Getting to know 'the real Rudy'

The same Beltway experts who declared Sen. John McCain of Arizona the GOP front-runner, even as he under-polled fellow presidential contender Rudolph Giuliani, now parrot equally dodgy concepts. When Republicans meet "the real Rudy," they will abandon New York's former mayor like cattle fleeing a burning barn. Then, the wobbly Washington wisdom continues, Giuliani's three marriages, and his less-than-solidly-right-wing views on gays, guns and gametes will torpedo his buoyant presidential hopes.

These seers now detect unhappiness with the GOP aspirants. They cite a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll in which 26 percent of Republican primary voters were dissatisfied with Giuliani, McCain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, among others. However, 56 percent called these choices satisfactory. This mirrors the 57 percent of conservative Republicans who preferred Giuliani, versus 31 percent for McCain. More broadly, Republicans backed Giuliani by 38 percent to McCain's 24, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's 10, Romney's 8, and 2 percent each for Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

But what if voters like Giuliani better upon understanding his pre-9/11 performance? Educating Republicans on his complete mayoral record - and soon - may be Giuliani's best bet for extinguishing the lingering grumbling about his candidacy.

Americans vividly remember Giuliani emerging from the ashes of Sept. 11 like a latter-day Churchill rising from the rubble of the London Blitz. However, these involved and informed citizens knew startlingly little about Giuliani's other mayoral achievements:

Through robust policing, Giuliani drove overall crime down 56.1 percent, while chopping homicides 66.6 percent, from 1,946 in 1993 to 649 in 2001.

Following national trends, abortions on Giuliani's watch dropped 16.9 percent, while taxpayer-funded Medicaid abortions plunged 23 percent.

Gotham's foster-care population fell 38 percent as Giuliani helped loving families adopt 17,804 boys and girls.

By fighting fraud and finding work for legitimate beneficiaries, Giuliani cut welfare rolls 58 percent, starting two years before federal welfare reform. Giuliani renamed welfare offices "Job Centers."

Giuliani privatized 23,625 previously confiscated, city-owned dwellings, 78 percent of supply, benefiting family and individual homeowners and tenants.

Giuliani dumped Gotham's 20 percent set-aside and 10 percent overbid bonus for minority and female contractors. "The whole idea of quotas to me perpetuates discrimination," he explained. He initiated this on his 24th day in office, far exceeding any colorblindness legislation Congress even debated during the 12-year "Republican Revolution."

Giuliani's $10 million Charter School Improvement Fund helped 3,286 pupils in 17 new charter schools, up from $0 and zero campuses in 1997. He ended tenure for school principals, so slackers could be sacked. He also stopped social promotion; students needed to complete grade-level work to matriculate.

Ex-pornography mecca Times Square now welcomes families, tourists and locals for fully clothed musicals like "The Lion King" and "Mary Poppins."

Beyond these socially conservative victories, Giuliani governed as a Reaganesque supply-sider:

Giuliani scrapped three taxes and slashed 20 others, lowering Gotham's tax burden by 17 percent and saving individual and business taxpayers $9.8 billion.

While inflation averaged 3.9 percent, Giuliani's average spending grew 2.9 percent annually. If the departed GOP Congress were that fiscally disciplined, the next federal budget would be $2.275 trillion - $625 billion cheaper than proposed.

While hiring 12 percent more cops and 12.8 percent more teachers, Giuliani sliced other positions 17.2 percent. Overall, the municipal headcount fell 3.1 percent.

Rudy got this done thanks largely to a management style that he described recently at a $2 million Manhattan fund-raiser: "I'm impatient and single-minded about my goals."

Before Giuliani's enemies caricature him as a divorce-driven, abortion-peddling, gun-grabbing transvestite, he should familiarize Republicans with his mayoral accomplishments. From Westwood to Washington's echo chamber, Rudy Giuliani and his supporters should specify how he rescued America's largest left-wing city through Reaganite social and economic reforms.

>>>Though some criticized the Mattachine movement as insular, it grew to include thousands of members in dozens of chapters, which formed from Berkeley to Buffalo, and created a lasting national framework for gay organizing. Mattachine set the stage for rapid civil rights gains following 1969’s Stonewall riots in New York City.<<<

Harry Hay
Pioneer, coalition-builder and radical faerie
Nov., 2002

Henry “Harry” Hay, the founder of the modern American gay movement, died on October 24, 2002 at age 90. He had been diagnosed weeks earlier with lung cancer. Despite his illness, he remained lucid to the end and died peacefully in his sleep at his home in San Francisco.

