It probably wasn't needed, but if Rudy Giuliani needed any extra motivation to enlist in John McCain's presidential campaign -- and thus probably hinder Mitt Romney's bid for the Republican nomination -- he got it Tuesday night.
Faced with his distant third-place finish in the Florida primary that he spent the last two months -- to the exclusion of virtually any other campaigning -- trying to win, Giuliani appeared before his supporters in the state to deliver what obviously was going to be his swan song. All the cable news networks were broadcasting it. And then Romney stepped on his message.
Giuliani was about two-thirds or so through his remarks, reaching the part where he would sum up what he had tried to accomplish in his White House quest, when Romney, the night's second-place finisher to McCain, began giving his concession speech to his backers. The cable stations cut to him -- Giuliani, after all, had collapsed as a viable candidate, while Romney clearly was still in the fight.
In a major campaign coup, presidential candidate John McCain just gained the endorsement of one of the most popular political figures in Florida: Gov. Charlie Crist.
Crist praised McCain as a ''true American hero'' at the Lincoln Day Dinner here and said he decided to endorse him after ``thinking about it a lot.''
The endorsement from a governor with an approval rating that hovers near 70 percent could prove to be a crucial factor in persuading the 13 percent of undecided Republicans to vote for McCain on Tuesday.
At Real Clear Politics' poll page, the race is shown as a dead heat. But is it really? Remember, probably half the voters have already voted. Giuliani probably has a slight lead among those, with McCain in second and Mitt probably a distant third. So the tie now is just among those who have not voted.
I'm happy to see it, but I confess I'm as surprised as you probably are.
“In a stunning turnaround, John McCain has turned a 33-point deficit with Republican voters in December into a 12-point lead over Rudy Giuliani today,” said Steven Greenberg, Siena New York Poll spokesman. “While America’s mayor still has strong support among New York City Republicans, he is getting beat by McCain in the suburbs and trounced upstate. Republican women give Rudy a small edge, however, Republican men are behind McCain nearly three-to-one.”
Everybody loves a winner. :)
Meanwhile, the latest meme going around is that Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee have effectively been stalking horses for McCain, preventing Mitt-Mentum from taking over the GOP. Perhaps best expressed here:
First, there's Fred, whose lackluster showing in South Carolina was just enough to help McCain win there. As Ryan Sager writes, "Fred Thompson surely has a claim on the vice presidential nod should McCain go all the way, given the votes he took from Mike Huckabee on the Arizona senator's behalf." Then, there's Huckabee in Florida. As Martin and Ruffini point out, he's a great asset to McCain, drawing votes from Romney. Not only that, Huckabee has verged into man-crush territory with McCain and can be counted on to call any attack on him unfortunate and unfair.
Because of course, Fred and Mike legitimately like and admire John McCain, but their supporters do not? Let me say here too that some of the most vocal people who have said they'd rather lose than support the remaining field are Fredheads: Jeff Goldstein, and Professor Bainbridge, for example. The idea that these folks would flock to Romney is wrong, and it's wrong because Romney has pissed them off, just as he's pissed off the supporters of John McCain, and those of Mick Huckabee and (I suspect) those of Rudy Giuliani. That's the reality behind that astonishing poll result I cited the other day that showed 62% of the people would not vote for Mitt Romney. The negative campaigning has worked in some respects for Mitt, but it's really damaged him to the point where he's not a very credible candidate.
But also note Lowry's extremely wishful theory. Fred Thompson should have gotten out of the way of Mike Huckabee in South Carolina because it would have beaten John McCain. And Mike Huckabee should get out of the way of Mitt Romney in Florida because it would beat John McCain. How come these brilliant candidates don't do what is needed to beat John McCain?
Patrick Ruffini did an interesting bit of analysis the other day, pointing out that if the Romney forces had cast their ballots for Huckabee it might have stopped McCain:
Had just 20% of Mitt Romney’s voters voted tactically for Mike Huckabee, McCain would have been denied this needed momentum boost going into Florida and probably the nomination.
Yes, but they didn't know this going in. The polls were all over the map, including the one published the day of the primary that showed Huckabee winning by and Romney getting 9%. If Romney had gotten 20% of his supporters to vote Huckabee, they might have given the Huckster a huge win and Romney would have gotten 7%. It is difficult to spin a result like that positively, although I'm sure Hugh Hewitt would have risen to the occasion.
