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Rudy: one step closer to extinction

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by spnited, Aug 11, 2007.

  1. Mystery_Meat

    Mystery_Meat Guest

    Why, exactly? I know the strong majority of people here are solidly Democrat, both lifers and people who aren't going to vote Republican barring a miracle because of this administration. Unless Al Sharpton gets the nomination, a Repub would never win the SJ straw poll. That said, shouldn't we want the two best candidates in the general election? I don't want "my guy" running against the failest failbutt in Failtown, I want two strong choices so that even if the person for whom I'm pulling the lever doesn't win, I can feel confident the other one will do a good job too.

    Somewhere along the way, politics became sports in the way Americans approach it. Yay for the Cowboys, boo for the Redskins, or vice versa. I know that's human nature, but I don't feel comfortable conceding that particular point.
     
  2. expendable

    expendable Well-Known Member

    Now Meat, there you go using common sense. :D


    Shit. Now I've posted on a political thread.
     
  3. Football_Bat

    Football_Bat Well-Known Member

    MM, you totally missed my dig on Mitt with the double-t's, but never mind that.

    There is NOT ONE CANDIDATE on the GOP side who I think can overcome all the headwinds against him. Everyone of them has a fatal flaw. Many (hell, most) of the Dems have flaws, too, but they aren't necessarily as fatal and plus, they have a collective political tailwind.

    Who knows, maybe Huckabee turns into "None of the Above" and he gets an ol'-fashioned Arkansas fish-fry fisticuffs going with Hillary.

    But no, I still see Rudy vs. Hillary in the finals. Forty-nine states will groan (and the 50th one north of Poughkeepsie), but I like Hillary in this matchup.

    Forget Romney. The Golden Mitt is expected to win Iowa and N.H., but will turn to lead in S.C. (here's where Huck has a chance to muddy the waters.)
     
  4. Mystery_Meat

    Mystery_Meat Guest

    No, I didn't get the Romney slam. I thought maybe you had the world's quickest sober-to-drunk-to-sober transition.

    I wonder if some white knight on the Republican side might pop up in the next six months, which would be inconcevable in a regular campaign cycle but possible in one where, as you point out, everyone seems to have some sort of fatal flaw. No clue who it might be, though; I'm not as keyed into this stuff as I was in the 80's and 90's. See also: Clinton, Bill in a campaign where the candidate everyone was waiting for (Cuomo) never got off the pot. Neither did Clinton, but different context.
     
  5. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    All I know is that this is going to be the most interesting presidential campaign of most of our lifetimes...
     
  6. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    If that sums up Giuliani for you, then obviously aren't interested in the chronology of what actually happened on 9/11. It's insulting. He was minutes away from having died--he was with the First Deputy Fire Commissioner who did die minutes later when the first building collapsed. Giuliani was on the scene immediately and didn't sleep for days afterward as he tried to be everywhere at once. He was tireless.

    Yeah, all he did was run. ::)

    Fuck, if you don't like the guy, fine. But don't try to minimize the efforts he made to try to do constructive things in the minutes, hours and days after the attack. That is insulting. Take a look in the mirror and ask yourself how well YOU would have held up compared to the way he did if you were the mayor of New York in the aftermath of that. Few people would have.
     
  7. Lamar Mundane

    Lamar Mundane Member

    Did Rudy have a policy in place to allow first responders to communicate with each other?
     
  8. Unfortunately, Ragu, what he did between the two times that the WTC was attacked -- which was nothing and WORSE than nothing -- makes his ability to give a nice speech afterwards a little less heroic. That and the facts that the people who actually did risk their lives are the ones calling bullshit on him now, and the fact that, if you read the Barrett piece closely, he was taking Judi to his bulletproof command center before they were publicly an item. It's not about not liking him. It's about the fact that he's demanding sole ownership of one of the worst days in American history, everyone else's tragedies be damned, to gain for himself an office in which he will be incomparably dangerous.
    Here's an oldie but a goodie:

    http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A01E2D9173CF933A15750C0A962958260

    "Freedom is about authority."
    Remember that.
     
  9. Herbert Anchovy

    Herbert Anchovy Active Member

    Giuliani has a respectable lead in traditionally liberal states with many primary delegates (Florida, New York, California). That's a decent card to be holding at this phase.
     
  10. You realize I pulled that quote from the story, right?
    My point isn't about 9/11. It's about his capitalizing on 9/11 since then. His whole campaign is, "I was mayor of NYC on that day."
    I find that to be pretty lame.
     
  11. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    Yes. I know where the quote came from. I saw the stories too. It's the fact that you repeated the quote and chimed in with that line summing up Giuliani for YOU that caused me to respond. I will cut a grieving father who says something like that all the slack in the world. It doesn't mean it's a fair characterization of what happened that day, but the guy lost his son. I won't cut any slack to the guy who repeats it on a message board and nods his head in agreement. Rudy Giuliani did a hell of a lot more than run on 9/11/01. He was minutes away from dying that day because he had his nose in it. And regardless of what you think about the things he has done when he has had time to be deliberate about his decisions, in the hours, days and weeks after the attacks, he was forceful and tireless. He was not a man who ran--that day, or in the weeks afterward. And to suggest so is a bullshit thing to do. And jeez, that SHOULD be his whole campaign. You run on your record. And he showed leadership that among other things earned him the nickname "America's mayor" and got him named Time's Person of the Year. They didn't just give it to him because he happened to be mayor that day. Jeez.
     
  12. But he's not running on his record. He's running on a circumstance. There is a difference.
    He is capitalizing politically on one of the darkest days in our nation's history. That bothers me.
    But hey, I guess I don't have the right to have a problem with that because I didn't have a son who died at Ground Zero.
    Jeez.
     
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