President Giuliani 2008? Wake me when it's over! - why do you guys think?

[Akash]

Thanks for that insight Damien. So basically it's all Staten Island's fault. LOL. Staten Island is easily the culture void of New York.

But hey, given how easily New Yorkers were fooled into voting for him again, I'm glad I was too busy playing with legos to follow this.

[Damien]

Lack of viable mayoral candidate from the dems?

I honestly have NO IDEA why he was ever that popular in NY. But then again I was 8 years old when he was first elected. Perhaps a New Yorker who wasn't playing with legos at the time can shed some light? Damien? Anyone?

The primary reason that Evil Creep got to be mayor, after having lost the elestion four years earlier, is that in 1993 there was a Resolution on the ballot calling for the secession of Staten Island from New York Vity. For those of you not familiar with the City, Staten Island is the most conservative and only Republican-leaning borough in New York City.

In essence it's a suburb, and in most parts of Staten Island you can't believe you're actually in New York City. t's basically a suburb. And the people there tend to have a certain, primarily they didn't like payong high taxes for services that they saw going to the poor (or "shiftless") in the other four boroufghs. So even though this secession resolutun was absolutely non-binding and had no effect, it galvanized residents of the borough, who cam out to voye in huge numbers to make a statement. And while they were stating that they hated being a part of New York City, they also took the time to pull the lever for the Republican candidate, Giuliani.

In addition, there had been an incident 2 or 3 years earlier which hurt Mayor David Dinkins among Jewish voters who were a reliably Democratic bloc. In the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights -- which is home to both a sizable black and Jewish community. There was some cult with a revered Rebbe as its head. They had a motorcade, one of the cars in which hit and killed an African-American child.

I don't remember the details but word on the street was that the car didn't stop. A riot ensued, and a rabinical student who wandered into it was knifed to death. Ironically, Mayor Dinkins, who was among the most Israeli-friendly black politicians in the country and who had always had strong alliances iwth the Jewish community was suddenly branded as anti-Semitic, and enough of his support among Jewish voters peeled off to elect Giuliani.

Dinkind was the anti-Giuliani: a conciliatir who tried to bring people togehter, and one of the most decent and just good politicians ever -- I felt privileged from 1990-1994 to have him as my mayor.

In 1997, sadly, most New Yorkers showed themselves to be merely lip-service liberals, and chose coming down on suspected criminals (inluding such perpetrators of evil as Squeege Men) over upholding civil liberties. funding programs for the poor, preserving neighborhoods, providing for the homeless, and Giuliani was re-elected, although he was despised by the African-American community (as well as all my friends, lol). It didn't help that the Democratic candidate, City Council President Ruth Messenger -- who had been something of a firebrand in her career -- essentially rolled over and played dead in the campaign, allowing Giuliani to just cite crime statistics.

But with crime down in his second term, Giuiliani had no real targets on which to unload his fascistic bullying, so he went against art in city-funded museums, pedestrain crossings (a child of the suburbs he always had a preference for those who drove in New York City rather than those who walked), street peddlers. And, with his implicit blessing, police brutality got very intense -- Giuliani always condemning the victim even before the facts were out. Oh, and his ugly personal life -- informing his wife he was leaving her in a press conference.

On September 10, 2001 Giuliani was as hated by New Yorkers
as George Bush is today. Of course since then he has -- for both great financial and political gain -- been exploiting the fact that he only did what his job called for him to do. As Al Sharpton famously said, "After September 11 we would have rallied around Bozo the Clown if he were mayor."

But there's no affection these days for Giuiliani in this town. And it's very unlikely that he would carry New York state, especially as he so transparently tries to imitate a social conservative in trying to woo Republican primary voters.

And these days most New Yorkers seem to think of him not so much as a hero -- especially as ugly tuths about the 9/11 clean-up and reconstruction come into the open -- but as a racist, divisive, inlikable demagogue. In other words, what the perceptive minority knew all along.

[Akash]

Lack of viable mayoral candidate from the dems?

