I don't buy the arguments in the Giuliani campaign's recent conference call outlining their candidate's inevitable path to the Republican nomination--and not for the reasons suggested by the Romney campaign. On The Stump, Noam Scheiber argues that if Romney comes out ahead in the early primary states, Mitt could start picking up states in the Midwest and West, even Florida, Rudy's supposed "firewall." But another looming problem, seemingly unaddressed in campaign’s conference call, is the South. If Fred Thompson continues his swan dive, while Rudy keeps playing the supposed-frontrunner-who-gets-beaten, isn’t it possible that a high-spending family man like Romney could make a play in states like Mississippi and Virginia? Someone’s got to get those voters who are fleeing from Fred--why not the guy with the momentum? And with the RNC granting additional delegates to states that have voted red, Dixie has disproportionate clout. Maybe Giuliani can get away with basically ignoring Iowa and conceding first place in New Hampshire, but if Romney makes a strong showing in the South, he won’t get very far at all.

(One more note: On the call, Rudy’s aides reportedly said that they feel good about their current second-place position in New Hampshire. What if McCain keeps climbing?)

Labels: Giuliani

"I'm rooting for the Red Sox".

"I guess if Colorado wants Mayor Giuliani to root for the Rockies, they’re going to have to move their primary up."

Labels: Giuliani, mitt romney

click to enlarge

Labels: afa, Giuliani, rudy, rudy giuliani, social conservatism

So I finally read Wayne Barrett's Giuliani takedown in the Village Voice (I linked to it a while ago). It goes through Giuliani's five big lies about 9/11. The first three are, if true, pretty devastating. It appears that Barrett's reporting was pretty meticulous. But he does have an axe to grind —see this Barrett hit on Giuliani's personal life, for example—so I'm not sure whether he is leaving anything out that exculpates Giuliani.

Labels: Giuliani, national security, rudy, terrorism

• From abortion to nuclear pork projects, Thompson's lobbying record leaves much to be desired for conservatives. Kenneth Vogel over at the Politico has the extensive details on the nuclear blemish on Thompson's bona fides.

• Rich Lowry says it's quittin' time for Sam Brownback.

• "It sounds like an effort by Giuliani to make himself seem like a hawk on immigration when, in fact, he's been a dove all along," the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, Mark Krikorian, said. More here.

• So how is Huckabee taking advantage of his surprising second-place straw poll finish? Apparently courting the media instead of voters.

Labels: brownback, fred thompson, Giuliani, news

Labels: fred thompson, Giuliani, John McCain

[Larry] Sabato said the incident reflects on Giuliani, who accepted Ravenel's aid when he was first putting his campaign together and most of the state's top Republicans had committed elsewhere.

Giuliani, he said, has "egg -- no, omelet -- all over his face. To say this was a poor choice for his state chairman is an understatement," Sabato said.

Hat tip to South Carolina '08.com.

Labels: Giuliani, Greenville News, south carolina

First is Romney's plan to game the primary system, in other words, play it smart:

Republican primaries are winner-take-all. Whoever wins statewide gets all the
delegates at stake. This favors front-runners, who, with their early money and
early support, can wrap up the nomination quickly.
But, in a barely noticed move, California Republicans have changed the system. Now it is winner-take-all by congressional district.
That means a candidate no longer needs to win the whole state to get delegates.

This means that California's primary is now 53 individual contests and the candidates will be able to cherry pick which districts they want to be competitive in, limiting the expense of advertising in CA.

Romney also plans to bring a new kind of politics to CA:

he intends to treat California as if it were a "retail" political state instead of a tarmac state. (Because California is so large geographically, candidates spend most of their time flying from airport to airport, standing on the tarmac, doing a sound bite for local TV and then flying on.) Romney intends to emphasize more intensive, face-to-face campaigning in select congressional districts in which he has the best chance of winning delegates.

He is going to spend money.

He will exploit the differences between him and his chief rivals:

Romney intends to exploit what he perceives as two of McCain's great vulnerabilities in the Republican primaries: the McCain-Feingold law, which restricts campaign contributions, and the McCain-Kennedy bill, which would change immigration laws and allow for a guest-worker program. And while Romney disagrees explicitly with Giuliani on issues such as abortion, gun control and gay rights, he implicitly draws distinctions between Giuliani's rather turbulent personal life -- he has been married three times -- and Romney's own marriage of nearly 38 years.

