Lo, how the mighty have fallen into consulting jobs

Apparently Hizzoner is now doing some consulting for a thirty-six-year-old ex-kickboxer boxing champion running to be mayor of Kiev. Apparently his primary role is to offer ideas about how Kiev can reduce the level of corruption in its municipal government.

This is pretty funny to me. No offense intended to Kiev, (kick)boxers, or 36-year-olds - what's more funny is relying for your advice about corruption on a guy with a fairly spotty ethics record himself. Elise has documented this quite well already, so I won't repeat that here. Suffice it to say that of all the American ex-mayors (and even ex-presidential candidates) who you could conceivably ask to give you advice about corruption, Giuliani should probably not be at the top of the list.

Or maybe he'll advise that the mayor of Kiev respond to corruption charges by saying, "My picture is on thousands of buses!"

Update: Corrected for details of the would-be mayor's current (not former!) boxing career. Thanks, David!

Hillary to Succumb to Rudy-ism?

Washington, Nebraska, and Louisiana have been called for Obama tonight. In addition to that, Obama's expected to score big in Maryland, DC, and Virginia in the Potomac / Chesapeake / Beltway / Pundit Primary on Tuesday (seriously, could they give it any more names?). Maine tomorrow could be closer, but Obama's strong showings in caucuses (winning 9 of 10 so far) mean that he'll probably pull off a win there too.

Following Tuesday, there are three remaining contests this month on February 19 - primaries in Wisconsin, Hawaii, and Washington state (although Washington's primary won't count; all of their delegates will be apportioned according to the results of tonight's caucuses). Obama will more than likely do well in Hawaii - the state of his birth, while Wisconsin is less clear.

The Clinton campaign has been saying lately that they plan to focus on the March 4 contests in Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, and Vermont, where the demographics favor her. What happens, though, if Obama goes into March having won all or all but one of the contests since Super Tuesday? Clinton could start to look a lot like Rudy Giuliani did during the early primaries. Rudy's campaign wrote off Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina, and they couldn't survive a month of absolutely no media coverage and no momentum after he received next to no votes in those states. Once Rudy lost his "firewall" state of Florida, he dropped out.

This same thing could happen with Clinton. If Obama has strong wins in the remaining February primaries, as it looks like he will, Hillary's current demographic advantages in the March 4 states could evaporate in favor of Obama momentum. If this race is going to go all the way to the convention, as many are predicting, Hillary needs to at least be competitive in the remaining February states.

Update: Louisiana's been called for Obama.

Update 2: And a 90% of the vote, 3 of 3 delegate sweep in the Virgin Islands.

A Third Party Election

Alongside today's news that Edwards and Rudy are dropping out comes word that Ralph Nader, accomplice to Bush's 2000 election theft, is exploring another run.  It's pretty clear he waited until Edwards bowed out, as they both fit, to some extent, the same mold.  Except Edwards knew when to bow out with some dignity left, while Nader seems ready to screw things up again.

What's interesting, though, is that this could make 2008 a third party election.  If Mike Bloomberg ends up running and if Ron Paul, realizing he has several million dollars of online donations left after losing the Republican race, decides to run as well, things could get interesting.

While the Democratic race is still fairly wide-open, it's becoming increasingly clear that John McCain will end up with the GOP nomination.  McCain and Paul present drastically different views of conservatism, just as either Clinton or Obama and Nader do on the liberal side.  Bloomberg, having been a member of both parties, can provide something interesting to attract voters from both sides  - drawing from the left for his social stances and from the right for his business experience and managerial skills.

While this is drastically oversimplifying things, let's say most of Paul's supporters stick with him in a third party run and that some (although definitely not all) of Edward's supporters go to Nader.  Who does Bloomberg get?  He'll likely pick up some of Romney's supporters on the GOP side and a few Hillary or Obama supporters regardless of who wins the nomination.  Nader and Paul will cut down the votes of the eventual Democratic and Republican nominees.  And if McCain is the Republican candidate, there's a good chance many of the evangelical conservatives who supported Huckabee will be less likely to vote.

What does this all boil down to?  It's still not likely by any stretch, but for the first time in decades there's a very small, but finite chance that an independent could make it to the White House.