I honestly have NO IDEA why he was ever that popular in NY. But then again I was 8 years old when he was first elected. Perhaps a New Yorker who wasn't playing with legos at the time can shed some light? Damien? Anyone?

[OscarGuy]

OG is right. Despite NYC's puzzling endorsement of him as mayor, New Yorkers will note vote for a Republican presidency in the next election. The Dems could run a monkey on a stick in NY and they'd still win that state.

Lack of viable mayoral candidate from the dems?

[Akash]

OG is right. Despite NYC's puzzling endorsement of him as mayor, New Yorkers will not vote for a Republican presidency in the next election. The Dems could run a monkey on a stick for President and they'd still win NY.

[OscarGuy]

Giuliani takes the Red States and Guiliani takes New York. In terms of Electoral votes, that's a pretty scary match.

There's one problem with that. Even if he's in the race, New York isn't guaranteed to go to him. And if Hillary's in the race, I really think she'll carry the state.

[Sabin]

Giuliani takes the Red States and Guiliani takes New York. In terms of Electoral votes, that's a pretty scary match.

[Damien]

The prick is not gonna have an easy time of it.

The AP:

GIULIANI FACES 9/11 QUESTIONS
By LARRY McSHANE

Rudy Giuliani's White House aspirations are inescapably tied to Sept. 11, 2001 - for better and for worse.

While the former mayor of the nation's largest city was widely lionized for his post-9/11 leadership - "Churchillian" was one adjective, "America's mayor" was Oprah Winfrey's assessment - city firefighters and their families are renewing their attacks on him for his performance before and after the terrorist attack.

"If Rudolph Giuliani was running on anything but 9/11, I would not speak out," said Sally Regenhard, whose firefighter son was among the 343 FDNY members killed in the terrorist attack. "If he ran on cleaning up Times Square, getting rid of squeegee men, lowering crime - that's indisputable.

"But when he runs on 9/11, I want the American people to know he was part of the problem."

Such comments contradict Giuliani's post-Sept. 11 profile as a hero and symbol of the city's resilience - the steadfast leader who calmed the nerves of a rattled nation. But as the presidential campaign intensifies, criticisms of his 2001 performance are resurfacing.

Giuliani, the leader in polls of Republican voters for his party's nomination, has been faulted on two major issues:

_ His administration's failure to provide the World Trade Center's first responders with adequate radios, a long-standing complaint from relatives of the firefighters killed when the twin towers collapsed. The Sept. 11 Commission noted the firefighters at the World Trade Center were using the same ineffective radios employed by the first responders to the 1993 terrorist attack on the trade center.

Regenhard, at a 2004 commission hearing in Manhattan, screamed at Giuliani, "My son was murdered because of your incompetence!" The hearing was a perfect example of the 9/11 duality: Commission members universally praised Giuliani at the same event.

_ A November 2001 decision to step up removal of the massive rubble pile at ground zero. The firefighters were angered when the then-mayor reduced their numbers among the group searching for remains of their lost "brothers," focusing instead on what they derided as a "scoop and dump" approach. Giuliani agreed to increase the number of firefighters at ground zero just days after ordering the cutback.

More than 5 1/2 years later, body parts are still turning up in the trade center site.

"We want America to know what this guy meant to New York City firefighters," said Peter Gorman, head of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association. "In our experiences with this man, he disrespected us in the most horrific way."

The two-term mayor, in his appearance before the Sept. 11 Commission, said the blame for the death and destruction of Sept. 11 belonged solely with the terrorists. "There was not a problem of coordination on Sept. 11," he testified.

Giuliani was also criticized for locating the city's emergency center in 7 World Trade Center, a building that contained thousands of gallons of diesel fuel when it collapsed after the terrorist attack.

The lingering ill will between Giuliani and firefighters was resurrected when the International Association of Fire Fighters initially decided not to invite the former mayor to its March 14 candidates forum in Washington. Other prominent presidential hopefuls, including Republican John McCain and Democrats Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards, addressed the nation's largest firefighters union.

According to the Giuliani camp, the contretemps with the union dates to tough contract negotiations in his second term as mayor. His critics deny any political motivation.

