We won’t have Giuliani to kick around much longer

January 24, 2008

Headline I wish I’d come up with, from the NYT’s Timothy Egan: “Goodbye Rudy, Tuesday.”

For 50 days, Giuliani has had the Sunshine State nearly to himself. In advance of the presidential primary on Jan. 29, he’s sucked up to the Cuban vote in Miami, pandered in Cape Canaveral about the space program, tried to scare retirees over early-bird specials in South Florida.

There he is riding in a fire truck in a Miami parade, trailed by angry firefighters who blame him for multiple failures when New York was attacked. There he is in the Panhandle, the consummate Yankees fan trying to look down-home on the Redneck Riviera. And every night, his campaign phone bank reaches out to the diaspora of 1.5 million transplanted New Yorkers. Start spreading the news – quick!

Yet, the more they see of him here, the more his poll numbers tank.

Hmm, where have I seen that trend before? Oh right, everywhere.

We know from a certain New Hampshire contest that pre-primary polls aren’t always reliable, but all available evidence suggests Giuliani, who came up with a post-hoc Florida rationale for failing badly everywhere else, is tanking in his designated “firewall” state.

But if the former mayor isn’t going to win in Florida, who is?

There are a few new polls to consider:

* St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald: McCain 25%, Romney 23%, Giuliani 15%, Huckabee 15%

* Public Policy Polling (D): Romney 28%, McCain 25%, Giuliani 19%, Huckabee 15%.

* InsiderAdvantage (R): Romney 24%, Giuliani 19%, McCain 18%, Huckabee 12%.

One Florida pollster said, “Giuliani for all intents and purposes has virtually no chance to win in Florida.”

How bad is it? I saw some analyses yesterday that Giuliani was missing valuable opportunities by not attacking his rivals in Florida nearly enough. Apparently, though, that’s intentional — Giuliani may expect to lose, and figures staying positive now may help his post-candidate business career.

Rudy Giuliani isn’t pulling the plug on his flagging presidential campaign, but he is pulling his punches — a strategy that may help ensure he has a life to go back to if he has to bow out of the race.

With six days left before Florida’s primary — and a new poll Wednesday showing Giuliani sinking into a distant third place here — the tough-talking ex-mayor would seem to have good reason to mount a no-holds-barred offensive to tear down his opponents.

But as Giuliani stumps across the state on which he pins his White House hopes, he is barely mentioning his rivals by name, and then only when goaded by reporters. And rather than attacking, he has limited himself to making gentle distinctions. […]

Giuliani also has more to lose than an election. Both his consulting business, Giuliani Partners, and his law firm, Bracewell & Giuliani, depend in large part on his image as a capable executive who reminds Americans about what is best about the nation’s democracy, not the worst.

The same holds true for his marketability as a paid lecturer on the topic of leadership — a sideline that for years earned Giuliani up to $100,000 for each hour-long speech. Besides, it would be bad for business to make a lasting enemy of a GOP rival who could become President.

Obviously, strange things happen, and I’m reluctant to label any candidate “toast” prematurely, but I’m feeling quite a bit of relief lately over Giuliani’s collapse. All of the Republican presidential candidates, to varying degrees, strike me as awful, but a Giuliani presidency would have been a nightmare.

“Goodbye Rudy, Tuesday”…yep, a great headline, and probably correct…for a change. 😉

  • 100K for leadership speeches? That’s like as sensible as paying Lynn Spears to write a book on raising good Xtian kids.

    About the only leadership principles that Rudi clearly shows are:
    1) How to win friends and followers by stabbing them constantly in the back
    2) Shit floats to the top
    3) Pride/arrogance/stupidity goeth before the fall
    4) That there is a difference between reality and perception. “I’m not even close to being a leader, but I played one on TV. Vote for me 9udi 9iu11ani” doesn’t always work.

  • But, kicking him is so satisfying, lol…

    As I was driving in to work this morning, I was listening to POTUS 08 – and there was a story on Rudy and his slipping poll numbers. Then, a clip was played of Rudy at a rally in Florida, and after I heard it, I thought, “no wonder – the more people see of him, the less they like him.” I think it’s just proving that the myth of Giuliani was just that – a myth – and all his campaigning is doing is making sure people understand just how big a myth he is.

