Friday’s political round-up

May 11, 2007

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:

* Bush was the featured speaker for the national Republican Party at its annual gala last night, helping the party raise $10.5 million. The AP noted that it was a paltry sum, compared to previous years (Bush raised $17 million last year, $15 million in 2005 and $14 million in 2003. When Bush was seeking re-election to the White House in 2004, the dinner brought in a record $38.5 million).

* As if Rudy Giuliani didn’t have enough trouble right now, ABC News reported last night that the former NYC mayor and his consulting company, Giuliani Partners, have “served as key advisors for the last five years to the pharmaceutical company that pled guilty today to charges it misled doctors and patients about the addiction risks of the powerful narcotic painkiller OxyContin.”

* West Virginia Rep. Shelly Moore Capito (R) has rebuffed NRSC overtures and will not challenge Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D) next year. Rockefeller’s likelihood of winning re-election easily just went up.

* NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg raised a few eyebrows this week when he re-launched the website he used for his mayoral campaigns in 2001 and 2005. “This site will help you learn more about the issues important to me and the causes I’ve supported in business, philanthropy and public life,” it says. Hmm.

* MySpace is organizing a series of “Presidential Town Hall” meetings at college campuses across the country from September through December. Twelve candidates from both parties will participate.

* How fast is the 2008 presidential race moving? The AP reports that the Commission on Presidential Debates is already visiting some of the 19 possible sites for next year’s debates. (We’re still seven months before the Iowa caucuses, right?)

Have the Dems figured out yet that MySpace in owned by the dreaded, right wing News Corp (gasp!)? These Town Hall might quickly turn to one party meetings!

  • Guilani served as key advisors for the last five years to the pharmaceutical company that pled guilty today to charges it misled doctors and patients about the addiction risks of the powerful narcotic painkiller OxyContin.”
    It must be his strategy to win the Limbaugh vote.

  • I always enjoy when JRS, Jr chimes in. Without fail, a smile crosses my face, kind of like watching a comedian that a prat fall.
    Thanks, and keep ’em coming!

  • Re: Rudy’s latest reason to drop out of the race.

    Is anyone suprised that Asa Hutchinson is a BushCo (TM) appointee who graduated from Bob Jones University?

    [crickets chirp]

    Anyone?

  • “As if Rudy Giuliani didn’t have enough trouble right now, ABC News reported last night …”

    Ah, but will it stick? Will it get enough attention that it has any effect at all? I mean, compared to a $400 haircut…

  • Your “Educator-In-Chief”:“I like talking about what we believe in, because I firmly believe the philosophy we believe in is best for America.”

    Isn’t it a violation of the Hatch Act that this political appeal for big dollars is on the governmental resource of whitehouse.gov?

    P.S. I firmly believe in the philosophy that George W. Bush is the worst “president” this country has ever seen or had nightmares about. “Educator-In-Chief,” what an insult to ‘C’ students everywhere.

  • I like the Town Hall Meeting debates idea.

    But please, Bloomberg, please quietly go away…

  • Bloomberg will be uniquely positioned come next Spring to enter the race as an Independent. The 2 party noms will be battered from the primary season — and there will still be seven months left.

    Bloomberg, as an Independent, will be free from having to toe either party’s line. (Gun control is a biggie here.)

    I’m just sayin’.

  • One of two guys will win the Buyer’s Remorse primary–and, very possibly the election. They are Gore and Bloomberg.

    Personally, I’d be thrilled with either. Bloomberg’s candidacy would essentially constitute an invitation to the American people to grow the fuck up: he’s not a guy you’d want to get a beer with (I mean, I would, but I doubt most suburbanites and non-Northeasterners would) or who “shares your values,” if those values are conscribed by Wal-Mart and the local megachurch.

    He’s just a superb manager who knows how to make systems work and has a fundamentally liberal worldview. After the Bush years, can you really think of much better than that?

  • I don’t think Bloomberg is waiting for anything – he’s taking on national issues like gun control and he spoke today, I think, in Texas about a national engery plan. So I think he’s running as openly as anybody else in the race. And frankly, I think that someone who has a 70% approval rating should be heard.

  • Good points, Bea, all of them. It’s his stance on gun control — and the fact that he’s only one willing to take the heat — that gets him my vote.

  • You watch: Bloomberg is going to run right up the gut in ’08, blowing by both the right and left flanks, by campaigning the platform of the mass moderate base desires, the majority segment that has been desperate for a champion of their cause. As mayor, he’s done as good of a job running NYC as his predecessor — without pissing off as many people to boot.

  • I’m always wary of engaging with someone dumb enough to believe in Lieberman’s “integrity,” but…

    Rudy did not “do a good job of running NYC.” He ran a vindictive, corrupt administration and populated it with crooks like Bernie Kerik and Russell Harding and ideological nut jobs like Jason Turner. But he was borne up by the Clinton crime bill (which put thousands more cops on the streets), a booming economy–in which only Manhattan did well, by the way–and the total (and ongoing) ineptitude of the NYC Democratic Party. He gave away billions to corporations in sweetheart retention deals, did nothing to build a human capital infrastructure other than fire a lot of Schools Chancellors, and exacerbated racial tensions.

    Had there been no 9/11, he would have been remembered as the guy who broke up with his wife on TV and wanted to appoint his mistress and divorce lawyer to a committee on public decency to block “obscene art.”

    Bloomberg, in contrast, has been easily the city’s greatest mayor since LaGuardia. I don’t think he’s always right, but I do think he’s always honorable and driven by principle rather than sadism or egomania.

  • Of course Daj, Clinton was the entire cause of NYC’s clean-up in the ’90’s and Rudy had nothing to do with correcting the absolute mess that Dinkins left him. Oh, I guess you were happy with the Dinkins regime in that there were no “racial tentions” then… If somebody got pissed off at someone else in the ’80’s, they just ended up capping them… problem solved, tentions gone!

    Rudy is and will always be remembered as the catalyst that originally cleaned up Manhattan and caused a chain reaction throughout the rest of the city.

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