Mittens for Giuliani

Joining the ranks of Trotskyites for John McCain, we have Mitt Romney for Rudy Giuliani. Rudy's put out a new ad in Florida, interrupting naps across the state with faux-momentous music over a slew of quotes from various conservatives (Norquist, Forbes, Will) about Rudy's reputation as a fiscally conservative tax-cutter. It closes with a quote from... well, you'll have to watch.

Needless to say, Mittens for America is none too happy about this move, as the quote was, predictably, taken somewhat out of context. Commenting in an interview after a Michigan debate, Romney said:

The line-item veto is the best tool the president has to reign in excessive spending, and Mayor Giuliani has a great record of cutting taxes and cutting spending, although, according to the Mayor, Mayor Bloomberg, that followed him, he said that he left excessive deficits for him. But he’s cut spending, he cut taxes, I cut spending, I cut taxes. But the real difference between us is that when it came to the line-item veto, I’m in favor of it.

Personally, I think the line-item veto is pretty awesome, since it can be used (and has been, in my home state) to make legislation absolutely unrecognizable, through the technique of amending budget numbers from "$250,000,000" to "$2" or striking out little words like "not." Sadly for the creative writers among us, though, after two years of Bill Clinton enjoying that particular power, the line-item veto was ruled unconstitutional - in a case brought by the City of New York under the authority of none other than Mayor Rudy Giuliani. So there you have it, kids: Mittens is for the line-item veto, but also for Rudy, who's against the line-item veto, or at any rate was against the line-item veto back in the late 90's, but by Romney standards that by no means equates to opposing it now. (No word yet on how left-handed leprechauns feel about the line-item veto.) I fully expect his hair to explode early next week.

Something Must Be Wrong With Me...

Because I'm agreeing with "The American Conservative" magazine.  Their January 2008 cover:

The article, Declaring Forever War is an interesting analysis of Rudy's advisers.  It points out the extremely troubling fact that Rudy's foreign policy could be even worse than Dubya's.  Bush came in with virtually no views on foreign policy and was won over by the neocons, over other, more sensible advisers such as Colin Powell.  Rudy, on the other hand, is starting out with a strong neocon outlook, and has surrounded himself with even more extreme advisers.

As fun as it would have been to destroy this guy in the general election, I've gotta be happy for his recent drop in the polls and all-but-insignificance in the early primary states, because he's gotten far too close to the White House already.

Rudy's slipping in the polls? Iran's not evil? Quick, men! To the time machine!

Look what the cat dragged in:

Yes, Rudy Giuliani's latest ad is all about Iran--- but not the Iran you're thinking of, with the nuclear disarmament and protesting students and other such annoying complexities. (Completely true: that declassified NIE report sank a CNN special planned for the 12th called "CNN PRESENTS: We Were Warned -- Iran Goes Nuclear". Darn reality, always ruining a good story!) No, Giuliani wants to talk about the Big Evil Retro Iran of 1980, a presumably safer choice and certainly a more perfect foil for his macho Reagan fantasies -- emphasis on "fantasies". Giuliani really wants us to think that "Rambo" Reagan being in office for an hour caused Iranian terrorists to burst into tears and lay down their arms. It'd be poignant if it wasn't so fucking retarded.

The brilliant Phil Nugent explains the real facts and context very well. All I want to point out in addition is that this follows a pattern I've seen among Republicans for years: that for some presumably psychological reason, they have absolutely no idea what decade it is. The concept of historical context simply eludes these people. Just as they do not understand the difference between TV and real life, conservatives likewise do not grasp the difference between the past and the present; hence this totally earnest attempt to pretend it's still the age when gas cost $1.20 a gallon and Ron Reagan rode around on his horse. To a man, they see nothing wrong with this escapist drivel; I fully expect Mitt Romney to respond with an ad invoking the Miracle on Ice. (And Fred Thompson, who's been doing the Cold War thing for some time, will probably just keep pedaling backwards until he winds up raving about pinkos and the Apollo program. But then, it's Fred Thompson, so nobody will notice.)

---ON THE OTHER HAND, if Giuliani really wants to cast this election in terms of 1980 -- when, if you remember, the incumbent party was soundly defeated due to a clearly failing economy, a disastrous foreign policy and a widely mistrusted leadership -- I suppose I wouldn't really have a problem with that...

