A first(?) thread on 2008: McCain,Giuliani & the Republicans

dyslexia wrote:

On the other hand, just a few years ago a man was sitting in his living room in Denver Colorado cleaning his handgun (revolver) when the police arrived (having the wrong address) simply broke in his front door. He has the revolver he was cleaning in his hand when they busted down his door and shot him (he had a gun in his hands). Changes are needed but i don't know what they should be.

That sounds like a screwup by the Denver PD.
That does not change the fact that he had a right to own a gun, as does every other lawabiding citizen.

How true. And contrast all this Republican discord with the sweet harmony prevailing among the Democrat candidates. From Clinton to Obama, Edwards, Dodd, Richardson, and the rest we see only reasoned discourse, courtesy, and wise restraint.

Nimh in particular is increasingly giving voice to sweeping generalities

blatham wrote:

That is interesting, nimh. We can see, in this thread of comments, something quite similar to what we see looking at the more high profile goings-on...the center isn't holding and folks are flying off hither and thither.

This reminds me of a conversation almost four years ago, in a thread "Is Bush Invincible?"

[url=http://www.able2know.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=546055#546055]On February2, 2004[/url], I wrote:

I believe that the Republican party is currently experiencing the political equivalent of a stock market bubble. Unlike the Democrats, Republicans lay their internal differences aside and stand behind their leaders because they're winning. And their leaders are winning because people at the base stand behind them and lay their internal differences aside. This is nice for Bush while the bubble keeps inflating, but it also means that any random glitch can pop the bubble, at which time he will face a most unpleasant awakening.

I don't know when this awakening will come, but I hope it will come before November 2004. It would be good both for America and the Republican party.

Four long years after I wanted it to, the Republican bubble is finally disinflating.

You may not have noticed in your haste to reach that typical mix of condescension and stern disapproval, but I actually praised the discussion on that conservative blog for being exactly that: fierce but respectful.

Meanwhile, the contest between Hillary, Obama and Edwards is indeed at least as fierce as that between the Republicans, but what appears to be missing is the kind of significant ideological divides that tear at the Republican party right now. I prefer Edwards over Obama because he is more assertive, but programatically they are, in the end, both just progressive Democrats, just the one is more cautious in approach than the other. Even with Hillary it's not all that different; most of the objections about her are of purely personal nature, focusing on her style or her strategies or her scruples. Programatically she is obviously to the right of the other two, but not by any huge stretch anymore; take health care for example, where her plan outflanks Obama's to the left.

In that sense, the Republican race is actually more interesting, because the divergences of views there appear to be far more substantive, and there is more meat (and risks!) involved in the clash between different currents.

georgeob1 wrote:

Nimh in particular is increasingly giving voice to sweeping generalities

Projection, I think. This is not even a question of pot and kettle anymore; while I at least try to illustrate the arguments I make with data, citations and examples, your wizened grumblings about Democrats and Republicans nowadays tend to be limited to exclusively sweeping generalities. To repeat the joke I made on the other page, it should be possible to write a program that assembles certain sentences, phrases and keywords in a creatively random way to produce boilerplate georgeob1 posts. So come on, George, less boilerplate more input! :wink:

Why the hell didn't you write it 8 years ago?!

He points out that had Gore or Kerry won previously, the revelations of how extreme the conservative movement has become would have been obscured and delayed.

Rudy Giuliani adds war/disaster profiteer Joe Allbaugh to campaign staff
The former head of FEMA who gave America "Brownie" and helped disembody the agency will be senior advisor on homeland security issues
On October 30, Joseph Allbaugh was named Senior Advisor to Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign. According to a Giuliani campaign press release, Allbaugh "will advise the campaign on general strategy and homeland security."

"Rudy Giuliani is the only candidate who will keep America on offense in the Terrorists' War on Us," the press release quoted Allbaugh as saying. "The leadership he showed after 9/11 was an inspiration not only to New Yorkers but to the country. He knows what it takes to keep America safe, and as President, he will ensure that our country never goes back on defense in this war."

Giuliani said that the two of them had "worked closely together in the aftermath of 9/11 to ensure that everything possible was being done to help victims and their families. He has significant experience in emergency management and I will look to him for sound advice and expertise."

The Politico reported that "The endorsement is valuable ... because it gives the former New York mayor additional entrée to the Bush-Cheney organization. Allbaugh was one-third of the 'Iron Triangle' of Allbaugh, Karl Rove and Karen Hughes, the powers-that-be in the president's original Austin-based presidential campaign."

Both Giuliani and Allbaugh are disaster profiteers.

... or maybe Republicans would have learned that their Karl Rove wing doesn't win elections, and nominated someone in the Eisenhower/Ford/Bush I/ Bob Dole tradition?

It's Thanksgiving day here. House is full of sons, daughters, spouses and progeny (I think the gene pool is safe). A good day and I can't muster any ill thoughts towards anyone - not even my friends Nimh & Blatham.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

Déjà vu all over again: 1992 revisited

Gallup Guru
November 19, 2007

There are continuing - and accelerating -- signs of perceived distress from the American public.

The percentage of Americans who are satisfied with the way things are going in the U.S. is now as low as it has been since the summer of 1992. The percentage of Americans who say the economy is getting worse is the highest Gallup has measured since it started using the current measure - back in 1991. The president's job approval is at 32%, which prior to the current president's ratings this year and last year is the lowest since 1992. Approval of the job Congress (i.e., the people's elected representatives) is doing is at 20%, and prior to this year we have to go back to 1992 to find a time when it has been this low. [..]