The IAFF drafted a membership letter - it was never sent - that excoriated Giuliani and promised to tell "the real story" about his role in handling the terrorist attack.

The then-mayor's decision to change policy on the ground zero recovery effort was "an offensive and personal attack" on firefighters, the letter said, going on to say that Giuliani's "disrespect ... has not been forgotten or forgiven."

Giuliani countered the attacks by releasing an open letter of support from retired firefighter Lee Ielpi, whose firefighter son was among the 2,749 victims on Sept. 11. "Firefighters have no greater friend and supporter than Rudy Giuliani," Ielpi said.

A contingent of nearly 100 South Carolina firefighters also expressed their support for Giuliani and his White House hopes.

Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran political consultant, predicted the 9/11 criticisms could resonate beyond New York during the presidential campaign.

"These are very emotional people who will touch a responsive chord with a lot of the electorate," he said. "The things that the 9/11 families say will wind up in television commercials used against Rudy Giuliani."

The issues also have forced Giuliani to try to strike a balance to avoid the perception that he's exploiting the attacks for his own personal gain. President Bush faced the same challenge in 2004 when he invoked the attacks to portray himself as a strong and steady leader in the face of terrorism. Some victims' relatives criticized Bush for using the ruins of the World Trade Center in his campaign commercials, while others defended him.

[criddic3]

This is similar to how the Democrats were in 2003-2004, when they (and still are) divided in several areas.

The difference is that the Republican Party will be more willing to band together for the good of the party than Democrats were. Guiliani is at this moment the best candidate the party has to offer.

John McCain is not going to make it. Too many Republicans see him as a compromiser in too many instances (terrific for a senator, not a President), too moderate and perhaps now too old for long-term service in the job. Some are also concerned about his POW experience making certain judgments/pressure too difficult to overcome.

Gingrich was the conservative choice until his recent admissions of an affair during the Clinton impeachment, which is funny for several reasons but mostly because he didn't lie about it under oath (which makes it less of an issue, but voters won't understand that "nuanced" position. most people never got that part in the first place). So while I think he can help the party to focus on issues, I do not think he'll be the candidate. Since he also would not be very interested in being the v.p., he's pretty much out unless a surge of Gingrich support occurs. Besides his plan for a campaign had all the markings of hedging his bets to begin with. September announcement?

Mitt Romney doesn't have the kind of name recognition or clout that would help him thrive in the party as a candidate. He would smack of a compromise vote more than Guiliani would, sort of the equivalent of John Kerry in 2004.

No, Guiliani will be the consensus choice next year. He's strong on defense, moderate on domestic issues (but not so much that it would feel like swallowing a pill for the hard-righters) and he has support from a lot of regular voters around the country.

If he's not the nominee in 2008, Republicans may lose the election.

[Akash]

Just to get this back to the Presidential race - and because I've never grooved shirtless to muscle boys on a dance floor - here's today's NY times article. I know a lot can happen between now and 2008, but a more tepid response to Ghouliani among Republicans than I had anticipated is at least vestigial reason to be grateful. The one thing I've always given the Pubs credit for was their ability to cast such a wide net, trapping voting bocks that had almost nothing in common, and reeling in electoral votes for completely different reasons. How wonderfully ironic then that this wide net may indeed be their undoing as the party seems to be more divided than ever. The marriage of religious fundamentalism and fiscal conservatism couldn't last forever. It was only a matter of time before one of the spouses said, "You're not meeting my emotional needs."

G.O.P. Voters Voice Anxieties on Party’s Fate
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and MEGAN THEE
March 13, 2007

After years of political dominance, Republican voters now view their party as divided and say they are not satisfied with the choice of candidates seeking the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

In a survey that brought to life the party’s anxieties about keeping the White House, Republicans said they were concerned that their party had drifted from the principles of Ronald Reagan, its most popular figure of the past 50 years.

Forty percent of Republicans said they expected Democrats to take control of the White House next year, compared with 46 percent who said they believed a Republican would win. Just 12 percent of Democrats said they thought the opposing party would win the White House.