“Harry Hay’s determined, visionary activism significantly lifted gays out of op-pression,” said Stuart

Timmons, who published a biography of Hay, called “The Trouble with Harry Hay,” in 1990. “All gay people continue to benefit from his fierce affirmation of gays as a people.”

Hay devoted his entire life to progressive politics, and in 1950 founded a state-registered foundation network of support groups for gays known as the Mattachine Society.

Hay was also a co-founder, in 1979, of the Radical Faeries, a movement affirming gayness as a form of spiritual calling. A rare link between gay and progressive politics, Hay and his partner of 39 years, John Burnside, had lived in San Francisco for three years after a lifetime in Los Angeles. Hay is listed in histories of the American gay movement as the first person to apply the term “minority” to homosexuals. An uncompromising radical, he easily dismissed “the heteros” and never rested from challenging the status quo, including within the gay community.

“Harry was one of the first to realize that the dream of equality for our community could be attained through visibility and activism,” said David M. Smith of the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, DC. “When you were in a room with him, you had the sense you were in the company of a historic figure.”

Due to the pervasive homophobia of his times (it was illegal for more than two homosexuals to congregate in California during the 1950s), Hay and his colleagues took an oath of anonymity that lasted a quarter century until Jonathan Ned Katz interviewed Hay for the ground-breaking book “Gay American History,” published in 1976. Countless researchers subsequently sought him out. In recent years, Hay became the subject of a biography, a PBS-funded documentary, and an anthology of his own writings called “Radically Gay: Gay Liberation in the Words of Its Founder.”

Before the establishment of the Mattachine Society, attempts to create gay organizations in the United States had fizzled or been stamped out. Hay’s first organizational conception was a group he called Bachelors Anonymous, formed to both support and leverage the 1948 presidential candidacy of Progressive Party leader Henry Wallace. Hay wrote and discreetly circulated a prospectus calling for “the androgynous minority” to organize as a political entity.

Hay’s call for an “international bachelor’s fraternal order for peace and social dignity” did not bear results until 1950. That year, his love affair with Viennese immigrant Rudi Gernreich (whose fashion designs eventually earned him a place on the cover of Time magazine), brought Hay into gay circles where a critical mass of daring souls could be found to begin sustained meetings. On November 11, 1950, at Hay’s home in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles, a group of gay men met which became the Mattachine Society. Of the original Mattachine founders, Chuck Rowland, Bob Hull, and Dale Jennings pre-deceased Hay. Konrad Stevens and John Gruber are the last surviving members of the founding group.

“Mattachine” took its name from a group of medieval dancers who appeared publicly only in mask, a device well understood by homosexuals of the 1950s. Hay devised its secret cell structure (based on the Masonic order) to protect individual gays and the nascent gay network. Officially co-gender, the group was largely male -- the Daughters of Bilitis, the pioneering lesbian organization, formed independently in San Francisco in 1956.

Though some criticized the Mattachine movement as insular, it grew to include thousands of members in dozens of chapters, which formed from Berkeley to Buffalo, and created a lasting national framework for gay organizing. Mattachine set the stage for rapid civil rights gains following 1969’s Stonewall riots in New York City.

Harry Hay was born in England in 1912, the day the Titanic sank. His father worked as a mining engineer in South Africa and Chile, but the family settled in Southern California. After graduating from Los Angeles High School, he briefly attended Stanford, but dropped out and returned to Los Angeles. He understood from childhood that he was a sissy -- different in behavior from boys or girls -- and also that he was attracted to men. His same-sex affairs began when he was a teenager, not long after he began reading 19th century scholar Edward Carpenter, whose essays on “homogenic love” strongly influenced his thinking.

A tall and muscular young man, Hay worked as both an extra and ghostwriter in 1930s Hollywood. He developed a passion for theater, and performed on Los Angeles stages with Anthony Quinn in the 1930s, and with Will Geer, who became his lover. Geer (who later generations grew to love as Grandpa Walton on the TV series “The Waltons”), took Hay to the San Francisco General Strike of 1934, and indoctrinated him into the American Communist Party. Hay became an active trade unionist. A blend of Marxist analysis and stagecraft strongly influenced his later gay organizing.

