Ruminations on the Nomination

Okay, here's the results of my ruminating so far. I reserve the right to change my mind at a later time... say, any time more than 30 seconds after posting this.

Fred has to bring his "A" game to South Carolina. Fortunately, South Carolina's culture is a lot more similar to Tennessee's than Iowa's or New Hampshire's, so if Fred is going to shine anywhere, it will be in SC. I am cautiously optimistic that Fred will do well there, especially if he and others start really pointing out Huckabee's dismal record on taxes and other issues.

Giuliani also has to bring his "A" game, but to Florida, not SC. That's the first state where Rudy has a halfway decent chance of winning, IMHO. Fred could do well there, but so could Romney or McCain... Huckabee probably wouldn't sell well in Florida.

Others have suggested this and been pooh-poohed, but if Fred takes SC and Rudy wins Florida, a brokered convention is a real possibility. Note that there's a lot of ifs in that statement, but the chances are better than in any election since I've been watching elections.

I think a brokered convention could be a good thing. With the popularity of "reality" TV, a brokered convention might just draw more eyes to the TV than a convention usually gets, and give the GOP a real opportunity to explain who they are and what they stand for. Of course, if the GOP screws it up, they could end up turning off a lot of prospective voters, so it would have to be handled with care... and rule number one should be to remember that the media (with the possible exception of Fox News) is not their friend.

Well, that's my take on it. Your mileage may vary, past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results, coffee is hot, and all the rest of the usual disclaimers apply.

Giuliani's Crime Record

Giuliani's latest TV ad is drawing criticism from the good--and truly non-partisan--folks at FactCheck.org:

Rudy Giuliani's latest TV ad falsely claims New York City experienced "record crime ... until Rudy." In fact, the city recorded its highest rates of both violent crime and property crime years before he took office. The downward trend was well established before he was sworn in.

The ad also claims New York is "America's most liberal city," but his campaign offers no evidence showing that the city is more liberal than, say, San Francisco; Berkeley; Washington, D.C.; or Detroit, all of which rank as more liberal in a study of voting behavior in the 2004 elections. In that study, New York ranked 21st among cities with populations of more than 100,000.

Giuliani's ad also repeats some boasts we've found to be misleading in the past. It claims he cut taxes by $9 billion but counts several tax cuts that he didn't initiate or sign, and one that he lobbied against before changing course. It also boasts that he cut welfare rolls by 60 percent but fails to note that the reduction in New York was a bit less than it was for the nation as a whole.

Read the whole thing (link in the title of this post). And while you're at it, check some of their other articles... you'll see that they skewer distortions by both Democrats and Republicans... now that's what I call fair.

Push-Polling-Gate: UPDATED

Much ado is now being made about the push-polling against the Romney campaign--which specifically targeted his Latter-Day-Saint religion. There are several theories floating around out there, including (but not limited to):

1. Romney's campaign did it to themselves, to get the issue out of the way. Evidence for this is supplied in the facts that the firm making the phone calls, Western Wats, has done work for Romney in the past, and another firm, Target Point, which appears to be involved has also been hired in times past by Romney. Also in the mix, Western Wats has several employees who have made contributions to the Romney 2008 campaign.
2. Giuliani's campaign is behind it. Seems that a polling company used by Giuliani, the Tarrance Group, also has connections to Western Wats.

Personally, I find it hard to believe either of the above, though the accusations have been splashed all over the web... I found the following breathless section on National Review Online:

According to Whocallsme.com, on August 16 — almost exactly three months before the anti-Romney calls were made in Iowa and New Hampshire, a user named Bruce reported:

Call from Amanda at Target Point Consulting
www.targetpointconsulting.com
66 Canal Center Plaza No. 555
Alexandria, VA 22314
(703) 535-8505
fax: (703) 535-8517
info@targetpointconsulting.com
Caller ID: (801) 623-4621 [Emphasis Added]
Caller: Target Point Consulting

A Western Wats-Target Point connection sets off alarm bells since the Romney campaign has paid Target Point consulting $720,000.