The Man Who Lies, Cheats, Steals, and Runs for President

Rudy Giuliani has been having a bad month.

First, his longtime buddy and protege Bernard Kerik, who he made police commissioner of New York, gave a job in his firm, and nominated for the top job in the Department of Homeland Security, was indicted on 16 counts of "bribery, tax fraud, and obstruction of justice."

Kerik's sleaziness is old news, but now Giuliani is being forced to ask other cronies to keep him from calling up the "old crowd" in his defense, which might be tough considering this photographic gem:

Have you ever seen a two men kiss a baby less convincingly? I think they could give Lord Voldemort and Wormtail a run for their money.

Read more »

A Vote For My Opponent is a Vote for Child Abuse

Facebook has this new Causes app that essentially lets you say "I support Cause X and then donate Y amount of dollars to that cause." Two of the more, shall we say, interesting, causes I came across include this one on ending child abuse and another on supporting the troops. While I'm all for ending child abuse and supporting the troops, apparently, the best way for me to do so is to donate to Messrs. Hunter and Giuliani's political campaigns. Screenshots below.

I don't know what's more shocking, that these causes were created or that 60,000 Facebook users fell for this. Maybe Facebook is becoming more like MySpace.

Giuliani: President of $9.11

From the AP:

WASHINGTON - A supporter of Rudy Giuliani's is throwing a party that aims to raise $9.11 per person for the Republican's presidential campaign.

Abraham Sofaer is having a fundraiser at his Palo Alto, Calif., home on Wednesday, when Giuliani backers across the country are participating in the campaign's national house party night.

What charming, charming, behavior. In case anyone missed it, the nine dollar and eleven cents amount is a reference to terrorist attacks that happened in New York City while Giuliani was mayor. I wonder what Sofaer would've done if the attacks had happened on January 1st? Oh, but what a bonanza it would've been for the Giuliani campaign if they'd been on December 31st! ($3.20 extra per person)

I just find it disgusting. Of course Giuliani's campaign won't comment, because they had 'nothing to do with it,' and it won't become a big news story because these kind of things just don't become big news stories, but 9/11 really seems to be what the Giuliani campaign is about.

Witness his speech to the NRA where he said that 9/11 changed his mind on gun control. How, exactly? It put the 2nd amendment in a "different light"? Oh. I still don't understand.

I also visited Giuliani's campaign website today, and noticed that the central image is of Giuliani in profile standing beside an American flag with the New York skyline in the background, the twin towers conspicuously absent.

Hoffman for America

LONDON (AP) — Rudy Giuliani went on the trans-Atlantic campaign trail Wednesday, schmoozing with conservative idol Margaret Thatcher and bragging about his international credentials.

"I'm probably one of the four or five best known Americans in the world," Giuliani told a small group of reporters at a posh London hotel as onlookers gathered in the lobby to gawk at actor Dustin Hoffman, who was on a separate visit.

Paul Curtis has it right: if Rudy Giuliani is one of the five most well-known Americans, and Dustin Hoffman is apparently even more well-known, one is led to the inescapable conclusion... why isn't Dustin Hoffman running for president?

In fairness, Giuliani did get a chance to suggest some other people who qualified for this high distinction:

"Bill Clinton ... Hillary," he said, but he was whisked away for another engagement before he could throw out any other names.

... So logic isn't the man's strong suit.

BONUS DUSTIN HOFFMAN:

Brains! BRAAAINS!

Rudy, on global terror strategy:

This cannot be like a horror movie. You know, in the horror movie you kill the monster, and the hand re-emerges. And if you're not looking, the hand grows back and then the monster's there again. That cannot be allowed to happen.

At this point I envision Giuliani's aides slowly backing away saying "Yes, Mr. Mayor. Whatever you say," before they break out into a full sprint.

Good Lord this guy is the frontrunner.

(h/t: Greg Sargent)

This just in

Giuliani hires genocide advocate Norman Podhoretz as a "key foreign policy adviser." If you think it's an exaggeration to call Norm a genocide advocate, just read the Greenwald article linked above:

They should have threatened to bomb the Iranians into smithereens if the sailors weren't returned immediately. They should have threatened it. Whether they would have had to carry out the threat, I doubt, maybe they would have.