Despite a decade of gay life, in 1938 Hay married the late Anita Platky, also a Communist Party member. The couple were stalwarts of the Los Angeles Left. Hay taught at the California Labor School and worked on domestic campaigns like that for Ed Roybal, the first Latino elected in Los Angeles. The Hayses occasionally hosted Pete Seeger when he performed in Los Angeles, and Hay recalled demonstrating with Josephine Baker in 1945 over the Jim Crow segregation policy of a local restaurant. When he felt compelled to go public with the Mattachine Society in 1951, Hay and his wife divorced.

After a burst of activity lasting three years, the growing Mattachine rejected Hay as a liability due to his Communist beliefs. In 1955, when he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, he had trouble finding a progressive attorney to represent him. He felt this was due to homophobia on the Left. (He was ultimately dismissed after his curt, brief testimony was deemed unimportant.) Hay felt exiled from the Left for nearly fifty years, until he received the Life Achievement Award of a Los Angeles library preserving the history and artifacts of progressive movements.

A second wind of activism came in 1979 when Hay founded, with Don Kilhefner, a spiritual movement known as the Radical Faeries. This pagan-inspired group continues internationally based on the principle that the consciousness of gays differs from that of heterosexuals. Hay believed that this different way of seeing constituted the greatest contribution gays made to society, and was indeed the reason for their continued presence throughout history.

For most of his life Hay lived in Los Angeles. However, during the early 1940s, Hay and his wife lived in New York City. He returned there with John Burnside to march and speak at the Stonewall 25 celebration in 1994. During the 1970s, he and Burnside moved to New Mexico, where he ran the trading post at San Juan Pueblo Indian reservation.

His years of research for gay references in history and anthropology texts led Hay to formulate his own gay-centered political philosophy, which he wrote and spoke about constantly. His theory of “gay consciousness” placed variant thinking as the most significant trait in homosexuals. “We differ most from heterosexuals in how we perceive the world. That ability to offer insights and solutions is our contribution to humanity, and why our people keep reappearing over the millennia,” he often stressed.

Hay’s occasional exhortations that gays should “maximize the differences” between themselves and heterosexuals remained controversial. Some academics and activists seeking full integration of gays and lesbians into straight society tended to reject his ideas while still respecting his historic stature.

A fixture at anti-draft and anti-war demonstrations for sixty years, Hay worked in Women’s Strike for Peace during the Vietnam War as a conscious strategy to build a coalition between gay and feminist progressives. He also worked closely with Native American activists, especially the Committee for Traditional Indian Land and Life. Hay was a local founder of the Lavender Caucus of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition during the early 1980s, and was determined to convince the gay community that its political success was inextricably tied to a broader progressive agenda.

Despite his often-combative nature, Hay became an increasingly beloved figure to younger generations of gay activists. He was often referred to as the “Father of Gay Liberation.”

Hay is survived by Burnside as well as by his self-chosen gay family, a model he strongly advocated for lesbians and gays. His adopted daughters, Kate Berman and Hannah Muldaven, also survive him. A circle of Radical Faeries provided care for him and Burnside through their later years.

Harry Hay leaves behind a wide circle of friends and admirers among lesbians, gays, and progressive activists. Donations in his memory can be made to the San Francisco GLBT Community Center, 1800 Market Street, San Francisco CA 94102 (identify it for the Harry and John Founders Wall plaque), or to the One Institute and Archives, 909 West Adams Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90007.

[This obituary was prepared by Stuart Timmons, Hay’s official biographer, historian Martin Duberman, Joey Cain of the San Francisco GLBT Pride Parade, and Harry Hay’s niece, Sally Hay. IN Step’s Jamakaya also contributed to the story.]

NAMBLA emerged from the tumultuous political atmosphere of the 1970s, particularly from the leftist wing of the Gay Liberation movement which followed the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City. Although discussion of gay adult-minor sex did take place, gay rights groups immediately following the Stonewall Riot were more concerned with issues of police harassment, nondiscrimination in employment, health care and other areas.