Target Point’s president, Alex Gage, is a pioneer in the direct-marketing data-mining technique known as microtargeting. The Bush campaign spent nearly $3 million on Gage and Target Point’s services in the 2004 election. In the 2008 election cycle, Gage has been working closely with Romney. The Washington Post headlined an article about Gage “Romney’s Data Cruncher” and has elsewhere identified Gage as part of “Mitt Romney’s Inner Circle.”

Adding to the intrigue, Western Wats employs a dialer named Amanda Earnshaw who, according to election records, has made the maximum allowable donation of $2,300 to Romney’s campaign. Further, Federal Election Commission records reveal that Amanda’s husband Seth Hutchings, her father Craig Earnshaw, mother Colleen, and brother Berton have all maxed out donations to the Romney campaign. Craig Earnshaw is active in Romney’s campaign, serving as Utah’s co-chair for the state’s “Rally for Romney” fundraiser on September 28, 2007.

My Lord, we've got her! It's this "Amanda" who is behind it all... she works for Western Wats, and she also gave to the Romney campaign! And it's such an uncommon name that it just has to be the same person!

(disclaimer for those with their undergarments permanently in a twist: the above paragraph is sarcasm and satire.)

Puh-LEEZE! This is the sort of nonsense I, at least, expect from DailyKos, MoveOn, or Democratic Underground, not from National Review. A first name as common as Amanda simply cannot logically be used to prove anything.

As for the Giuliani accusation, that's just as ludicrous. Guilt by association has long since been revealed as invalid.

No, for my money, I go with what Jim Geraghty--also, let it be noted, working for National Review--has said:

The more I hear angry accusations from campaigns, and the more bad blood that is stirred, and the accusations that some campaigns employ bigoted arguments against a candidate, I start wondering... isn't this what some deep-pocketed Democrat would want to see in the GOP primary?

Indeed, as a conjecture this one has good legs under it. If a Democrat wanted to do this and reduce the risk of it being traced back to them--and unlike some of my fellow conservatives, I do admit that there are some pretty smart Democrats--they'd naturally use a company with lots of ties to Republicans, and if they can use one with direct ties to Romney, so much the better.

In short, this whole thing has "Politics of Personal Destruction" written large all over it. Whether it is Mrs. Clinton or one of the Democrats who learned the art from the eight years of Clinton ascendancy has yet to be determined, but it seems to be accomplishing exactly what the Party of the Donkey would want to see right now.

Let me also point out that I am neither a Romney nor Giuliani supporter... just take a gander at the sidebar to see which candidate I support. However, it is clear, from the points above, that if some hyper-partisan wants to make of this a case against Mitt or Rudy, they're gonna have to do a lot better than they have so far.

UPDATE: Well, not so much an update as an explanation of a point and the introduction of a new point that occurred to me after posting this last night.

First off, the "Amanda" thing. Mr. Mark Hemingway, the NRO columnist whose breathless article I excerpted above, seems to be conflating two Amandas. There is the one that works for Western Wats, who donated to Romney, and apparently another one that works at TargetPoint, and called "Bruce" from a Utah number. There is, at least so far, absolutely no evidence that they are the same person. Amanda is far too common a name for there to be any sort of assumed link... now, if the person was named Zaphod Beeblebrox, it could be assumed that they were the same person, but Amanda? It fails the laugh test.

Second, the assumption that Mitt or Rudy had something to do with this also fails the laugh test. In order to believe that, one would have to believe that the campaign--whichever one you fancy as the culprit--had staffers who were unaware that the Western Wats connection would be highly indicative of the campaign's involvement. Stripped of the fancy language--sorry, I get too verbose at times... and there I go again--Mitt or Rudy's people didn't realize that the use of Western Wats would point a huge glowing finger straight at them. I simply cannot believe that two such successful campaigns as Mitt's and Rudy's would have such incompetent people in a position where they could set up such a program. Now, Ron Paul's campaign... maybe. (Ooooh, am I gonna get hate mail for that one... good thing I have comments moderated.)

