate to go there but I must, is the lisp. I’ve said it on this site before, why can’t the President be the brightest and best spoken person this country has to offer? Every time he says “city” I shudder. However, that’s not a fair argument, it is not his fault he doesn’t speak well, and if the Decider has taught us anything, its that speaking well is not a requirement to be President.
Rudy, however, has many flaws as a candidate. First, his experience is in the executive realm of governance, but he was a mayor. Granted the mayor of the largest city in America, but nonetheless he was only a mayor. Now I know there isn’t a list prerequisites somewhere for President, but I would hope that the American people would not want someone who’s claim to fame is being in New York during 9/11. Being New York’s mayor at a time of crises does not make someone qualified for our nation’s highest office.
Then comes Rudy’s baggage. This recent story about Judith Regan won’t help matters much. As the Huffington Post said:
“Judith Regan, the former book publisher, says in a lawsuit filed yesterday protesting her dismissal by the News Corporation, the media conglomerate, that a senior executive there encouraged her to lie to federal investigators about her past affair with Bernard B. Kerik after he had been nominated to become homeland security secretary in late 2004.
The lawsuit asserts that the News Corporation executive wanted to protect the presidential aspirations of Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Kerik’s mentor, who had appointed him New York City police commissioner and had recommended him for the federal post.”
Just another thing in the list of Rudy’s skeletons. Here I thought marrying his cousin was going to do him in, he’s actually picked up the endorsement of Pat Robertson even though he’s been Pro-choice and Pro-gay rights in the past. He’s also supported gun control, something his party hates, and he’s pro-immigration, something the racist side of the Republican party will not tolerate. And yes, I will make the claim that the anti-immigration movement in this country is based on racism.
For a more (read SCARY!!!) conservative take on Giuliani check out this article at Human Events.
All this said one would think the Republicans would make their way to another candidate. Regular readers know my stance that the only real Republican candidate in the race is Ron Paul. The fact that Giuliani keeps hanging around does give me some hope though: if the Republicans are ready for a pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-gun control, pro-immigration candidate there’s no way the Democrats can lose in 08!
Posted on October 30th, 2007 in Rudy by liberalcollegekid
There was a time when people from the East Coast, especially around New York city and the surrounding area thought Giuliani could win the Presidency by drawing votes from the left. His stances on topics like a woman’s right to choose combined with the crime in New York dropping significantly made him extremely popular before 9/11. He then became one of the heroes of the tragedy despite the fact that his negligence cost the lives of many rescue workers in the cleanup effort. Oh, and he spent more time at Yankee Stadium than at ground zero in the months following the attacks. And he didn’t even participate in the 9/11 commission, instead he went around collecting huge pay checks for speaking engagements. Real patriotic there Rudy…
<! Uh, The Democrats love Ahmadinejad… Uh, I’m a terrorism expert!>
All that aside, Rudy has been on top in many of the polls for Republican presidential nominees. My only concern is that since the Presidential season kicked off he has really gone off the deep end:
“This is the world we live in. It’s not this happy, romantic-like world where we’ll negotiate with this one, or we’ll negotiate with that one and there will be no preconditions, and we’ll invite (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad to the White House, we’ll invite Osama (bin Laden) to the White House,” Giuliani said.
“Hillary and Obama are kind of debating whether to invite them to the inauguration or the inaugural ball,” he added.
Sorry, Rudy, but I can’t let this one slide. What is he talking about? Simply because the left doesn’t want to start another war we are now all of the sudden on the side of Ahmadinejad and Bin Laden? Of course, Giuliani’s statements also make Ahmadinejad and Bin Laden sound as though they were on the same side when any reading of Middle Eastern history would tell the reader that these two men are mortal enemies, even more so than their distaste for the US (gasp!).
But back to Obama and Hillary for a moment: both of the Democratic front runners have expressed a willingness to keep troops in Iraq, impose sanctions on Iran, and follow Bin Laden into Pakistan. To be honest, it is these positions that a lot of progressives in this country are unhappy about. But for Giuliani to make this kind of statement is just inexcusable. This is classic scare tactic, black and white thinking that the current Bush regime has let dictate all of their policy decisions, and look where its gotten us. If Giuliani is truly seeking election how can he make such statements that are blatantly inaccurate. Don’t get me wrong, I know he was speaking sarcastically (I hope at least) but so was Ann Coulter when she called Jon Edwards gay and thought it was ok. In fact, she thought she was being funny. Is that what Giuliani thinks? He’s being funny?
The year is not 2004 and the leading Democrats are just as hawkish as the leading Republicans, sadly. Not supporting the war in Iraq any longer is one thing, but Hillary especially has embraced a potential military solution to a problem in Iran that currently doesn’t exist. That’s downright Republican in my book! And for the record, the only party that has close ties with the Bin Laden’s is the Republicans. The Bush family, which Rudy has been such a fan of for so long and who made sure every Bin Laden got out of the country on the only flights in American skies in the days after 9/11, are far more likely to invite a Bin Laden to White House than any of the Democratic nominees.
Rudy’s 9/11 record will come back to hurt him, there’s just no credibility to virtually anything he says. You can read about his testimony regarding his unpreparedness and naivety regarding the attacks here. Giuliani is a fraud touting credentials he doesn’t have and making himself out to be a hero at ground zero instead of a fan at a Yankees game. I hope he’s ashamed of himself, but I’m sure he’s not.
After seeing poll after poll saying Rudy Giuliani leads the Republicans I’ve finally decided to weigh in on the matter here at LCK. As a young child growing up we were taught that the President commanded respect and represented America to the world. We learned that the President is our Chief Executive, Commander in Chief and Head of State and that that person should be held to the highest of standards. I’m not in elementary school anymore, but I don’t think we should throw out all of those lofty goals.
I still want a President who represents me and everyone else, not who represents the 51% of the country who voted for them. I still want a President who truly commands respect, and if it’s not too much to ask I’d like them to be the absolute best person our country can muster. That doesn’t seem like too much to ask for. I don’t want a President I’d like to have a beer with, I want a President who is the smartest, most well-spoken, and most charismatic that we can find. That goes for both sides of the aisle, but there is one person I just can’t help but pick on… Rudy Giuliani.
Clinton messed up, sure, but compared to Giuliani a blow-job in the oval office hardly compares. Rudy married his childhood sweet-heart. Sounds all well and fine, until you read that she was his second cousin! Then there’s the whole dressing in drag thing. The National Review even wrote about it, and they’re a conservative publication!
<The best the Republicans can come up with…
The time has passed when Presidents could be seen as infallable and almost other worldly. We’re living in the information age where there is more access and more media then ever before. Because of this, no President will be able to protect secrets the way they used to. By this I’m talking about how many people didn’t know FDR was in a wheel chair when he was President. Because of this fact, though, do our standards need to change?
Some people argue that we need to change the way we look at politicians. Rather than making the election about who they are, it should be about what they are going to do. Wouldn’t it be refreshing to not hear about people’s families, their lives outside of politics and just talk about where they stand on the issues?
I suppose it’s all just part of our psyche these days when Lindsay Lohan is on the front page of all the celebrity magazines. We are obsessed with celebrity and that’s exactly what national politics have become: a spectacle of celebrity. I’m sick of politics being about elections and not about things that matter. It’s not about getting elected, it’s governance and the sooner the rest of the country reaches that conclusion the better.
If Giuliani truly is the best the right can muster though… 2008 will be a great year to be a Democrat!
<The best the Republicans can come up with…