And speaking of radio talk show hosts, let's hear what Michael Medved has to say about South Carolina's big losers:
The big loser in South Carolina was, in fact, talk radio: a medium that has unmistakably collapsed in terms of impact, influence and credibility because of its hysterical and one-dimensional involvement in the GOP nomination fight.
The point is that you cannot lead the people someplace they don't want to go. You may be proven right in the end, but unless you are amazingly eloquent and charismatic, very few people going to drink the Kool-Aid just because you say so. Rush doesn't succeed because he tells people stuff they don't want to hear; quite the opposite.
Sam Brownback, a Kansas conservative and favorite of evangelical Christians, will endorse his former Republican presidential rival John McCain, GOP officials said Wednesday.
The nod could provide a much-needed boost, particularly in Iowa, for the Arizona senator and one-time presumed GOP front-runner whose bid faltered and is now looking for a comeback.
Pat Robertson, one of the most influential figures in the social conservative movement, announced his support for Rudy Giuliani's presidential bid this morning at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. [Watch the video below]
While the press will undoubtedly play it as "Rudy enough of a bible-thumper to impress Robertson", I agree with the take at Power Line:
Once we get past the strangeness of this, it's a good development. I doubt that Robertson will persuade many anti-abortion voters to prefer Giuliani in the primaries. But maybe he can help persuade some of them not to stay home or vote for a third party candidate in the event that Rudy is the nominee.
If Giuliani gets the nomination. I know I'm virtually alone in feeling this way, but I have an inkling that events are working out well for John McCain. Fred Thompson seems to be struggling; the other day he had to beg for applause for one of his speeches. If the race boils down to Giuliani and McCain, I like John's chances.
The Rabbit and I sat there for a few moments staring at each other in silence before he angrily dismissed me.
"Now it will be very bad for you, Mac Kane. Go back to your room."
I did as instructed and awaited the moment when the Rabbit's prediction would come true.
That same day [July 4, 1968] my father assumed command of all U.S. forces in the Pacific.
Let me point out as well that in the much-reported fund-raising discussion, McCain did not do all that poorly. McCain dropped from $13 million to $11.2 million. Romney saw an even larger decline, from $20.5 million to $14 million (although he "loaned" $6.5 million to his campaign so he could claim to have kept pace with the earlier quarter). Giuliani did manage to bump his numbers a bit, but it was only from $16.6 million to $17 million.
I also tend to think that "lending" money to one's own campaign is the kind of thing that makes future donors nervous. If I contribute to Mitt Romney's campaign today, is that money going to go towards campaign ads and phone banks? Or is Mitt going to put it back in his pocket? We hear a lot about how much money Mitt has on hand ($12 million to McCain's $2 million), but Romney loaned something like $2.5 million to his campaign in the first quarter and $6.5 million in the second, so Romney's total is artificially inflated by $9 million in money that he presumably does not want to spend.
But things have been changing recently. Giuliani appears to have benefited from a great many Republicans who simply did not know where he stood on these bedrock issues of conservative Republican principles. In the last two or three months that has begun to change as Giuliani has become the focus of news coverage that has emphasized his positions. Giuliani's recent clarification of his positions, and his performance in tonight's second Republican debate, is likely to further increase awareness among Republican voters.
While polling has found, somewhat surprisingly, that many Republicans say they are willing to overlook these issues I think there has been an inevitable drag on Giuliani, and that is now showing up in the Red estimator.
At the same time, McCain has tried to restart his campaign and it appears to have at least stopped his falling support and perhaps begun to produce some gains.
As always, I emphasize that polls don't mean much at this stage of the game. But I suspect as conservatives begin to look at their core issues, they'll find themselves more in tune with John McCain than with Rudy Giuliani.
Well, it's pleasing to see that after months of "What's wrong with McCain?" the coverage is starting to turn to "The Comeback Kid".
While most have thought that McCain is the candidate in trouble, it is actually Giuliani. He has not developed beyond his strong opening burst in February, and has slid sharply in most national polls since then. Little more than a month ago, he had a clear lead in Nevada. In this latest poll, he is fourth, albeit within a half-dozen points of the leader, McCain. His fundraising in the first quarter was strong, but no stronger than that of the third place Democrat, John Edwards. McCain, who seemed hyper in the begininng, delivered an effective performance at the Reagan Library, but Giuliani tended to fade into the woodwork, impressing only with a remarkably diffident answer on the fate of Roe v. Wade. This led him to refocus his campaign on his historical pro-choice stance, a risky move in the Republican primaries, especially the early ones.