The more I look at this the more fantastic the accusations against Mitt and Rudy look. From Mr. Hemingway's article, it almost seems like Amanda might have been the person on the "grassy knoll" as well. Such outlandish conspiracy theories belong on the left, not in a heretofore respectable journal of conservative thought such as National Review.

Distorting Giuliani

It should be clear to everyone by now that I am not a Giuliani supporter, but this just couldn't go un-commented on:

The segment revealed, just as with Bush, the media has no problem broadcasting factual errors when targeting Giuliani. Olbermann misquoted Giuliani as saying that Democrats wanted to invite Osama bin Laden to the White House. In actuality, Giuliani didn't say Osama, he said Assad, as in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, one of the leaders whom Barack Obama did in fact say he would be willing to meet with in Washington with no preconditions within the first year of his administration. Making the incident even more absurd, Olbermann ran the video clip of Giuliani's remarks on his show, and it was clear that Giuliani said Assad. How clear? The transcript appearing on the official MSNBC website for Olbermann's show had Giuliani saying Assad in the video clip.

Nevertheless, Olbermann asked his guest Arianna Huffington to comment on whether the former mayor was being hyperbolic or lying.

"Well, he's lying and also every day he reveals more and more of himself," Huffington said. "And you can see that he really has the soul of a thug and the disposition of a tyrant."

Huffington repeated the false Giuliani-Osama quote, and later in the interview, she added: "He's kind of channeling Rush Limbaugh. He's making the lunatic fringe mainstream."

And Olbermann wondered, "Has it reached a level yet where we should be considering examining whether or not this is compulsive lying that there is something endemic to [Giuliani]? Or this specific purpose driven lies?"

One might ask the same about Olbermann. Even though the AP issued a correction to its story that misquoted Giuliani following a report on AmSpecBlog, as of this writing, Olbermann has not corrected his erroneous segment. His spokeswoman did not return three calls or an email sent from TAS asking whether the news channel planned to correct the error, and if not, to explain its corrections policy.

So, Olbermann slips up with the proof right there in his own show, and he refuses to admit it? Is this guy trying to outdo Dan Rather and The New Republic for sheer unadulterated gall in the face of an obvious error?

Actually, I think it's just more of the same lefty mindset... we're never wrong, we are always right, and those who accuse us of being wrong are part of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.

Keith, you were wrong. Now, where'd I put that VRWC membership card?

Thompson/Giuliani 2008?

Over at the Campaign Spot on NRO, Jim Geraghty has an interesting article about Fred and Rudy.

I had been talking with a strategist with neither the Rudy nor FDT campaigns, and he had mentioned his theory on running mates. This strategist said tickets no longer need geographic or ideological balance; instead, what mattered was that the strengths of the vice-presidential nominee echo the strengths of the presidential nominee. The choice, he said, says, 'The qualities that are so great about me are so important to the job of president, that I want the man (or woman) who is a heartbeat away from the presidency to have the same strengths.'

Come to think of it, a Fred/Rudy ticket would probably be pretty much unstoppable on law and order, as well as national security concerns. And I sort of feel in my gut that those are going to be the big issues in this election.

Now, if only Fred can talk Rudy into being #2...

Anti-Mormon Rumors Surfacing

Turns out one of Mr. Romney's opponents for the GOP nomination may (emphasize, may) be working on a rumor-mongering campaign against Mr. Romney's religion.

I suspect this will backfire on the other candidate, and backfire badly. Even if one disagrees with Mr. Romney's religion, as I do, that is no reason to start a back-door whispering campaign like this.

It appears, however, as though one candidate, or at the very least his staffers, seem to believe otherwise.

To find out which campaign I am referring to, hit the link in the title above.

