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.
So which Left wing organization do you work? Pretty transparent you have gone thru one of the Leftists “how to pretend to be a betrayed Conservative and propagandize for Democrats on Conservative websites” seminars
I’m so sick I could puke! I’m sick of the GOP taking it for granted that I will vote for anybody to keep Hillary from winning!
Is this the choice that is going to have to be made by us? This will not happen if REAL conservatives start sticking together and getting behind ONE candidate that we can live with.
They are counting on the right to splinter out into little groups & thus assure that Rudy will be the frontrunner. We are playing into their evil, little dirty hands by fighting among ourselves.
I cannot say how I will vote if this Rudy/McCain ticket is what I will have to vote for.
What a way to kill a party!!!
LOL, primary voters choose the candidates, not the RNC or DNC.
Yep - I will vote 3rd party if that happens. They are just as bad as Hitlery.
See my reply #22. We will all vote in the primaries for the man we think is best to be our candidate. The problem is there are so many other candidates that we will each be pulling for that will dilute the numbers & Rudy will emerge as the winner.
We had better get our $hit together and start lining up behind one candidate - to make him stronger than the Rudy! machine.
Well this is utterly moronic drivel without even the slightest hint of a shred of a possibility of a shadow of intellectual merit. This is either the product of the most politically inept minds in US History or from Democrats fraudulently pretending to be “Conservatives” in the hope of splitting the GOP base with their idiots drivel.
After 70 years of Liberals running the Supreme Court the Conservatives are ONE seat away from taking back control of arguable the most influential portion of the Fed Govt. So now the moronic wing of the Conservative Movement, in the last 100 yards of that marathon struggle, want to sit down and throw a temper-tantrum because the finish line isn’t their personal favorite shade of red!
Idiotic. 70% of something is way better then 100% of nothing. Adult minds understand that, children throw temper tantrums about it.
On Judges alone the GOP has in the last 7 years done far MORE good for the future of the Conservative movement then all the pathetic posturing by Internet pseudo “Conservatives” has, or ever will, do.
Wonder what these purists would of wrote about a President that signed 6 tax hikes? A Real Illegal Alien Amnesty? Double Federal Spending in 8 years? Spent record Deficits? Ran away from a Muslim Terrorist threat? Appointed a Liberal to the Supreme Court? Played diplomatic footsie with the Mullahs of Iran?
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That President was Ronald Reagan.
Nothing in life is ever perfect. Not even the greatest US President of the 20th century Ronald Maximus Reagan. This instance on tilting at political windmills by the Purists is the behavior of petulant children, not rational adults minds.
The real life Reagan would of never been able to compete with the mythical Reagan that has been manufactured by Talk Radio since he left office. Perfection can be found in God, and no where else. It certainly is not to be found in politics.
In real life, and in politics, one is continually forced to take the good with the bad. Only in recent years has this dogma of “perfect Conservative” reared it ugly ignorant head. There is no such thing.
The best you can hope for is at least 51% of the time they move in the direction you want them to go. The GOP does that for Conservatives. Hillary and the Leftist move the ball 100% AGAINST the Conservative agenda. It would be pure idiocy for anyone to think Hillary would in any way help the Conservatives.
On Judges alone the GOP has done more good for the Conservative Movement’s future then all the whining from the Purists with their arrogance ignorance of how a Constitutional Republic work ever will.
Elections are won by those who can best harness a coalition of interests, not the one who demagogues the purist dogmas best. No one who can win in politics is ever going to measure up to this dogmatic demand for perfection. Not even Reagan could have.
Hello, President Hillary Clinton!
Then get used to saying “President Clinton” again...
I won’t vote for Rudy. I won’t vote McCain. And I certainly won’t vote for the two of ‘em.
These are reasons to vote against Romney period. A McCain/Rudy ticket is a winner, I doubt McCain will take second fiddle. McCain has one of the most conservative voting records of the major candidates running. I have heard many old timers, cowboys from central Texas speak of their love for McCain but their dislike for Bush. These are not liberals. MCCain has a large appeal to swing voters and men. The Republicans will need to maximize the male vote against Hillary and Romney will not rally that support.
Most voters are not political junkies, they work all day, watch the local evening news, eat dinner and maybe watch a movie before bed. Most male voters are repulsed at Hillary but men will just stay home if their other option is a do gooder televangelist or some slick cardboard cut out.
Who will fight the war better, McCain or Hillary?
Who will keep taxes low, McCain or Hillary?
Who will cut spending, McCain or Hillary?
Who will honor the 2nd Amendment, McCain or Hillary?
Who has always been pro life, McCain or Hillary?
Look at the big ticket items because if anyone thinks voters will go to the polls based on McCain/Feingold their living in a bubble.
The GOP does not have anything to do with who primary voters will choose. There is no “they” conspiracy.
The race is still fluid, anything can happen.
WOW, that really does it for me ... We have local elections which are important to me, so I will vote, just won’t vote for these types. Better to get the real deal socialist/Marxist rather than try and defend yours.
How do you think the RNC and Republican establishment is going to accomplish that? Are you involved?
Not if I can help it.
Then let's do it and quit our whining. However, I do not agree that will awaken the sleeping giant. There may be no sleeping giant left to awaken. A Rudy presidency is also preferable to a Hillary presidency. To claim otherwise is being disingenous. Rudy has a good record for NY and we will be decidedly better off with him as president than dictatorial Hitlery.
When will conservatives endorse a 3rd party candidate and dump the Rinos. If Thompsen fails, I see no recourse than to leave the republicans in my wake.
Maybe this has GOP turncoats like Mel Martinez, Ahnold, and Chuck Hagel “chattering”. But it has very few actual GOP voters doing anything but looking on in dread.
A Romney/Thompson ticket is a winner.
Rudy is going to be the next president, because he is the only one who can win in 2008.
Anyone who says otherwise is in the tank for Hillary.
Pure BS, and also disgusting drivel.
Oh dear God help us as a county / a nation! Help us all!
While you are right the Giuliani/McCain ticket would be a huge loser, the Romney/Thompson ticked would lose also though by not as huge numbers.
You might be able to Win with a Thompson/Romney ticket but Romney has to many negatives to draw trust from the conservatives and no way will the hard core Christian Right vote for him in the top slot(and you can not win without them) not to mention the South and the Heartland just don't vote for Northern Liberals no matter how much the are conservative at the moment (and that is the trust issue in a nutshell they see and do not trust the shift).
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