Of course, the sine wave will change again in a few months, but it seems likely we are hitting the "McCain Moment" that Ramesh Ponnuru wrote about a couple months ago.
After months of conflicting signals on abortion, Rudolph W. Giuliani is planning to offer a forthright affirmation of his support for abortion rights in public forums, television appearances and interviews in the coming days, despite the potential for bad consequences among some conservative voters already wary of his views, aides said yesterday.
At the same time, Mr. Giuliani’s campaign — seeking to accomplish the unusual task of persuading Republicans to nominate an abortion rights supporter — is eyeing a path to the nomination that would try to de-emphasize the early states in which abortion opponents wield a great deal of influence. Instead they would focus on the so-called mega-primary of Feb. 5, in which voters in states like California, New York and New Jersey are likely to be more receptive to Mr. Giuliani’s social views than voters in Iowa and South Carolina.
Obviously this will cost him some support among the Right to Life folks, but at least it's more honest that Mitt Romney's position.
Looks like the mayor had better not order the new drapes for the Oval Office just yet:
Compared to Quinnipiac's last national poll in February, Mr. Giuliani fell to 27% from 40% — a huge tumble. Mr. Romney barely budged, going to 8% from 7%. Mr. McCain also barely budged, going to 19% from 18%. And Mr. Thompson burst onto the scene, coming in at 14%, having not been included in the last poll (and, as usual, stealing third place from Mr. Romney, despite not having lifted a finger).
And:
While Mr. McCain's favorable-unfavorable ratings have deteriorated slightly with the public at large, he's gained among white Evangelicals while Mr. Giuliani has seen an erosion. In February, Mr. McCain's fav-unfav with white Evangelicals was 53%-24%; now, it's 58%-15%. Among the same group, Mr. Giuliani went from 62%-16% in February to 57%-19% today.
These aren't huge jumps on either side. But they are evidence that Mr. Giuliani's liberal social views are catching up with him, while Mr. McCain is having some success reminding social conservatives that, though he's had some spats with the religious right, his views aren't that far out of the Republican mainstream.
All in all, a good week so far for Mr. McCain in the polls.
Of course, polls this far out aren't worth much, but it's nice to see just the same.
A survey of likely Republican voters in Alabama found that U.S. Sen. John McCain and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani are about even at the top of a crowded GOP field of presidential candidates.
In a Press-Register and University of South Alabama telephone poll of 402 people planning to vote in February's Republican presidential primary, McCain was favored by 23 percent, while Giuliani was the choice of 22 percent of those responding to the survey.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney received 12 percent, followed by actor and former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson, with 10 percent, and former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, with 7 percent. Thompson and Gingrich are considering runs for the GOP nomination, but have not officially entered the race.
Meanwhile, Cliff Kincaid hyperventilates over a proposal by Fox News to limit their debate to candidates with a chance of winning. His point would be valid if Fox weren't setting the bar quite low:
Reports indicate that the candidates will have to register at one percent in various polls before being invited to the debate. But as the AP story noted, “In a variety of national and state polls, seven of the 10 candidates hover around one percent or less.” Four candidates—Hunter, Tancredo, Paul, and Brownback—are at one percent in the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. But it’s not clear this poll will be used to select the debate participants. The three top GOP candidates in the poll who stand to benefit the most from the Fox News decision are Giuliani (at 39 percent in the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll), McCain (24 percent) and Romney (12 percent).
But certainly registering 1% should not be an insurmountable hurdle, and Fox is quite right to insist on at least that kind of support, otherwise we'd have a debate with 1,500 candidates. I suspect that Hunter, Tancredo, Paul and Brownback will be in the debate, but some even more marginal candidates like Mike Huckabee and Jim Gilmore may be left out.
GIULIANI: Partial-birth abortion, I think that's going to be upheld. I think that ban is going to be upheld. I think it should be. And I think, as long as there's provision for the life of the mother, then that's something that should be done.
HANNITY: There's a misconception that you supported partial-birth abortion.
GIULIANI: Yes, well, if it doesn't have a provision for the life of the mother, then I wouldn't support the legislation. If it has provision for the life of the mother, then I would support it.
