Could the United States actually elect RUDY GIULIANI President?

[DeepModem Mom]

Boston Globe: James Carroll
Giuliani's iron fist
By James Carroll | October 29, 2007

COULD THE United States actually elect as president a Yankee fan who has been rooting for the Red Sox? A father whose own children would boycott his inauguration? A husband whose first wife was his cousin and whose current wife can't remember how many times she married? Could the United States, for that matter, elect a cross-dresser? The Rudy Giuliani surge would be comic if its broader implications were not so grave.

Could the United States elect as president someone whose neoconservative advisers have been wrong on a decade's worth of foreign policy questions? Last week's group portrait in The New York Times of Giuliani's national security inner circle makes Rumsfeld and Cheney look like the wise men.

Gay-tolerant and prochoice, Giuliani contradicts, and even demeans, the "values" that have defined conservative America for a generation. That the former mayor of New York is so successfully overcoming what should have been candidacy-killing negatives among Republicans is an epiphany of our national condition. Why is such a figure emerging as the odds-on favorite to carry the right wing banner into the general election?

The answer is obvious. A run-of-the-mill political hack was transformed into the nation's only hero on Sept. 11, 2001. While President Bush cowered in Curtis LeMay's SAC bunker in Omaha, Giuliani was striding toward Armageddon....

What followed was not so glorious: the outlandish hubris of his assumption that the transition to his elected successor should be postponed; the commercial exploitation of his accidental status; the partisan belligerence of the lesson he drew from the experience. Giuliani came out of the crisis as a man with a clenched fist - permanently outraged, and looking for a fight. Alas, in that, too, he embodied an essential American esprit....

***

There are no dangers that justify the massive insecurity that marks current US foreign policy, even if - punklike - that insecurity manifests itself as bullying. The biggest bully on the block turns out to be Giuliani. That would be a sad reason to make him president.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/10/29/giulianis_iron_fist/

[ronnykmarshall]

1. George W Bush

[DeepModem Mom]

3. Good answer! nt

[AtomicKitten]

2. Statistics put a Clinton vs. Giuliani race too close for comfort.

[ooga booga]

7. You may be right about that, but.....

I've already read a blurb where an anti-abortion conservative was wringing his hands about the match up between pro-abortion Guiliani versus pro-abortion Hillary. A big no win situation for that single issue. I loved it.

I've been thinking that Guiliani is probably the most beatable Republican who has any real chance to get the nomination. However, the "Battle of the New York Titans" angle with Guiliani versus Clinton may be exactly the wrong matchup for our girlfriend, Hillary. Romney is also beatable though. I dunno. Given the strong track record of Southerners in presidential elections, I'm more worried about Thompson and Huckabee if either of them manages to capture the nomination.

This 2008 presidential race will certainly be one for the history books. Very hard to handicap and I think it'll stay that way perhaps right up to the end. I hope that collectively we have the good sense to NOT elect Rudy Guiliani, but such a miserable choice is certainly possible. After all, Dubya got re-elected, didn't he?

[AtomicKitten]

11. It is most certainly a crapshoot.

The Republicans scare me. Huckabee is really a lovely man and then he starts talking about Adam and Eve riding dinosaurs to church. Oy vey.

But I think most of us agree the MSM is angling for the Clash of the NY Titans. That race will require mud flaps because it will be flying. Ugh.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

13. As Are All The Candidates

I suspect his numbers will go down when folks learn


-he married his sister, errrrr, first cousin

-has been married three times

-is a tranvestite

-has a pedaphile priest on his payroll

-had a love nest at the WTC which is why he set up central command there prior to the attacks

[goodgd_yall]

4. Worse has happened n/t

[DFW]

5. I don't know if we could elect him, BUT-----

It has already been demonstrated in the last two elections
that the person who appeared to have won did not take office.

SOOOO---the question should read: "Could Rudy Giuliani actually
BECOME president?" and the answer to that is: if the dork that
currently appears be in office is really there (and it seems
that he indeed is), then sure, Giuliani could become president.

The Republicans could run Snagglepuss with Snidely Whiplash as
his running mate, and still be contenders unless the system gets
repaired between now and November, 2008.

[Bitwit1234]

6. Well that's not necessarily true...bush had two elections stolen for him

I don't care what anybody says. BUT the same thing could happen in rudi's case. rove and his criminal element are dispicible to do anything. Didn't this criminal element try to kill a woman in Alabama because she outed rove.

[AnnieBW]

8. Rudy might be pro-gay and pro-choice

But people will look past that and see that he's a fear-mongering psychopath. At least I hope so.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

10. But there are voters who LIKE fear-mongering psychopaths.

Exhibit A: George Bush.

[ooga booga]

12. Mario Cuomo once said that his name was too ethnic.....

If that's true, Rudolph Guiliani is also too ethnic a name to get elected President.

Who knows how this crazy election will turn out! I wonder if the anti-Northern trend will continue. Since JFK's slender victory in 1960, NO ONE has captured the White House who came from anywhere north of Arkansas (Reagan was born in Illinois, but he ran as a Californian). Southerners LBJ of TX, Carter of GA, Clinton of AR and both Bushes (TX) came from southern states. Losers Humphrey of MN (68), Mc Govern of SD (72), Ford of MI (76), Mondale of MN (84), Dukakis of MA (88), and Dole of KS (96) were all from northern states. Hillary is more from IL and NY than AR, so she just might break that streak. Watch Huckabee though.

[antiimperialist]

9. One respected liberal predicted a Rudy win in 2008 due to the media

http://dailyhowler.com/dh103007.shtml