UPDATE: According to NRO, the Romney campaign has responded thusly:

"I sincerely hope that the Giuliani campaign did not send that e-mail out to reporters in an effort to provoke questions about a fellow candidate's faith. They may have just been passing it along for other reasons, but given the focus of the article, they should be more careful since it could very easily be seen as an effort to question Governor Romney's faith. An action like that would be terribly disappointing."

-Kevin Madden, spokesman for Governor Romney

That about covers it, I think.

Giuliani Doesn't Think Illegal Immigration is a Crime

At least that's what the above-linked report of his interview with Laura Ingraham seems to indicate:

Radio talk-show host Laura Ingraham last week asked Giuliani about the immigration policies he supported in New York City. She asked, “Are you still standing behind your sanctuary city policy?”

Giuliani told her, “I never supported a sanctuary policy.”

He said he was willing to turn over undocumented criminals to federal immigration authorities, but would not turn over illegal aliens who had not committed a crime.

Uh... Mr. Giuliani, what part of illegal do you not comprehend?

Giuliani Fumbles on Abortion, Again

The American Spectator's Campaign Crawlers reports that Giuliani is in trouble again:

The most memorable moment in last night's Republican presidential debate came when the candidates were asked about Roe v. Wade. One after another, everyone said what a great day it will be when Roe is overturned. Then came Rudy Giuliani's turn.

"It would be okay," he said, almost shrugging.

As Chris Matthews pressed him into elaborating that he'd leave it to a judge to determine whether it's appropriate to overturn precedent, the fundamental dilemma of the Giuliani candidacy was on full display. A Republican can't win without making peace with the pro-life movement. But Giuliani can't campaign as a pro-lifer without being rightly pilloried as an opportunistic flip-flopper. And while promising not to make Roe a litmus test is regular ritual in general elections, Giuliani actually means it: He'll appoint judges who would probably overturn Roe, but he's not going to make it a priority.

The "electable" candidate is becoming less and less "electable."

And, remember, John "I Voted For the $87 Billion Before I Voted Against It" Kerry was "electable," too.

Giuliani Feeling the Heat on Abortion

Looks like Rudy's recent abortion comments have put his campaign in full damage-control mode. NRO ran an editorial regarding his statement on Friday, and, lo and behold, the "Policy Director" of Rudy's campaign, a Mr. Bill Simon, has seen fit to fire off a letter to them, which was printed today (link to that letter is in the title of this post). Mr. Simon makes a claim that looks good at first glance:

Abortions declined by 16.8 percent in New York City during the Giuliani administration, according to the Center for Disease Control. And University of Alabama political scientist Michael New told your publication, “The decline in abortions in New York City under Giuliani was greater than the national decline.”

The editors at NRO, however, are no dummies. They reply with:

Like Bill Simon, we admire Professor New. Let’s quote him some more on abortion trends during Giuliani’s mayoral terms: “I cannot attribute this decline to any actual policy Giuliani implemented.” Note also that New York City’s abortion rate had a long way to fall: Even after its decline, it remained much higher than the national average. Should Mayor Giuliani get credit for that fact as well?

The fact that Mr. Simon had to try so desperately to cover Rudy's gaffe indicates that he knows just how much damage his boss has done. I admire Simon for doing his job and trying to cover Rudy's backside, but I can tell you that's a job I sure wouldn't want, the way Rudy likes to speak first and think later.

Giuliani Also Inserts Foot

It's not just Nancy Pelosi that has foot-in-mouth disease today, seems she's passed the bug on to Rudy Giuliani.

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (CNN) -- Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani told CNN Wednesday he supports public funding for some abortions, a position he advocated as mayor and one that will likely put the GOP presidential candidate at odds with social conservatives in his party.

The honeymoon's over, Rudy, and this is likely to hurt you a lot.

Also, a big thank-you to CNN for publicizing this. If they'd been able to restrain their joy at having a Republican support public funding for infanticide abortion, they might have been able to sneak him into the White House, with the willing support of the GOP's leftists moderates.