TIM RUSSERT (host): A banning of late-term abortions, so-called partial-birth abortions -- you're against that?
GIULIANI: I'm against it in New York, because in New York --
RUSSERT: Well, if you were a senator, would you vote with the president or against the president?
GIULIANI: I would vote to preserve the option for women. I think that choice is a very difficult one. It's a very, very -- it's one in which people of conscience have very, very different opinions. I think the better thing for America to do is to leave that choice to the woman, because it affects her probably more than anyone else.
The only problem here? The bill that was proposed in 2000, specifically contained a provision allowing the procedure for the life of the woman:
Clinton has vetoed similar proposals twice. The bill allows for the procedure only if a woman's life is endangered.
It's an annoying habit, but conservatives should consider their other options. By any measure, Rudy Giuliani is the more liberal candidate — indeed, the most liberal serious candidate Republicans have fielded in decades. But because Giuliani made the right enemies — chief among them those vexatious New York Times editors — conservatives respect him, even though they disagree with him on almost everything. And they give the cold shoulder to McCain, who agrees with them on most of the important things.
McCain's been a consistent pro-lifer (which distinguishes him from pretty much everyone else in the race so far). Until recently, Giuliani argued passionately for partial-birth abortion as a constitutional right. McCain has voted to confirm every conservative Supreme Court nominee, including Robert Bork. He voted "guilty" in Bill Clinton's impeachment trial. He campaigned for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, even after Bush beat him. Giuliani says he was ideologically simpatico with Clinton, and he endorsed Democrat Mario Cuomo for governor of New York.
My point isn't merely to make invidious comparisons between McCain and Giuliani (heck, to liberals they're not invidious at all). I'm actually a fan of Giuliani, and I think the GOP and the country could do worse in a president and Republican standard-bearer. But the double standard on the right seems more than a little self-indulgent.
Giuliani's chief selling point seems to be that he'll have "what it takes" to be tough in the war on terror. That may well be the case. But Giuliani's foreign policy experience is, at best, limited. Meanwhile, McCain's experience is deeper than the rest of the field's combined. There's no evidence that Giuliani is more of a hawk than McCain, who has spent the last four years arguing that Bush needs to be more aggressive in Iraq and who argued for a troop "surge" years before anyone used the word.
"Ultimately, it's a constitutional right, and therefore if it's a constitutional right, ultimately, even if you do it on a state by state basis, you have to make sure people are protected," Giuliani said in an interview with CNN's Dana Bash in Florida's capital city.
A video clip of the then-mayoral candidate issuing a similar declaration in 1989 in a speech to the "Women's Coalition" appeared recently on the Internet.
"There must be public funding for abortions for poor women," Giuliani says in the speech that is posted on the video sharing site YouTube. "We cannot deny any woman the right to make her own decisions about abortion."
When asked directly Wednesday if he still supported the use of public funding for abortions, Giuliani said "Yes."
"If it would deprive someone of a constitutional right," he explained, "If that's the status of the law, yes."
But the presidential candidate reiterated his personal opposition to the practice.
"I'm in the same position now that I was 12 years ago when I ran for mayor -- which is, personally opposed to abortion, don't like it, hate it, would advise that woman to have an adoption rather than abortion, hope to find the money for it," he said. "But it is your choice, an individual right. You get to make that choice, and I don't think society should be putting you in jail."
That's a big part of why I think abortion should be legal myself; but I support the repeal of Roe (leave the issue up to the states), and I oppose taxpayer-funded abortions. Let the feminists raise money to pay for them.
Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign raised a record-setting $26 million for her presidential campaign in the first three months of a year, an impressive feat that may nonetheless be overshadowed in the next few days by news that Sen. Barack Obama managed to keep pace.
Is Fred Thompson a serious candidate? Bob Novak says yes:
Thompson's popularity reflects weakness among announced Republican candidates, as reflected in the Gallup survey. Sen. McCain, no longer an insurgent but still not accepted by conservatives, is stuck in the 20-25 percent range. Former New York City Mayor Giuliani has dropped precipitously from 44 percent to 31 percent, amid attacks on his ideology and personal life. Most startling, despite a well-financed, well-organized campaign, Romney has fallen to 3 percent.
