'Mr. 9/11' has a heavy load to carry

Giuliani blusters on despite a duffle bag full of political gaffes and personal peccadilloes

WASHINGTON–For months now, Rudy Giuliani has been hauling his metaphorical duffle bag of liabilities around with him, through Iowa, New Hampshire and other states key to the nomination of the next presidential candidates.

It's stuffed with the messy, public divorce, the estranged family members, the videos of him hamming it up, dressed in drag.

It's brimming with his views on abortion, gay rights and gun control, which would surely drag him down in the race for the Republican nomination.

And still he finds room in that sack for the criminal indictment of the protege he chose as New York police chief and tried to elevate into the George W. Bush cabinet, the endorsement from the evangelical who talks to God, his brusque manner with primary voters and his casual dismissal of his misrepresentation of Canada's health care system.

America's mayor, Mr. 9/11, even briefly tossed his beloved New York Yankees overboard and embraced the hated Boston Red Sox – and seems to have survived.

Against all odds and counter to every campaign prediction, 63-year-old Giuliani took the early lead built on his celebrity and solidified it, maintaining his national lead in Republican polls just weeks before the first votes are cast.

A victory could be a triumph for security and crime-fighting over traditional Republican social values, and a big nod to electability over party principles.

But a man who shuns convention and traditional political strategy is trying a most unconventional end-run to the nomination, aiming to keep his head above water in three early voting states, Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, where he places behind former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

If he can forestall the inevitable momentum Romney would gain from those early wins, the Giuliani strategy has him sweeping to victory in early February after winning the delegate-rich states of New York, Florida and California.

It's an imperfect strategy but, by his own admission, Giuliani is an imperfect man.

His first television ad in New Hampshire tells voters not to look to him for perfection.

Thrice-married, he announced at a press conference in 2000 that he was seeking a divorce from wife Donna Hanover – without telling her in advance.

He is estranged from his children and his daughter is publicly supporting Democratic candidate Barack Obama.

He has gone before evangelicals to unsuccessfully plead for their backing, even though his brand of New York Republicanism is light years from the party brand in the heartland.

He landed an endorsement from televangelist Pat Robertson, a surprise that might have helped Giuliani's credibility with social conservatives, but could have been more of an attempt by Robertson to regain some frayed credibility by backing a perceived winner.

Other evangelical elders threatened to draft a third-party candidate, such is their distaste for Giuliani.

So, Robertson has become a loose cannon that could become another part of the Giuliani baggage, having once endorsed the view that the 9/11 attacks happened because God stopped protecting a country so permissive on homosexuality.

Robertson told television viewers that God had told him Bush was going to win a huge victory in 2004, later revising that prediction to a "razor-thin" victory. And he once advocated the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Perhaps the most damaging stain on the Giuliani record is this month's 16-count indictment of Bernard Kerik on charges including allegations he took bribes from businessmen with ties to the Mob.

Kerik had once been Giuliani's driver and the mayor was so impressed, he made him New York's top corrections officer, then police commissioner, then convinced the Bush White House to nominate him as Homeland Security secretary.

Kerik abruptly withdrew his name from consideration, almost immediately, when questions about his behaviour surfaced.

"I regret the fact I didn't do a better job of vetting him, and I've apologized to the president for that," said Giuliani

But still he blusters through, just as he did after being found manipulating health care statistics and implying that he might not have survived prostate cancer if he had been living under "socialized" medicine.

He had cited the numbers in an article entitled "The Ugly Truth About Canadian Health Care," by Dr. David Gratzer, an adviser to the campaign who later conceded the cancer survival rate numbers used by the candidate were seven years old and "crude."

No matter, Giuliani shrugged, the numbers might have been outdated, but his point remained.

"If we ever got to Hillary-care in this country," he said in reference to New York senator and Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton's private-public universal health care pledge, "Canadians will have nowhere to go for health care."

Long-time Giuliani-watchers are on the lookout for another "ferret moment," a reference to his infamous outburst to a radio caller in New York who complained about the mayor's ban on pet ferrets.

The mayor said his constituent "was somewhat deranged" and this obsession with little weasels was "a sickness."

On the campaign trail, Giuliani curtly told a New Hampshire voter he couldn't help her on a rural matter because there were no rural concerns in New York.

He challenged a third-grader worried about Al Qaeda to "face your enemy" and recently told another youngster America would be prepared for an attack by aliens from outer space under his presidency.

More than anything, a Giuliani presidential victory next year would lead the United States into an even more aggressive bid to take the fight to the terrorists, create a tough pushback against those who want to set limits on wiretapping and "legal interrogation," ensure more bellicosity toward Iran and a determination to remain in Iraq until victory can be declared.

"The era of cost-free anti-Americanism must end," Giuliani wrote in a Foreign Affairs magazine essay in which he also called for an overhaul of NATO and a U.S.-led international organization to replace an irrelevant United Nations.

But most of all, of course, Giuliani has built his lead by playing off his strength in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, crafting a campaign message that Democratic candidate Joe Biden famously derided as "a noun, a verb and 9/11."

Giuliani's national image does not always square with the views New Yorkers held of him before the attacks.

Former New York mayor Ed Koch, who has written a book entitled Giuliani: Nasty Man, says Giuliani handled 9/11 superbly, "but had there been an election on 9/10, he couldn't have been elected dogcatcher."

He's as liberal as they come but Republicans want to side with a winner. So the polls say.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

...Perhaps the most damaging stain on the Giuliani record is this month's 16-count indictment ...

I cannot tell what the most damaging stain on his record really is.

There are so many that are so big it is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

-—”He’s as liberal as they come but Republicans want to side with a winner. So the polls say.”-—

LOL. GOP death knell.

“Screw the base, worship the polls!”

He's as liberal as they come but Republicans want to side with a winner.

You can enjoy your pyrrhic victory then. There's no way in Hell I'm voting for this clown. And I won't support the Republicans in lower races either.

He's as liberal as they come but Republicans want to side with a winner. So the polls say.

You sure are putting an optimistic spin on the polls for Rudy.

As I read them 75% are saying ABR (Anybody But Rudy).

'Mr. 9/11' has a heavy load to carry

Yeah, it's all the money he's milked from 9-11 for himself and his cronies.

And the mutt still refuses to release the client list of Giuliani Partners and all his other money laundering, oops 'making', companies. As such, the Rats will beat him like a rented mule over that (and rightfully so). It'll be a 3 Ring Circus, it'll be Halliburton¹⁰.

It will also take the 'Clinton Secrecy Arguments' off the table and another issue Rooty neuters the GOP on.

(the sob should go crawl back under his rock.)

Giuliani is actually slipping in the polls in the early primary/caucus states. He is being buried in Iowa, way behind in New Hampshire and, in the last poll I saw, behind Thompson and Romney and tied with Huckabee in South Carolina.

If all that holds up, he's done.

Mayor Rudy did well while Mayor of New York. And as someone recently said, New York City is NOT the center of America. I was born and raised in Manhattan. My husband and I left Manhattan and moved to Central New York State - a completely different world - a world Rudy will never understand because we are just plain Americans who love our country. Rudy has too much baggage for our tastes.

Giuliani curtly told a New Hampshire voter he couldn't help her on a rural matter because there were no rural concerns in New York.

Which is why Giuliani would be a CLUELESS and dangerous President. Giuliani knows nothing except New York City.

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