More at this thread

HARRY HAY
and the
SPIRIT OF STONEWALL
New York, 1994

Harry made the following statement to a press conference on June 24, 1994, in the former Stonewall Inn on Sheridan Square in New York, site of the riots that launched the modern gay movement in June 1969. The press conference was called to announce the Spirit of Stonewall (SOS) contingent in the Stonewall 25 march two days later. It was moderated by SOS co-organizer and indefatigable activist Bill Dobbs. Other participants were Christine Martin, sex educator and documentary filmmaker; Glenda Orgasm (aka Glenn Belverio), drag queen activist and filmmaker; Scott O�Hara, editor and publisher of Steam magazine; Val Langmuir of Feminists Against Censorship (London); Julia Smedley, member of Stonewall Now; and Charley Shively of Fag Rag and professor of American Studies at the University of Massachusetts.
This statement was transcribed from a videotape of the press conference. A much shorter version�which omits any mention of NAMBLA or SOS, as well as the entire last half of the statement and the first paragraph�appeared in Radically Gay: Gay Liberation in the Words of Its Founder Harry Hay, ed. Will Roscoe (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), p. 303. These omissions seem odd in view of the fact that Harry read from a written text. The truncated version also used capital letters for words such as �Brothers and Sisters� and �Queers,� a convention that is not followed here since this complete version is not based on a written text.

Sir Julian Huxley, the great English biologist, said, at the beginning of this century, no negative trait�and, as you know, a negative trait is one that does not reproduce itself�no negative trait ever appears, and reappears, millennia after millennia after millennia, unless it in some way serves the survival of that species. We gays and lesbians may embody, or have discovered, some things that you folks desperately need to know about.
I�m here today as a survivor, as well as the founder of the first ongoing gay organization in the United States, the Mattachine Society, first formed in 1950 in Los Angeles, and now, naturally, a member of SOS, the Spirit of Stonewall, because things we discovered about ourselves and principles we developed in 1950 to �53 are now being trashed by queers who don�t know their own history, all over the place.
We decided from the beginning that, first, because we were still discovering our parameters, we wouldn�t censure each other. If people like NAMBLA self-identify themselves to me as gays and lesbians, I accept them as brothers and sisters with love.
Second, when we decided to rejoin the social or political mainstream again, we would integrate as the group we saw ourselves to be, complete with our own set of values, or we would not integrate at all.
And third, we would no longer permit any heteros�nationally or internationally, individually or collectively�to tell us who we are, what persons our groups should or should not consist of. We assert our right to self-determination, we assert our right to collective self-definition. We queers will decide for ourselves who our members should be.
Members of SOS, notably NAMBLA, have been accused of child molestation. Insofar as child molestation is concerned, the most common form is the sexual coercion by which gay and lesbian children are bedeviled into hetero identities and behaviors. And this is practiced daily by the whole national and international hetero community�parents, family, teachers, preachers, doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs, not to overlook U.S. senators and pooh-bah media.
This outrageous coercion of gay kids into hetero identities and behaviors against their wills is not only sexually abusive, it is spiritually devastating rape, because the child unbeknowingly is being led into developing self-loathing at the same time. For this gigantic criminal trespass against not only today�s children but against all of us also�all of us�since childhood, from the queers my age of 82 down through all the generations of queers assembled here in New York, to the gay kids still being bedeviled by sexual coercion against their wills, we the international gay and lesbian people here this week should unite to sue the whole guilty heterosexual community lock, stock, and barrel to within an inch of their lives, and for every nickel they�ve got, as a beginning of compensation. And while we�re at it, we should request our first-class citizenship as well. This could be the class-action suit of the century.

Copyright Ã‚Â© NAMBLA, 2003. All rights reserved.

Post 32, Harry Hay is speaking on this parade: SPIRIT OF STONEWALL, New York, 1994

More on this parade:

"Stonewall at 25," October 1994.

On June 26, 1994, scores of fully naked men and women marched in an illegal parade yelling "F___ You" at those on the steps of St. Patrick's Cathedral. They masturbated in the street, pointed their middle fingers at the Cathedral, did satanic dances and dressed as cardinals, nuns, and priests. All of this was done in full view of Police Commissioner William Bratton and the New York City police force. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani watched from above in a helicopter. No one was arrested for anything.

...