Even as Republican voters continued to support President Bush and the war in Iraq, including the recent increase in the number of American troops deployed there, they said a candidate who backed Mr. Bush’s war policies would be at a decided disadvantage in 2008. And they suggested that they were open to supporting a candidate who broke with the president on a crucial aspect of his Iraq strategy.

Asked what was more important to them in a nominee, a commitment to stay in Iraq until the United States succeeds or flexibility about when to withdraw, 58 percent of self-identified Republican primary voters said flexibility versus 39 percent who said a commitment to stay. The three leading Republican candidates are strong supporters of the war and the increase in American troops there.

he poll, which was designed to survey more Republicans than it normally would to provide a better statistical look at the mood of the party, found signs that members were uneasy about its future.

“There is going to be so much antiwar in the news media that there is no way the Republicans are going to win,” Randy Miller, 54, a Republican from Kansas, said in a follow-up interview after participating in the poll. “The Democrats will win because of the war. I think the Republicans just won’t vote.”

Compared with the Democrats, Republicans appear far less happy with their choice of candidates for 2008 and are still looking for someone who can improve the party’s prospects, the poll found.

While nearly 6 in 10 Democratic voters in the poll said they were satisfied with the candidates now in the race for their party’s nomination, nearly 6 in 10 Republicans said they wanted more choices. Yet the poll found that a substantial number of Republicans did not know enough about their leading contenders — Senator John McCain of Arizona;Rudolph W. Giuliani, former mayor of New York; and Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts — to offer an opinion of them.

“I think the Republican candidate has not appeared yet,” said Richard Gerrish, 69, a Republican from Green- acres, Fla. “The ones we have now will run out of steam. Someone will come along later that will do better.”

For all that, the poll found that Republican voters remain largely loyal to Mr. Bush and his positions on the issues. Among Republicans, 75 percent approve of his job performance, and by overwhelming numbers they approve of his handling of foreign policy, the war in Iraq and the management of the economy.

Propelled by this Republican support, the poll registered an increase in the percentage of Americans who say they approve of Mr. Bush’s performance; it has increased to 34 percent now from 29 percent last month.

The poll highlights a Republican weakness going into next year’s election. Just 34 percent of all respondents said they had a favorable view of the Republican Party, and that is the lowest it has been since December 1998. By contrast, 47 percent of respondents said they had a positive view of the Democratic Party.

And by a 20-point margin, respondents said that if the election were held today they would vote for an unnamed Democrat for president rather than a Republican. Such questions are hardly predictive of the outcome of an election so far away, but they do offer an insight into the health of the party today.

Even as Republicans said they supported Mr. Bush’s performance, they showed divisions over the party’s ideological makeup; 39 percent of Republican voters said they wanted the next Republican presidential nominee to continue with Mr. Bush’s policies; 19 percent said they wanted the next president to become less conservative, and 39 percent more conservative.

“I think he’s spending too much money,” said Marjorie Bickel, a Republican from Indiana. “The money’s going to have to come from somewhere, and I think they’ll raise the taxes and take the money out of Social Security, which they shouldn’t.”

Republican strategists said they were not surprised about the poll’s findings, though they said Republicans were too pessimistic in concluding now that the party could not win in 2008.

“People should be concerned — we’ve had a tough last year and a half or so,” said Glenn Bolger, a Republican strategist. “But if you go back in time to 1991, the Democrats had a lot of the same concerns, both about the candidates running and their possibility of winning. And it turned out pretty well for them.”

The national telephone poll was conducted Wednesday through Sunday with 1,362 adults, including 698 Republicans. The margin of sampling error for all adults is plus or minus three percentage points and four percentage points for Republicans.

The poll also found an increase in approval of the way Mr. Bush is managing the war in Iraq, to 28 percent from 23 percent, and how he is handling foreign policy. But at a time when the administration has come under fire for the way veterans from Iraq have been treated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, 76 percent of Americans, including 57 percent of Republicans, said the Bush White House had not done all it could to deal with the needs and problems facing returning military personnel.