    Nothing he does seems to work.

    He tried campaigning on getting rid of the IRS, and even though no one likes the IRS, that failed. Maybe because no one with any sense knows it would ever happen.

    He’s still beating the 9/11 drum – and that ‘s not working either. He’s tried being for torture. Nope, no sale. He’s tried being for more war – sorry, Rudy – wrong answer.

    And his real ace-in-the-hole – Hillary-hate: going nowhere. I mean, if Hillary-hate doesn’t work, and 9/11 doesn’t work – what’s going on?

    I’ve decided that it’s pretty simple: it only works when people like you. When people hate you more than they hate Hillary Clinton, you’re in deep, deep doo-doo.

    All things considered, I couldn’t think of a better environment for Rudy.

  • Rudy was only marginally acceptable to the Republican base to begin with. When concern among the electorate shifted from the Islamofacist under the bed to the wolf at the door Rudy’s one-note campaign began to seem almost antique. Rudy’s addition of “I rebuilt New York’s economy after 9/11,” just served to emphasize the fact that although events have moved on since September, 2001, Rudy has not.

    He’s beginning to look like Al Bundy on the old Married with Children, forever reliving his one day of glory as a high school football player.

  • Rudy is playing nice now so he can angle for a cabinet position later. You want scary? How about President McCain with the AG Rudy by his side? And you thought Ashcroft was a freak…

  • We know from a certain New Hampshire contest that pre-primary polls aren’t always reliable, but…

    It’s such a hard habit to break. Get off my back, poll monkey!

  • I started noticing before Iowa and New Hampshire that Rudy’s poll numbers were best in places where he hadn’t campaigned, or at least where people weren’t yet paying any attention to presidential candidates. His campaigning seems to have had a negative effect on his numbers everywhere he went. He might have been better off if he had taken the Fred Thompson approach to campaigning – just don’t do it.

    But there was probably nothing wrong with the campaign. It was the product – like trying to sell dog food that the dogs won’t eat.

    I share your relief that we’re about to see the end of Rudy for President. Of all the Republican candidates, he is the scariest.

  • So then the question becomes – when Rudy drops out, where does that 10-15% GOP contituency he has go? Do they help out Mitt? Do they help McCain? Do they move to Huckabee? Do they take their ball, go home and not support any of the other candidates?[*]

    Because, unlike Duncan Hunter, Rudy actually has enough of a following that his supporters could seriously help any of the three left standing move out and become the frontrunner. Except that I haven’t seen any indication of what Rudy’s supporters think is important. If they’re just looking for a jackboot to lick none of the remaining candidates seem to have the required footwear. If they’re seriously worried about national security they wouldn’t be supporting Rudy anyway. If it’s all cult of personality 9/11 stuff then it could be completely random where they move.

    [*] I leave Ron Paul out of the list of people that Rudy’s dropping out could help because, frankly, the idea that someone could be a Giulianni supporter and flip to being a Paul supporter hurts my brain too much to contemplate. I guess it could happen, but ouch.

  • I’m waiting for the old Nixon paraphrase: “You won’t have Rudi to kick around any more.”

    This guy has set a record for first-to-worst. He crashed faster than the Hindenburg, burned hotter than Chicago after some cow kicked over a lantern, and self-extinguished quicker than a cigarette-butt tossed into a toilet bowl. I suppose he might even write a book one day.
    “Embarrassing Failure for Dummies” would be an apt title….

  • I sympathize with MSNBC/Fox – first they lose the husky, aqua velva Fred Thompson… then they lose their man-lover Guiliani… who will they direct their gay idol worship towards next? Who can fill that void?? Whooooo?????

    OK, I’m getting some clues now – just watch the “Joe Scarborough and ex-GE CEO Jack Welch’s Mitt Romney love-fest happy hour of 1/24/08″…

  • “Both his consulting business, Giuliani Partners, and his law firm, Bracewell & Giuliani, depend in large part on his image as a capable executive who reminds Americans about what is best about the nation’s democracy, not the worst.”

    How is constantly telling Americans that if we’re not scared to death of brown people we should be “reminding Americans what is best about the nation’s democracy?” Giuliani has been campaigning on the fact that we should all hide behind his skirt like little kids or we won’t be safe. Maybe the land of the brave and the home of the free actually wants to be both for a change.