...(re the '95 parade...): ..."All the usual suspects were there: drag queens, cross-dressers on Rollerblades, the Butch/Femme Society, the sado-macho brigade in black leather, Men of Discipline and other lovely types. Commercialism was most evident as about a third of the floats were sponsored by various gay bars and clubs. Though there were no signs indicating that the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) was there, the child molesters were listed in the program..."

...There were men dressed as women and there were fairies on stilts. Hundreds of men wore nothing but jock straps, shaking their bodies to the beat of the blaring rock music. Olympic diving champion Greg Louganis was one of the grand marshals and pop singer Cyndi Lauper danced and sang her hit "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun." Strange looking people were everywhere and often it was difficult to tell whether it was a man or a woman, and in some cases it appeared that it was both. And yes, some of the girls did bare their breasts (a few of them apparently spray painted their chests), but in all fairness it must be said that most of the girls managed to keep their clothes on. The police carried yellow blankets to cover the girls up but decided against using them. Following tradition, no one was arrested.

There's a fat and ugly guy who shows up every year dressed as the pope carrying a sign "My church organ is bigger than yours." He was there again this year. There was one car that passed by with a string of unrelated four letter words and sexual terms on it. Some marchers wore shirts with various vulgarities inscribed on them. There were large pictures of men performing oral sex and there were several examples of men simulating oral sex live atop the floats. The latter exhibition led Norm Siegel of the ACLU to declare "I love watching the First Amendment in action," thus demonstrating how far we've come in our understanding of free speech.

No Gay Pride Parade would be complete without a little Catholic bashing. It should be noted that the place where the march began, 52nd Street, is not a major cross street, making it all the more conspicuous what the intent was in starting there. If Catholic bashing wasn't central to the parade, then surely the request to start the march just south of the Cathedral would have been granted. Indeed, when Janice Thom, the co- chairman of the parade's sponsors, Heritage of Pride, was asked to comment on my statement that her group had deliberately targeted St. Patrick's, she responded briskly, "That's an interesting idea."

The most flagrant anti-Catholicism came from Catholic Ladies for Choice. In this group, there were gays and lesbians dressed as nuns carrying coat hangers and lesbians dressed as nuns carrying tambourines. Most incredible was the gay man who wore a black bra and a black jock strap with a huge set of rosary beads wrapped around his otherwise naked body. There was also someone dressed as the pope with a banner that read, "The Catholic Church, a history of murder, lies, censorship, oppression, and hypocrisy."

And what did Mayor Giuliani have to say about all this? He called it a "very dignified parade."

Here's my search, they're not that. That happens when titles change.

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Getting to know 'the real Rudy'

Posted by SJackson
On News/Activism 03/25/2007 8:11:52 AM CDT · 37 replies · 260+ views

Ocala.com ^ | 3-25-07 | DEROY MURDOCK
The same Beltway experts who declared Sen. John McCain of Arizona the GOP front-runner, even as he under-polled fellow presidential contender Rudolph Giuliani, now parrot equally dodgy concepts. When Republicans meet "the real Rudy," they will abandon New York's former mayor like cattle fleeing a burning barn. Then, the wobbly Washington wisdom continues, Giuliani's three marriages, and his less-than-solidly-right-wing views on gays, guns and gametes will torpedo his buoyant presidential hopes. These seers now detect unhappiness with the GOP aspirants. They cite a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll in which 26 percent of Republican primary voters were dissatisfied with...

Mort Zuckerman on Rudy Giuliani's political views (SHORT VIDEO)

Posted by pissant
On News/Activism 03/24/2007 2:39:19 PM CDT · 20 replies · 332+ views

Youtube ^ | April 2006 | Mort Zuckerman

Poll: Gingrich Receives Big Backing on Web (RINO Rudy drubbed on another net poll)

Posted by Ol' Sparky
On News/Activism 03/24/2007 12:16:40 PM CDT · 25 replies · 295+ views

NewsMax ^ | 3/24/07 | Staff
Gee, where ever conservatives congregate and vote online, they choose a conservative over RINO Rudy. That's been overwhelming true here, at Sean Hannity's website and, now, at NewsMax. It seems informed conservatives don't want a RINO as the GOP nominee.