Just think about that. England should have threatened and then "bombed the Iranians into smithereens" if their sailors were not returned immediately. Contemplate the depravity required even to suggest such a thing -- that a nation of more than 70 million human beings be reduced to rubble, perhaps vaporzied, over an incident of that magnitude, which was peacefully resolved after two weeks. It is really warped beyond belief. And it's the tone that is almost as notable as the content -- the breezy, smug wave of the hand that signifies the brutal deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people, possibly many more.

Any reasonable person would be concerned at the prospect of this nutcase gaining a position of influence in a potential Giuliani administration, but I reckon Giuliani considers it a veritable coup. After all, Podhoretz is among the most respected conservative 'luminaries.' Josh Marshall says:

This has to be the best appointment Rudy's made since Thomas Ravenel (indicted for dealing coke) his South Carolina campaign chair and Sen. David Vitter (aka Sen. Wild Thang) his Southern Regional Chairman.

9/11 Changed Everything

Hi, I'm Sam Jack, I'm going to be a freshman next fall, and I'm very happy to be joining the Harvard Dems blog. Thanks to Markus and Garrett for letting me join.

By way of giving some actual content to this introductory post, I thought I'd note the recent revelation--at least, recent to most people, that Rudy Giuliani was slated to be a member of the Iraq Study Group, but quit to pursue his lucrative speaking career

This is notable on a number of levels. For one thing, this behavior on Giuliani's part--like so much about Giuliani--has been always been a matter of public record, and has been roundly ignored by the media.

The media would rather cover really substantive topics like Edward's hair and Obama's parking tickets. You would think this would be a bit of a big deal, but it isn't, because the media would rather stick to the benevolent demi-god narrative that they've been spinning out about Giuliani, despite all the facts against him, ever since he entered this race, and really ever since 9/11.

It's too much to hope that this will get wide-spread media attention now, but I imagine it'll come back to bite him should he make it into a general election.

It was a bad move politically for Giuliani to play hookie on the ISG in favor of raking in piles of dough for 'inspirational' speeches, but the real shame, as Steve Benen points out, is that Giuliani missed a golden opportunity to "learn what the hell he's talking about"

Just last week, asked about the future of the policy in Iraq, Giuliani said, “Iraq may get better; Iraq may get worse. We may be successful in Iraq; we may not be. I don’t know the answer to that. That’s in the hands of other people.” It came after we learned Giuliani is confused about the attack on USS Cole, he’s confused about the Fort Dix plot, he doesn’t know the difference between Iran’s and North Korea’s nuclear programs, and he has no idea whether Iran and al Qaeda are Sunni or Shia. Asked recently for his thoughts on the efficacy of the president’s escalation strategy in Iraq, Giuliani said, “I don’t know the answer to that.”

Giuliani had a chance to become something of an expert on Iraq. In a presidential campaign, he could have had real experience to point to. Instead he gave vapid speeches for big bucks.

This is sort of a side issue, but Giuliani's friend Bernie Kerik, lately convicted of ethics violations and ordered to pay $200k, reportedly said that he "couldn't afford to be here" (in Iraq as police commissioner) because he was raking in money speaking about 9/11 for Giuliani's slush fund, pardon me, 'consulting firm.' Rajiv Chandrasekaran's book reports that Kerik did nothing as police commissioner other than give rosy, false reports about the state of the police force and wait to return to the states to continue cashing in on 9/11.

So when people like Giuliani and Kerik say that '9/11 changed everything' we know that they mean it, but we also know that the change they're referring to isn't a 'time to buckle down and really serve the country' sort of change; it's more like 'cash in quick before the magic wears off.' Actually, that could be the motto of Giuliani's presidential campaign.

Retro Is In This Year

I've already written about how Barack Obama's candidacy -- through no fault of his own, mind you -- is basically out of a time warp from 1974. Well, turns out Barack's not the only candidate who hasn't caught up with the times, and in this case the candidate's entirely to blame: one look at Rudy Giuliani's platform and you get a whole different kind of retro. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN I GIVE YOU: the 1980s.