For those of use who study such things, there's also a shift evident in the data by which the economy is gradually rising to the point where it is eclipsing Iraq as the population's most important concern. This is probably due to two factors. One, the news from Iraq is better. Two, worries about the economy are beginning to drown out concerns about Iraq. But whatever the cause, this too is beginning to look a lot more like the 1992 environment.

Things were perceived by the average American as so terrible in 1992 that the way was opened for a maverick Texas billionaire to jump into (and then out of and then back into) the presidential race, and ultimately to claim 19% of the popular vote.

And, of course, the way was opened for an obscure Arkansas governor to position himself as the hero of the people, both feeling their pain on the economy while shrewdly providing sharp contrast to the incumbent president (born with a "silver spoon in his mouth") who appeared relatively out of touch with what was happened to the nation's common men and women.

We have no incumbent this year. So the presidential race will not just be a matter of attempting to repudiate President Bush. That leaves open the increasingly relevant question: which candidate can best position him or herself on the economy?

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is sitting in the wings. [..] We also have a Democratic front runner equipped with a high level advisor who has significant memory of what worked well in the 1992 victorious campaign (i.e., Bill). [..]

On the Republican side, an economic shift in the focus of the presidential campaign would not immediately seem to benefit Rudy Giuliani or John McCain, both of whom are positioned more strongly on terrorism and foreign policy than on domestic issues. Fred Thompson: ??? Mitt Romney, like Bloomberg, hails from the world of business which in theory could provide him with a significant benefit.

Prior to 1992, observers assumed that George H.W. Bush would sail to re-election based on his victorious execution of the first Persian Gulf War. Prior to this year, observers have assumed that the Iraq war and foreign policy could be the central issues of next year's campaign. Those predictions did not come true in 1992, and they might not next year either.

Some House Backers of Thompson Are Starting to Lose the Faith

The New York Times has an article that takes a look at the continuing declines in New York City's murder rate over the past few years. I think understanding this is, among other things, an important part of how we understand Rudy Giuliani's legacy. Before 9/11, of course, his signature accomplishment was his association with the massive crime drop the city experienced during the 1990s, a tumbling in the murder rate that was paralleled in most other major American cities, but that happened to a much greater extent in New York than elsewhere.

Giuliani and his supporters would tend to argue that certain apparent black marks on his administration's record -- Amadou Diallo, Patrick Dorismond, Rudy's generally horrible relationship with the African-American community -- were all just part of the price you had to pay for his super-effective anti-crime measures. But then Bloomberg came into office, kept much of the same policy framework in place, but went out of his way to try to be a bridge-builder who got along with all sorts of people. And the poof is in the pudding -- this works just fine. Nothing about sound crime control policy required Giuliani to be acting like a jerk or a madman, he just did that stuff because that's who he is.

The fact is that Guilani very likely had a major role in starting the nationwide trend towards neighborhood policing and tough enforcement for minor public crimes as a way to alter public expectations and - as it turned out - behavior. There is more of a case for the proposition that he started the nationwide trend than merely benefitting from it.

Rudy: Yes, I Voted For McGovern, But I Actually Preferred Nixon
By Greg Sargent - November 23, 2007, 9:25AM
As he seeks to court GOP primary voters, one potential sticking point has been his opposition to the Vietnam War in the early 1970s and his vote for Dem George McGovern in 1972. But Rudy has now concocted a new explanation for that vote: He didn't mean it.

Or so he says in a new interview with The Weekly Standard [ed blatham notes: or, as is more properly known, the perennial money-losing murdoch paper which has no other function than, being a capitalist enterprise, to make money...nothing to see here folks, keep on moving]:

"I had traditionally been a Democrat," Giuliani told me in a recent interview in Las Vegas. "It was almost like a reflex mode. I actually remember saying to myself, 'If I was a person really deciding who should be president right now, I'd probably vote for Nixon, because I think the country would be safer with Nixon.'"
Hmmm. Does this mean that Rudy didn't vote for the candidate who he himself thought would keep the country safer? Seems a bit odd. Foreign policy and national security issues were kind of front and center during that campaign.

The article also delves into Rudy's switch to the GOP, which came in 1980. In the piece Rudy seems to suggest that this was driven partly by his discontent with Dems on foreign policy. But as the Standard article accurately points out, Rudy's switch to the GOP neatly coincided with his desire to get a political appointment from the newly-minted Reagan administration.

Mike Huckabee, the Republican presidential candidate and former Southern Baptist minister, is getting help from Tim LaHaye, the Christian conservative organizer and co-author of the apocalyptic "Left Behind" novels.

"America and our Judeo-Christian heritage are under attack by a force that is more destructive than any America has faced" since Hitler, Dr. LaHaye and his wife, Beverly, wrote in letters sent to lists of conservative Christians in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. "Defeating the radical jihadists will require renewed resolve and spiritual rearmament by the evangelical pastors in America."[..]

Giuliani, Romney shade their records on immigration
By David Lightman | McClatchy Newspapers
Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney share a big problem as barnstorm across American trying to act like tough guys on immigration: their past. Each ran a jurisdiction that's arguably among the nation's most tolerant, where cracking down on illegal immigrants wasn't good politics.

Giuliani's California Schemin' Money Man
By Paul Kiel - November 23, 2007, 4:33PM
Who is Paul Singer? He and Rudy Giuliani would prefer you not think too much about it.

Singer, who founded the multibillion dollar hedge fund Elliott Associates, has raised $200,000 for Giuliani. He flies Giuliani around in his jet.

And, as of September, his $175,000 contribution was the sole backing for the Republican scheme to split up California's electoral votes. Instead of all the electoral votes in the country's most populous state going to the state's winner (almost surely the Democrat), the ballot initiative would throw the loser (the Republican) his percentage, potentially swinging the election.