3 TIMES A LADY; RUDY RUSHES TO JUDI'S DEFENSE (but did Judi come clean about children?)

Posted by Liz
On News/Activism 03/24/2007 8:43:54 AM CDT · 110 replies · 1,339+ views

NY POST ^ | March 24, 2007 | DAVID FINNIGAN, ERIC LENKOWITZ and TODD VENEZIA
<p>Rudy Giuliani said his wife, Judith, came clean as soon as they met about her secret first husband - and insisted that the revelation would not hurt his chances of becoming president.....The first lady-wannabe dropped the matrimonial bombshell this week, by revealing publicly for the first time in an interview with The Post that she had been married before meeting "America's mayor" not once, but twice. She wed her hitherto-unknown first husband Jeffery Scott Ross in a whirlwind Las Vegas ceremony in 1974. The couple divorced in 1979 - just a few months before she wed Bruce Nathan, with whom she had a daughter, Whitney.....The Giulianis have six marriages between them, including the former mayor's first marriage, to second cousin Regina Peruggi, in 1968 and his wedding to TV personality Donna Hanover, the mother of his two children, in 1984.</p>

McCain's Lead Narrows in Arizona (Rudy Guiliani Closes In On John McCain In Arizona)

Posted by areafiftyone
On News/Activism 03/23/2007 5:49:52 PM CDT · 23 replies · 328+ views

Political Insider ^ | 3/23/07
Rudy Giuliani trails John McCain by only nine points in McCain's home state, according to the latest Behavior Research Center Rocky Mountain poll. John McCain leads in Arizona with 34%, followed by Giuliani with 25%, Romney with 11%, Gingrich with 5% and Hagel with 2%. In January, McCain led Giuliani, 40% to 13%. POLL CALL BE VIEWED HERE Rocky Mountain Poll

Romney Wins A South Carolina Straw Poll (Rudy Second McCain Third)

Posted by areafiftyone
On News/Activism 03/23/2007 1:31:26 PM CDT · 31 replies · 304+ views

Hotline | 3/23/07
h3>March 23, 2007 Romney Wins A South Carolina Straw Poll This proves he's still popular with the young 'uns. Ex-MA Gov. Mitt Romney won the SC Colleagiate Republican Organization's straw poll yesterday. Ironically, the SCCRO's convention this year was keynoted by State Sen. John Courson, a major backer of Sen. John McCain's. No word on whether -- or how much -- Romney's campaign paid to move the vote here. Mitt Romney 53% Rudy Giuliani 19% John McCain 15%

Sen. McCain on Rudy Giuliani: 'He's Very Popular'

Posted by areafiftyone
On News/Activism 03/23/2007 11:36:45 AM CDT · 45 replies · 342+ views

NewsMax ^ | 3/23/07
Arizona Sen. John McCain, running a distant second to fellow Republican Rudy Giuliani in recent New Jersey presidential polls, visited the Garden State on Thursday, stumping for money and hoping to advance his standing. McCain, who attended two fundraisers in Newark, acknowledged the rising popularity of Giuliani, his chief rival for the Republican nomination, and said his own poll numbers remained stagnant as Giuliani's soared. "It's understandable he's very popular," McCain said of the former New York City mayor. "I think we have a long way to go. I don't underestimate him or anybody else in this race." A Quinnipiac...

Rudy Memo: Strong And Growing

Posted by areafiftyone
On News/Activism 03/23/2007 11:17:13 AM CDT · 73 replies · 708+ views

Hotline - National Journal ^ | 3/23/07
Rudy Memo: Strong And Growing Ex-NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani's directror of strategy sent top supporters a memo 3/22 crowing about a "notable" growth in support for Giuliani since he declared on 2/5. Before February, 5th, we were leading in major media polls by an average of 5-points. Since February, 5th our lead has grown to an average of nearly 20-points. Other key bullet points: Mayor Giuliani has a wider lead among social conservatives than he does among Republicans in general. Social conservatives already know who Rudy Giuliani is. In fact, more than 70% say they know “some or a lot”...

Sources: NY GOP Coming Around To Rudy

Posted by areafiftyone
On News/Activism 03/23/2007 10:50:40 AM CDT · 63 replies · 375+ views

Newsday ^ | 3/23/07
WASHINGTON -- Rudolph Giuliani's drought in picking up New York Republican endorsements is coming to an end, as GOP state legislators plan to announce their support in coming weeks, two Republican sources said Thursday. Republicans backing a favorite son like Giuliani is hardly a surprise - except that Giuliani's campaign is anxious to secure early backing from statewide officials to counter notions he's unpopular at home. The Assembly Republican caucus took a vote on whether to back Giuliani and about 30 of its 41 members are on board, with a formal announcement expected soon, said the sources, who are both...