Better luck next time, lefties.

Another Hat Tip to Captain's Quarters. What can I say, he's got the stories that interest me today. It'll probably be someone different tomorrow.

Ferguson on Giuliani

Andrew Ferguson of the Weekly Standard takes a good, hard look at Giuliani (the title is the link--I'm gonna mention that a lot for a while--to get people used to it), and sees things that make him think that Rudy as the GOP Nominee will be bad news for conservatives:

Giuliani cites his triumph in New York in the 1990s--along with the sensitive and courageous performance of his duties during the chaos of September 11, 2001--as his chief qualification for the presidency. Yet voters will be entitled to wonder whether the triumph is transplantable to a different time, on a different scale, in a much larger, two-party political culture that is not nearly so irrational and self-destructive as New York City's. The personal temperament and "management style" he displayed as mayor, not unusual for New York, are hard to imagine in the Oval Office. "People didn't elect me to be a conciliator," he told Time magazine at the end of his second term. "If they just wanted a nice guy they would have stayed with [David Dinkins, his feckless predecessor]. They wanted someone who was going to change this place. How do you expect me to change it if I don't fight with somebody? You don't change ingrained human behavior without confrontation, turmoil, anger."

How would such a rough-edged approach appeal to those moderation-loving centrists who, Giuliani supporters claim, the candidate will attract to the Republican party in uncountable numbers? Even in New York his public personality wore thin. Three months before the end of his term Giuliani's poll ratings had fallen to George W. Bush-like levels--only one in three New Yorkers approved of his performance. The dip followed an excruciating personal difficulty that Giuliani himself thrust into public view. In early 2000, at a press conference on an unrelated matter, Giuliani suddenly announced to the assembled reporters that he was divorcing his second wife. The second wife, for her part, held a press conference of her own a few hours later to announce that the mayor's announcement was the first she'd heard of any divorce. She couldn't have been terribly surprised, though. By this time, the mayor had abandoned his official residence, moved in with friends, and taken to appearing at public functions with another woman, Judi Nathan, whom he would eventually marry three years later. The second wife and their two children were left to themselves in the mayor's mansion. The kids were 14 and 10 at the time. It's not necessary to imagine what all those moderation-loving centrists will make of this episode; just imagine what a Democratic ad-maker will make of it.

(emphasis mine)

That right there tells me that Giuliani, once that story gets wider exposure, will become highly unpalatable to many people. Ferguson, however, has more rounds to fire:

It was an interesting platform that Giuliani offered his audience [in San Francisco]--and that he intends to set before voters as the campaign progresses. He spoke of reforming Medicaid spending by giving vouchers to the poor. He suggested rebuilding the No Child Left Behind school reform by giving vouchers for parents to choose schools among private and public options. He endorsed a government-sponsored, NASA-like program to develop alternative sources of energy. Americans, he said, should have the choice of accepting the Social Security system or opening a private account instead. At the same time he suggested strengthening electronic provisions of the Patriot Act, and supporting "tough, intense interrogation" techniques against terrorists. Add the endorsement of gay rights and abortion rights, and it's an unusual stew.

Giuliani is routinely described, in the pundit's shorthand, as a moderate, and Fred Siegel, the Cooper Union scholar, coined the term "immoderate centrism" to describe Giuliani's politics. But watching the mayor lay out his views you begin to see that Siegel's term is only half correct. Giuliani's not a centrist at all. He's that rare politician who's most comfortable staking out positions at the further points of the ideological spectrum, swinging from one end to the other depending on the issue at hand, and passing over the middle altogether. Rather than appeal to the "center," as his supporters claim, it is just as likely that Giuliani's social liberalism will offend conservatives and his fiscal conservatism will offend liberals.

Simply put, Giuliani is the darling of the Nelson Rockefeller wing of the GOP simply because he's not a conservative. And if he is nominated, the Democrats will do a dance for joy.