Authenticity and star power conjure visions of Ronald Reagan. But Reagan had genuine experience running something—namely the state of California. Thompson's résumé is thin—an undistinguished eight years in the Senate, an acting career, and a youthful turn as co-counsel in the Watergate hearings. Supporters try to pump up his résumé by boasting that he shepherded John Roberts through his confirmation hearings—but that was the legal equivalent of walking Michael Jordan onto the court.
Republican Mitt Romney reported raising $23 million for his presidential campaign during the first three months of the year, shaking up the GOP field and rivaling the total reported a day earlier by Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton.
However, that 3% poll rating may dry the well up rapidly. And indeed, Mitt's money man sounds like he's thinking of moving on:
"Back in January, I had no idea that Fred was even thinking about it," Welch said. "I went ahead and committed to (Massachusetts Gov.) Mitt Romney because I thought he was the best of the lot that had shown interest in running. It would be very inappropriate and very unfair for me to say to Mitt Romney, 'Hey, Fred Thompson decided to run and I'm gone. Bye.' I'm not going to do anything like that. I made a commitment, and I'm going to stick with it, so long as he is in the race.
"If he, for some reason, were to drop out, my choice would naturally be Fred Thompson."
Welch made sure to say that last sentence several times: If Romney's out, Thompson is Welch's guy.
Animal Rights nutbars are up in arms over Rudy's wife's involvement with a firm that operated on dogs to demonstrate medical staples.
I don't think there is any doubt that the first half of that description fits the bill; Hizzoner is pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-gun control. And, I hasten to add, these are positions that should not disqualify one from being the Republican presidential nominee. My objection to Mitt Romney was not that he was a social liberal, but that he was trying to pass himself off as a social conservative.
But we do have to look closely at the second half of that billing. Is Rudy a good steward of the people's finances? Does he put on the green eyeshades, sharpen his pencil and carefully mind the bottom line?
Perhaps the biggest difference [between Giuliani and his successor, Michael Bloomberg] is on fiscal issues. Giuliani, who lost interest in curtailing the growth of city government in his latter years, left behind a fiscal catastrophe—a $6.4 billion deficit proportionately bigger than the hole that caused the 1975 fiscal shortfall.
That's pretty bad, but of course the question is whether it's 9-11 related. A Business Week article from 2002 indicates that much of it is not:
It's not just because of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Bloomberg has also been forced to confront two dismaying facts: First, New York's economy is more cyclical than the nation's because it depends heavily on Wall Street, whose profits are highly volatile. Second, New York has high fixed costs, including more debt per dollar of property value than any major city except long-suffering Philadelphia and perhaps Detroit. That combination--a cyclical economy and high fixed costs--virtually guarantees a fiscal crisis during an economic slowdown
Translation: You've got to manage spending during the good years. So the question becomes, how well did Rudy manage spending during his tenure?
Answer: Not all that well. According to New York's Independent Budget Office, total budgeted expenditures grew from $31.8 billion in 1995 (Rudy's first budget year) to $44.6 billion in 2003, an increase of 40.3%. By comparison, the inflation rate from January 1995 to January 2003 was 20.89% according to this inflation rate calculator. Thus, New York City's spending under Rudy grew at a rate twice that of inflation.
Now, in fairness, some of this was 9-11 related, but the Manhattan Institute notes that even if 9-11 had not occured, the city was facing a sharp budget shortfall caused by overspending during the good years:
But even if the events of September 11 had never occurred, the next mayor was destined to confront hard fiscal times. Recurring expenditures were on track to exceed recurring revenues by at least $2 billion in Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s last budget—an operating deficit he temporarily covered with prior year surpluses. Sooner or later, something was going to have to give: spending, or taxes.
Why is the city’s fiscal condition deteriorating again after eight years of a mayor who initially embraced such a fiscally conservative agenda? After a promising start, where and how did his policies go wrong? And what should Mayor Bloomberg learn from Giuliani’s experience?
Answer:
The scope of government was not reduced at all. The mayor abandoned his most visible initiative in this sphere—the proposed sale of the city hospital system—after a struggle with the unions and defeats in the courts. He did cut costs in social services; even before the new federal welfare reforms took effect in 1997, the city had begun to significantly reduce caseloads. But money saved on social services has only helped to subsidize big increases in other categories. Today the array of social services sponsored and partially funded by the city—from day care to virtually guaranteed housing—is as wide as ever.