The Full Rudy: The Man, the Mayor, the Myth

Posted by Ultra Sonic 007
On News/Activism 03/23/2007 8:41:15 AM CDT · 130 replies · 921+ views

The Nation ^ | 05/30/2002 | Jack Newfield
Rudy Giuliani was a C-plus Mayor who has become an A-plus myth. Since the atrocity of 9/11, Giuliani has managed to merge himself with wounded New York until the man and the metropolis--and this almost religious event--seem to be one heroic blur. But in April 1999, in the sixth year of his term-limited mayoralty, Giuliani had only a 40 percent approval rating from the people he governed, who knew him best. A year later his divorce lawyer was savagely attacking his wife, Donna Hanover, while the Mayor was flaunting his mistress in public. He even brought his girlfriend into the...

RUDY JUDI'S BOMBSHELL; REVEALS THAT HE'S HER THIRD HUSBAND (Giuliani gag-a-thon)

Posted by Liz
On News/Activism 03/23/2007 6:27:00 AM CDT · 149 replies · 1,857+ views

NY POST ^ | March 23, 2007 | ANDREA PEYSER, MAGGIE HABERMAN with Dareh Gregorian and Clemente Lisi
Rudy Giuliani's wife made a shocking revelation that stunned even those close to the White House hopeful - he isn't her second husband, but her third. "....Rudy and I have both been married three times," Judith told The Post. It was the first time she has publicly disclosed the bombshell information. Several longtime Giuliani supporters said they had thought he was her second husband, and profiles about Judith Giuliani - who has revealed little about herself - have always referred to her as twice-married. Rudy Giuliani, 62, learned about his wife's first husband early in their relationship, she and her...

Glance at AP-Ipsos Polling (As I suspected! It's the chics giving Rudy the lead)

Posted by pissant
On News/Activism 03/22/2007 9:18:36 PM CDT · 142 replies · 1,306+ views

WTOPNews/AP ^ | 3/10/07 | staff
(AP) - Demographics and details from AP-Ipsos polling on the 2008 presidential race. The poll was conducted by Ipsos, an international polling firm: OVERALL: The most important qualities looked for in a presidential candidate are honesty and integrity; these were named by more than half of those in the AP-Ipsos poll. The leading Democratic candidate, according to Democrats and those who lean Democratic, is Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York at 38 percent followed by Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois at 21 percent, former Vice President Al Gore at 14 percent and former Sen. John Edwards at 10 percent....

Sean Hannity Has Sold Out Conservatives For a Leftist Named Rudy

Posted by wagglebee
On Bloggers & Personal 03/22/2007 6:21:50 PM CDT · 84 replies · 582+ views

Wagglebee | 3/22/07 | Wagglebee
Tonight on Hannity's radio show he gave an entire hour to Rudy Giuliani. This is at least the third time in recent weeks that he has pandered to this pro-abortion, pro-illegal alien, gun-grabbing liberal. In all of these segments on radio and TV, Hannity has never questioned Rudy's pathetic explanations for his liberalism. Hannity claims to be a conservative, but gets absolutely giddy over Rudy. I am beginning to wonder if Hannity's conservativism was just an act all along. Now and then Hannity will have short segments with Newt, but he has been doing that for years (and Newt is...

The Times' Nicholas Kristof—A Rudy Giuliani White House Adviser?

Posted by pissant
On News/Activism 03/22/2007 6:21:44 PM CDT · 8 replies · 125+ views

Village Voice ^ | 3/22/07 | Keach Hagley
Poor David Brooks. By all rights, the moment should have been his. It was last Wednesday night, the first big hometown fundraiser for Rudy Giuliani, and the Sheraton New York ballroom was resplendent in faux-folksy glory. A thousand Republicans had come to toast (and fund) the candidate whom the New York Times columnist has compared to Teddy Roosevelt, lauded as a "courage Poor David Brooks. By all rights, the moment should have been his. It was last Wednesday night, the first big hometown fundraiser for Rudy Giuliani, and the Sheraton New York ballroom was resplendent in faux-folksy glory. A thousand...