The poll suggested that opinions were still fluid about three of the leading Republican presidential contenders. Mr. Giuliani is the best known of the candidates, but 41 percent of Republicans said they had not formed an opinion of him; 50 percent said they had a favorable rating of him, compared with 9 percent with an unfavorable view of him.

Fifty percent of Republicans said they did not know enough about Mr. McCain to offer a view on him or were undecided, even though he is running for president for a second time. Of the remainder, 32 percent said they had a favorable view of him, compared with 18 percent who said they had an unfavorable view.

By a margin of 43 percent to 34 percent, Republican primary voters said they would prefer to see Mr. Giuliani win the nomination over Mr. McCain, but those kind of measurements taken this early in a campaign tend to be largely discounted by professional pollsters.

Republican primary voters have a definite idea of what they are looking for in a candidate: They want a presidential contender who will make it more difficult for women to obtainabortions, who opposes same-sex marriage and who will push for more tax cuts, the poll found.

The poll found that Republicans think it might be more difficult winning an election as a Mormon, which Mr. Romney is, than as a candidate who had gone through multiple divorces, a category that includes Mr. Giuliani and Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who is considering a run for president.

Thirty-nine percent of Republican voters thought Americans would not vote for someone with multiple divorces; by contrast, 51 percent of Republican voters thought that Americans would not vote for a Mormon. (Among the general electorate, 42 percent of respondents said Americans would not vote for someone who had been divorced more than once, and 53 percent said most people would not vote for a Mormon.)

Republicans, the poll found, are satisfied, but not enthusiastic, with how Mr. Bush is handing the war in Iraq, taxes and abortion. They said they believed the United States was correct in entering Iraq in the first place, supported the troop escalation pushed by President Bush and believe the war is going well there now.

On an issue that has come to overshadow Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign to win the Democratic nomination, 52 percent of respondents said Mrs. Clinton had not made a mistake in voting to authorize the war in Iraq, compared with 41 percent who said it was a mistake.

But among Democratic voters, 53 percent said she had made a mistake, underscoring the political problems the war has caused her. Mrs. Clinton has refused calls from Democrats to apologize for that vote; just 16 percent of respondents, and 21 percent of Democratic voters, said Mrs. Clinton should acknowledge publicly that the vote was a mistake.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007....ted=all

[flipp525]

Harrumph. How do we know that's you, flipp? Could be any anonymous stud on craigslist!

:;):

Because who else besides a total film geek from UAADB would actually have a shower curtain with a silhouette of Norman Bates dressed up as "mother" wielding a knife from Psycho (see "mother's" arm raised in the background of the pic!?)

It totally freaked out a guy who was taking a shower at my place the other morning. LOL! :laugh:



Edited By flipp525 on 1173802945

[Penelope]

Harrumph. How do we know that's you, flipp? Could be any anonymous stud on craigslist!

:;):

[flipp525]

What's wrong with ripping your shirt off and grooving with some muscle boys on the dance floor? That's what conservatives are afraid of? Me grinding up to some hottie with Justin Timberlake playing in the background at Cobalt? Please.

I dunno. Maybe they should be. I've never seen you without a shirt on. :p

Oh, snap! Well, let me just completely derail this thread then. lol.

Shirtless flipp



Edited By flipp525 on 1173798531

[Greg]

What's wrong with ripping your shirt off and grooving with some muscle boys on the dance floor? That's what conservatives are afraid of? Me grinding up to some hottie with Justin Timberlake playing in the background at Cobalt? Please.

I dunno. Maybe they should be. I've never seen you without a shirt on. :p

[flipp525]

The only problem ultra-conservatives have (and even Democrat-moderates) is when the image is of those stupid images of men clad in paint and makeup mocking religion or prancing around with muscled male dancers at dark clubs.

What's wrong with ripping your shirt off and grooving with some muscle boys on the dance floor? That's what conservatives are afraid of? Me grinding up to some hottie with Justin Timberlake playing in the background at Cobalt? Please.



Edited By flipp525 on 1173504861