Posted on 10/15/2007 5:56:39 AM PDT by AngryNeighbor
Sensing weakness, Sen. John McCain and Rudy Giuliani have formed an unspoken alliance to try to torpedo Mitt Romney just as many voters are tuning in to the Republican presidential race.
“I'm not going to con you,” McCain said Monday on ABC’s “Good Morning America” when asked about Romney. “It’s important to be honest with people.” The two are teaming up at a time when the heat is escalating in both nominating contests. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) started attacking Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) by name last week after resisting for months in the service of his “new kind of politics.”
On the Republican side, Romney must figure out how to retain his strength in Iowa and New Hampshire now that loyal Republicans are hearing a lot more about him than the soothing messages they were getting from his heavy schedule of television commercials.
McCain has been running a mostly positive race, even refusing at one point to read a text by his aides that included attacks on Clinton. So his joint barrage with Giuliani is enough of a departure that it is even sparking GOP speculation about whether they might form a future ticket.
The two are friends and Giuliani said that if he weren’t running, he’d support the senator from Arizona. If Giuliani were the nominee, though, he’d need someone to help him turn out the Republican base, and McCain wouldn’t be much help there.
Romney aides see they are facing a fight and are pushing back hard. Kevin Madden, Romney’s national press secretary, said: “Other campaigns will flail about and try and attempt to launch angry attacks on us, and we’re prepared for that.”
“Angry” is aimed at one of Giuliani’s big vulnerabilities – his volatile temperament and the mixed view that New Yorkers had of him when he was mayor. The Romney campaign plans to push that idea – at first subtly and perhaps later overtly – in coming days.
Giuliani and his campaign moved ruthlessly to capitalize on Romney’s statement in last week’s debate that a president should “sit down with your attorneys” in deciding whether congressional authorization was needed to strike Iran.
In a post-debate interview, Giuliani made sport of Romney. “That's one of those moments in a debate where you say something and you go like this," Giuliani told ABC’s Jake Tapper, cupping his hand over his mouth — " ‘Wish I can get that one back.’ "
The former Massachusetts governor, trying to regain his footing, went on the offensive Friday in Sparks, Nev., saying: “Conservatives that have heard me time and again recognize that I do speak for the Republican wing of the Republican Party," Romney said. That was an echo of a crowd-pleasing 2004 line by Howard Dean that he represented the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party."
In New Hampshire the next day, McCain uncharacteristically dumped on Romney by packing many of Romney’s vulnerabilities into one brutal paragraph: “When Governor Romney donated money to a Democratic candidate in New Hampshire, I don't think he was speaking for Republicans. When he voted for a Democratic candidate for president, Paul Tsongas, I don't think he was speaking for Republicans. When he refused to endorse the Contract with America, I don't think he was speaking for Republicans.”
Democrats are also getting an increasingly blunt brawl. Obama had been attacking Clinton by inference, making clear references to her record and letting press coverage fill in the name. But in an op-ed on Thursday in the Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader, he connected the dots himself: “I strongly differ with Sen. Hillary Clinton, who was the only Democratic presidential candidate to support this reckless amendment. … Sen. Clinton says she was merely voting for more diplomacy, not war with Iran. If this has a familiar ring, it should. Five years after the original vote for war in Iraq, Sen. Clinton has argued that her vote was not for war — it was for diplomacy, or inspections.”
Obama told CNN he was “moving into a different phase of the campaign,” and followed that up with a speech criticizing Clinton by name. Opponents note a correlation between his disappointing polls and the coarsening of his rhetoric.
An Obama aide says: “I don’t think it’s as big of a deal as folks in Washington think it is. I know their line, ‘Whatever happened to the politics of hope?’ Iowans expect to know what the differences are in this race, and he’s not making personal attacks. What’s he’s doing is in line with what voters expect.”
And it’s now clear that, Republican or Democrat, they can expect a lot more of it.
“Up in Smoke?”
Rudy is going to be the next president, because he is the only one who can win in 2008.
And your proof is?
Not only will Rudy beat Hillary, he might deliver the House back to the GOP.
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