In Iowa he is going to go all out at the Ames straw poll August 11th

Finally, he is going to try to talk about the Mormon issue thusly:

Romney intends to recast the issue by emphasizing that he is a person of
faith and that that is more important to voters than what faith he is. Second,
his Mormon faith has been fundamental to his commitment to family, which he
believes people of all faiths can respect.

And realize he can be funny about it:

Romney quoted Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, a Mormon, telling other senators the
difficulty he has raising money among members of his own faith.
"You'd have had trouble raising money, too, if all the people you were asking money from were sober," Hatch said.

Mormons generally do not drink.

Of course, Mittheads, he can't do it alone. If you haven't already please go to Mitt's Website and sign up to volunteer and prepare for the battle ahead. There is much to do and barely a year to do it in. Also make sure all of your friends and family who support Mitt have done the same. YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!!

Labels: California, Giuliani, iowa, McCain, mitt romney

Mr. Giuliani arrived to a rousing reception, but the room grew silent and restless as Mr. Giuliani wandered through a speech that lasted 40 minutes. By contrast, Mr. Romney arrived to a much more subdued reception but left to rousing applause.

“The governor knocked this speech out of the park,” said Paloma A. Zepeda, a marketing consultant and conservative blogger who said she came into the room with “serious doubts” about Mr. Romney, and left saying she was leaning toward supporting him. By contrast, she said, Mr. Giuliani “took a risk by coming to C.P.A.C., and he managed to not allay a single conservative fear about a Giuliani candidacy.”

Labels: cpac, Giuliani, mitt romney

Labels: Giuliani, John McCain, mitt romney, Santorum

• Democrats outnumbered Republicans by more than 8 to 1
• One of his appointments was an officer of the International Association of Lesbian and Gay Judges.
• Another ruled that the state law banning liquor sales on Sundays was unconstitutional because it was insufficiently secular.
• A third, an abortion-rights supporter, later made it to the federal bench in part because New York Sen. Charles E. Schumer, a liberal Democrat, said he liked her ideology.

"They were decent, moderate people," she said.

In the mayors defense, he had to choose from only 3 candidates. From the article:

Under the system, the mayor appoints members of an independent panel. Aspiring
judges apply to the panel, which recommends three candidates for each vacancy.
The mayor chooses among the three.

Yet, surely, the mayor could have avoided those applicants whose records and pedigrees were that of extreme judicial activists.

Giuliani's pledge to appoint judges like Roberts and Alito comes under question when you consider his record of appointing extreme judicial activists onto the New York courts.

Consider that one judge:

Charles Posner, a Brooklyn judge appointed by Giuliani, made the kind of
decision that keeps conservatives up nights when he was asked to levy a fine
against a shopkeeper, Abdulsam Yafee, who had illegally sold beer at 3:30 a.m.
on a Sunday. In an unusual, lengthy 2004 ruling, Posner found that "there is no
secular reason why beer cannot be sold on Sunday morning as opposed to any other
morning."
Noting that Sunday is only the Christian Sabbath, Posner continued,
"Other than this entanglement with religion, there is no rational basis for
mandating Sunday as a day of rest as opposed to any other day."

Yet another:

Sonberg's other affiliation: When he was appointed in 1995, he was already an
officer of the International Association of Lesbian and Gay Judges, a
professional group. After his appointment, he became the group's president.

Two were appointed to federal seats:

one of them, Richard Berman, by President Bill Clinton. The other, Dora
Irizarry, was a Bush nominee considered so liberal that (Chuck) Schumer pushed
her nomination through....
"Temperament is not at the top of my list," Schumer explained at the time, when asked why he supported the former Giuliani appointee. "Ideology is key."

Giuliani spent a great deal of time with his nominees:

"He took it very seriously -- he spent a lot of time with these candidates,"
recalled Paul Curran, a Republican and former U.S. attorney who chaired
Giuliani's Commission on Judicial Nominations.

Yet he allowed these wreckless nominees through? This is troubling and hopefully answers can be provided when he speaks tomorrow at the CPAC conference.

Labels: Giuliani, judges

(h/t The Corner)

We need to make America more attractive for legal immigrants -- for citizens -- and less attractive for illegal immigrants. I want to see more immigration inour country, but more legal immigration and less illegal immigration."

Labels: Giuliani, Immigration, Romney