JOINRUDY2008 Rudy Campaign Website Has Been Revamped! (Check it Out!)

Posted by areafiftyone
On General/Chat 03/22/2007 11:56:05 AM CDT · 34 replies · 231+ views

JoinRudy2008 ^ | 3/22/07
Looking good! Much better than before! JoinRudy2008

Why Is Rudy Smiling?

Posted by areafiftyone
On News/Activism 03/22/2007 9:16:21 AM CDT · 142 replies · 1,313+ views

Time ^ | 3/22/07
Yes, the political rule book says a pro-choice former New York City mayor married to wife No. 3 cannot possibly win the Republican presidential nomination—not as long as the G.O.P. remains the preferred party of small towns and social conservatives. However, the political rule book has been stuffed into a shredder this year. Come summer of 2008, one or both parties will likely fire it from a confetti gun. A million fluttery pieces of conventional wisdom will swirl around a nominee or nominees once thought to be impossible: a woman, a black man, a guy in his 70s, a Mormon,...

former Maryland Governor Ehrlich To Endorse Rudy

Posted by areafiftyone
On News/Activism 03/22/2007 8:13:22 AM CDT · 21 replies · 180+ views

The Politico ^ | 3/22/07 | Jonathan Martin
Former Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich will endorse Rudy Giuliani tomorrow, the same day that the former New York Mayor hosts a high-dollar fundraiser in Montgomery County. Ehrlich, who lost his re-election campaign last year, will serve as a regional chairman for Giuliani, according to informed sources. Like Giuliani, Ehrlich is moderate on social issues, but more conservative fiscally. Both clashed with Democrats while governing in overwhelmingly Democratic locales. The two also share a top financier in Dick Hug. A Ranger for Bush-Cheney '04, Hug was Ehrlich's top fundraiser in his successful 2002 gubernatorial run. Hug is now backing Giuliani's White...

Peccadilloes No Stranger to Rudy (Giuliani)

Posted by XR7
On News/Activism 03/21/2007 1:27:16 PM CDT · 18 replies · 319+ views

creators.com ^ | 3/21/07 | Froma Harrop
I'm hardly the first to note that the Republican Party â€” alleged keeper of family values â€” has as its two presidential favorites men with checkered marital careers. Indeed, the leader in the polls, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, holds the most dismal domestic record of any human being who has ever seriously run for president. Yet he remains immensely popular among social conservatives. Could it be that 95 percent of the culture war was just a pretense to impeach Bill Clinton and tar Democrats? One chuckles at a 2005 column by conservative David Brooks that holds up Giuliani,...

'STALLION' RUDY

Posted by veronica
On News/Activism 03/21/2007 8:08:05 AM CDT · 222 replies · 1,818+ views

NY Post ^ | March 21, 2007 | ZEV CHAFETS
March 21, 2007 -- RUDY Giuliani's supporters call him "America's Mayor." But he is something more: the first serious presidential candidate in history with a vowel at the end of his name. Oddly, so far in this year of ethnic- and gender-identity politics, Rudy's Italian-American heritage hasn't been much of an issue. Much more attention has gone to Hillary's "favorite daughter" campaign, Barack Obama's quest for African-American authenticity, Bill Richardson self-depiction as the first Hispanic candidate and the Mormon beliefs of Mitt Romney. Almost nobody has focused on Rudy as the Italian Stallion. Yet. "Italian-Americans aren't usually thought of as...

Giuliani not fit for the White House: poll (Go Rudy!!)

Posted by Cincinatus' Wife
On News/Activism 03/21/2007 7:04:50 AM CDT · 298 replies · 2,158+ views

New York Business ^ | March 21, 2007 | Kira Bindrim
A majority of respondents to a Crain's online poll agree with columnist Alair Townsend, who wrote in this week's issue that former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani doesn't have the temperament to be an effective president. Ms. Townsend wrote that, while she had voted for the former mayor three times, she would not be casting a fourth vote for him, criticizing his "stick-in-your-eye" style. Ms. Townsend said that his strong personality would not translate well when it comes to dealing with international leaders and Congress. About 70% of the 784 respondents to the Crain's poll agree that Mr. Giuliani's...

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