And:
In 1995–96, the city entered into a series of collective bargaining agreements with its public-employee unions. In addition to granting pay increases that ended up roughly equaling inflation, the city promised not to lay off any workers for the life of the contracts. These agreements were expected to add $2.2 billion to the budget by fiscal 2001. But that estimate didn’t reckon with renewed growth in the number of city employees. After dipping in Giuliani’s first two years, the full-time headcount rose from 235,069, in June 1996 to over 253,000 by November 2000. Thanks largely to this growth in the workforce, the total increase in personnel service costs since 1995 has been $4 billion.
Over the past quarter-century, New York City has experienced two periods of steep economic decline accompanied by fiscal crisis or stress, followed by two extended periods of growth. In both economic crisis periods (1970-77 and 1989-93) the city's fiscal problems were compounded by rising debt burdens which forced the city to set aside larger shares of shrinking or stagnant budgets for debt service payments. During the two economic expansion periods, however, the city has taken different paths in terms of debt management. Over the 1978-88 recovery and growth period, New York City sharply reduced the mountain of debt it had inherited from the fiscal crisis. In the current recovery and growth period (dating from 1994), the city's debt burden has become heavier relative to ability-to-pay.
The New York Times noted in 2003 that the city's debt per capita was very high compared to other cities:
New York City's debt burden is twice that of other large cities in the United States, and the cost of repaying it accounts for 15 cents of every dollar the city collects, according to a report released yesterday by Comptroller William C. Thompson Jr. Nonetheless, the report said that the city's level of indebtedness, although high, is still $8.5 billion below the legal limit of $40 billion. Municipal debt in New York, which pays for capital projects like school construction and bridge repairs, totaled $5,645 per resident in the fiscal year that ended in June, a 127 percent increase since 1990, the report said. By comparison, per capita debt was $3,600 in Chicago, $1,700 in Los Angeles and $1,400 in Boston.
“The 1997 Local Tax Effort In New York City ($7.99 Per $100 Of City Taxable Resources) Was 79 Percent Greater Than The Average Local Tax Effort For The Next Nine Largest U.S. Cities ($4.47).”
How's he on tax cuts? Steve Forbes recently endorsed him, apparently forgetting that Rudy opposed his flat-tax plan back in 1996.
Back in 1996 when he was mayor, Giuliani dismissed Forbes' notion of a flat-tax as a "mistake," saying "the flat tax is not for me" because it would give states and cities more authority but less resources.
Indeed, although Rudy did cut some taxes, he has been extremely resistant to any serious tax-cutting. Consider his 1994 endorsement of Mario Cuomo:
Why did he endorse Cuomo? Because he opposed Pataki's platform of tax cuts for New York State.
The most spectacular maneuver was executed by New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani when he crossed party lines to endorse Mario Cuomo over George Pataki - "giving artificial respiration," as Bill Buckley put it, "to a political corpse far gone in decomposition" - on the grounds that the corpse would aid the city more generously. In so doing, Mayor Giuliani jettisoned one of the chief rationales for his own campaign last year. By pinning the city's hopes on government largesse rather than on reformist tax policies, he embraced the timid, static analysis of former Mayor David Dinkins. If Giuliani is right now, Dinkins was right then; so why should Giuliani be mayor? Mr. Giuliani also dimmed his future in Republican politics at the state or national level. Instead of urging conservative Democrats to join the Republican coalition - the strategy of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan - he broke Republican ranks to bolster a liberal Democrat.
Indeed, resistance to tax cuts seems to be a habit with Giuliani. In the late 1990s, Giuliani fought hard against the repeal of a commuter tax on people who work in New York City but live elsewhere.
Over the objections of a furious Mayor Giuliani and city legislators from both parties, the New York state legislature has abolished the New York City commuter tax. The action, done to apparently affect a local legislative race in suburban Rockland County, could cost New York City $360 million.
Commuter taxes are particularly pernicious, precisely because they follow the old gag of "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax the man behind the tree." Giuliani continued to lobby for reinstatement of the tax over the years, even after leaving office as mayor.
Although the media have been trying to sell the idea of a McCain collapse, this poll suggests strongly otherwise:
The candidates can be grouped as follows:
I. Very well-liked candidates with high favorable to unfavorable ratios of more than two to one:
* Rudy Giuliani * Barack Obama * John McCain
In fact McCain has a huge net positive rating compared to (say) Hillary Clinton. I happen to be one of those folks who think that Giuliani and Obama's high positives represent a ceiling, while McCain's represent a floor.