Take away 9/11 and examine Giuliani as a conservative - and he is a kind of conservative. How does this kind of conservatism translate to the America of 2008? It's an older model - a sort of reactionary tough love, a pastiche that thrived in an urban environment of racial tension, crime, and economic crisis. It appeals to a certain frustration with bureaucratic fecklessness, and it unmistakeably draws from white resentment of blacks stereotyped as welfare queens and criminals.

[...] Giuliani's conservatism is the product of a particular ecosystem - it's a reaction to the New York of the 1970s and 80s. As even some conservative analysts have noted, it is based on themes - welfare, crime, taxes - that simply don't resonate very much on the national level anymore. Giulianism was a late flowering of America's post-1960s reactionary phase; it's hard to imagine it translating to a presidential campaign in the current context.

[...] What he has emphasized is supply-side economics. There was the flat tax flip-flop to pick up the Forbes endorsement. Larry Kudlow loves him. And he seems to be trying to channel the force of his personality into, of all things, ending welfare as we know it... As a presidential campaign strategy, this is a very good one for 1980.

Per usual Paul from Alien & Sedition is right on the money. It's like Ronald Reagan if he'd missed out on the Cold War. Supply-side economics, for Chrissake, and cranky rants about the bleeding-heart liberals and their love of handouts. At this rate I half expect Margaret Thatcher to show up someplace and start bombing the Falkland Islands.

Of course this stuff resonates with many Republicans, a group hardly known for their progressive forward-thinking attitudes. They do venerate Reagan -- if for reasons that rarely correspond with reality -- and many elites are still drawn to that sense of tax-cutting fervor. (The Onion once pointed out that Bush's cabinet is pretty darn retro. And that was pre- Robert Gates, who was an Iran-contra conspirator for crying out loud.) But for the most part, the Morning in America message has lost its luster, as more salient issues have replaced the sort of hardheaded fiscal quasi-conservatism Giuliani still espouses. "Welfare queens" no longer scare people, after all, and Ronald Reagan is dead.

Paul cites the Pew poll, which shows a tremendous recent increase in public support for activist "big" government. (To which the natural response is, "about time.") Today's political environment is pretty much the worst in which Giuliani could possibly hope to articulate his already-outdated message. Which makes it all the more interesting that he's somehow become the prohibitive frontrunner; well, hell. If Republicans want to commit suicide by anachronism, I'm the last to suggest we stop them.

That'll Help

You know, sometimes I wonder why we're so harsh on conservatives; when it comes to the war on terror at least, I'm glad they're stepping up with plans to resolve it. Unlike liberals, they show a real grasp of the severity of the situation. Two recent examples come to mind.

Exhibit A, Rudy Giuliani:

"We have to say to the rest of the world, ‘America doesn't like war,'" Mr. Giuliani said. " America is not a military country. We've never been a militaristic country," he added, saying national leaders have fallen into an "analytical warp" by defining the battle as a war on terrorism and not, as he deemed it, a "war of the terrorists against us."

Not a war on terror, but a war of terror against us. That... why, that changes everything! We're saved!

(Conservative blogger "Captain" Ed Morrissey, without a hint of irony, writes "Sounds a bit like 'Morning in America' again.")

Exhibit B, Patrick Ruffini of townhall.com:

Counterinsurgency in Iraq has often been compared to a game of whack-a-mole -- secure an area, only to have the insurgents pop up somewhere else. But if we slammed a mallet into the hole, and kept it there, then picked up a new one... and did the same?

This is a new game called Seal-a-Hole, and it has a very different dynamic from Whack-a-Mole: the normal game is one of futility; the game continues until the player gets tired and quits or he runs out of money. But Seal-a-Hole actually has a victory point: when all the holes are sealed, the game is over -- and the player, America, has won.

Even though Seal-a-Hole is not futile, it nevertheless requires a great deal of patience; there are many, many holes, and each hole has a mole who must be whacked. Some of the holes, such as Sadr City, are very big and will require many mallets to properly seal. But if we have the courage and fortitude of our American forebears, we will seal those holes... and we will win.

REPUBLICANS 2008: Sealing Holes With Mallets To Win The War Of Terror Against Us. Powerful stuff. You know, I wish us unserious defeatist liberals would emulate those considerate conservatives more often. We might learn something!