  • Rudy Giuliani isn’t pulling the plug on his flagging presidential campaign, but he is pulling his punches

    But I thought that even when History hesitated, Rudy never did.

    a Giuliani presidency would have been a nightmare.

    I wouldn’t have stuck around to see. A country capable of electing that schmuck isn’t one I want my kids growing up in.

  • Since I’ve always maintained that Rudy was running for president in order to have access to the Federal Treasury, it makes sense that he is trying to keep his business options clean. He dropped out of the 9/11 commission to make money and 9/11 is his sole claim to fame.

    One can only hope that potential clients will see what a gas bag he is and seek help elsewhere.

  • We won’t have Giuliani to kick around much longer

    Third party!!!! I just can’t quit Rudy. He’s too much fun to kick around.

  • NonyNony: “So then the question becomes – when Rudy drops out, where does that 10-15% GOP contituency he has go?”

    Does he really have a 10-15% constituency anywhere other than Florida and New York at this point? He keeps finishing 6th in a 6-man field, so I would guess no.

  • Shalimar, I think he does have a constituency in New York and New Jersey. They will probably go to McCain. My guess is that, when Rudy drops out, he’ll endorse McCain. They were competing for the security/hawk vote anyway (unlike Romney the money guy, and Huckabee the Jeebus guy). Bush coalesced the GOP in 2000 because he embodied all three branches of their unholy alliance– defense, money, and Bible-thumpin’. Now, they’ve got candidates who embody a single branch, but no one who represents all three. And that is our greatest strength against them this year (as long as we don’t shoot ourselves in the foot by nominating the great turnout motivator of the GOP, Hillary Clinton).

  • shadou:

    Since you asked – Yes, scarier than Huck. If Huck became president, a majority of Americans would never approve of his Christianist policies and would fight him every step of the way. It’s impossible to unite Christian people on specifics. That’s why there are so many denominations. (And I live in the bible belt, so they don’t scare me so much. I guess I’m used to them.)

    Giuliani, on the other hand, was described as (where did I see this?) “a little man in search of a balcony.” We libs throw the word “fascist” around a lot, but I think Rudy has all the qualities of a fascist leader. I’m more afraid of America becoming a true fascist state than a theocracy. We’ve already come pretty far in the last seven years.

  • Il Douche is far scarier than Huckabee. For all his weird and repellent views, Huckabee doesn’t strike me as a power-crazed egomaniac who gets his greatest pleasure from destroying people he views as opponents.

    And there’s more. If Huckabee was sued literally dozens of times during his governorship for violating constituents’ First Amendment rights, I missed it. If he surrounded himself with child porn freaks, actual pedophiles, and Bernie Kerik, I missed that. If he refused to meet with non-white leaders on “principle,” I missed that too.

    There are only three people in public life I feel confident in describing as actually evil. Tom DeLay is one. Citizen Dick Cheney is two. Il Douche is number three.

  • Okie, BOTH states, fascist and theocratic, are a worry. But when you cut to the chase, I don’t see a hell of a lot of difference. Hester Prymm probably didn’t either.

    Neither is a deocracy, not that we have one anyway. But I’d rather make do with the semblance we have than to suffer an outright dictatorship of either church or corporation. The 20% of us who seem to be hell bent for religious rule will take every bt of freedom that Halliburton will. Where’s the difference?

  • You gotta hand it to Rudy and the MSM, though. They managed to build up a widely-accepted narrative that Rudy was the hero of 9/11. Whaaa? Just because he didn’t curl up in a fetal position on the sidewalk? (He had to be out on the sidewalk, of course, because he’d put his crisis center in the wrong place.) Because he put his arm around some firemen’s shoulders (the ones left after their buddies died because he’d fucked up their radio situation)? When someone so unlikeable who screwed up in so many ways can be spun into a hero based on little more than the fact that he happened to be mayor on that fateful day is an absolute feat of PR that will earn him a place in the Hall of Fame of Unbelievable Spin. THAT is his greatest accomplishment. Good riddance, Rudy. I wish we’d never known ye.

  • All the extreme lefties are out to get Rudy because he is obvious the only capable candidate in this race. Floridian will notice that also. Rudy’s got this familys votes here in california. Viva Rudy!

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