The better news for McCain lies in the other ratings. Mitt Romney barely comes out a positive (23-19) among those who are familiar with him, while Newt Gingrich gets a horrific -20 (29-49). If you want to know why he's not in the race, that's your answer.
Baptists and other evangelicals may have a tough time supporting him due to the circumstances of his second divorce/third marriage.
“I mean, this is divorce on steroids,” Land said. “To publicly humiliate your wife in that way, and your children. That's rough. I think that's going to be an awfully hard sell, even if he weren't pro-choice and pro-gun control.”
Americans like New York City, as officials in both parties are quick to say. Most find it vibrant, entertaining and an object of sympathy and pride since the terrorist attacks five and a half years ago that made Mr. Giuliani the national contender he is today.
But the city, with all its tumult and rough edges, is not for everyone. And few people embody all the complicated facets of New York City as much as Mr. Giuliani.
He is swaggering, brash and opinionated and loves to stick his thumb in the eye of conventional political norms. Those traits won him some acclaim in New York, not to mention a lot of tabloid headlines. But he can also be temperamental, controlling, capricious, volatile and, in the words of Edward I. Koch, a former Democratic mayor who supported Mr. Giuliani in his successful bid for a second term, “mean-spirited.”
In an article on the supposed troubles of John McCain, the Wall Street Journal notes hints that Rudy's support may ebb:
The senator's top political strategist, John Weaver, calls himself "quite serene" about the campaign's predicament, reflecting the McCain team's judgment that the Giuliani boomlet will fade. The Journal/NBC poll itself suggests that may well happen, as voters learn more about the New Yorker.
Dick Morris Should Stick to Getting His Toes Sucked
Okay, now that I've got that out of the way, how about this trenchant piece of analysis from Morris on John McCain? That is, if trenchant means pulled out of a trench.
Morris claims, and the headline states, that John McCain's campaign has collapsed:
The John McCain candidacy, launched amid much hope, fanfare, and high expectations, may be dying before our eyes.
Even worse, it may go out with a whimper instead of a bang.
Now, gee, pardon me for not being shocked that Townhall, which features Hugh Hewitt, might be a little less than impartial with regard to McCain. But get the slim reed that convinces Morris that it's all over for the Arizona Senator:
Throughout all of 2006, McCain sat atop the polls right next to Rudy Giuliani. In the Fox News survey of December, 2006, he was getting 27 percent of the Republican primary vote to Rudy's 31 percent. But, after Giuliani announced that he was running, the Arizona senator fell to 24 percent while Rudy soared into the stratosphere at 41 percent of the primary voters.
So to Morris, collapsing is the loss of 3 percentage points, which is probably below the margin of error. And Giuliani's rise is to 38%, according to Time. Obviously the real story in this poll is that Mitt Romney, who, by the way, Townhall's Hugh Hewitt has been pumping, has vanished:
In addition to McCain's swoon, the other possible top contender, Mitt Romney has stalled and is falling backwards. His flip-flop-flip from pro-life to pro-choice and back to pro-life again is not winning him any converts.
Again, McCain's "swoon" is the loss of three percentage points, from 27 to 24. Mitt Romney? Down to 7%.
Obviously, Giuliani's strength has to be of some concern to McCainiacs like me. Some conservatives are reacting to Giuliani's undeniable heroics on 9-11. Dick Morris said something on Medved's show about how it may come down to who Americans want in charge in the first seven minutes of a crisis. Morris is an entertainer, which is not a knock, but no president in history has needed to be amazing in the first seven minutes of a crisis, and God willing, none ever will.
Giuliani will enjoy a honeymoon with the national press, but sooner or later the sine wave of political coverage demands that he'll get pressured about his second divorce and his pro-choice beliefs, and somebody will remember that hey, wasn't Rudy about to get beaten by Hillary Clinton in 2000 when he dropped out of the race because of the former?
McCain fans should be happy that the race is evolving into a two-man showdown, especially given that the usual complaint I hear about McCain is that he's not a true conservative. Compared to Rudy he looks pretty good.
Oh, and the "wasted" comment was clearly a mistake. Unfortunate, but nobody can say that John McCain's a quitter, either on Vietnam or Iraq. And in order to believe those lives will be really be wasted, you have to think John McCain's going to quit on Iraq.
