giuliani fearmongering + foley ‘outrage’ + centrist southern populism???
are you dr. morbs?
no, we’ll need to triangulate it with hatred of mexicans
no he’s not, he’s just right and I’m surprised
just keep your hands off my uterus okay
thread inspired by comments on tpm in favor of dem campaign ads featuring giuliani in drag
there was no question in my mind that this was an ‘and what’ thread, and I think it is awesomely hilarious to amplify tpm comment cranks into the entire party’s strategy. well played young georgian.
search “vote for Cuomo not the homo”
ethan cares about gay people now?
why would teh dems ever run an ad w/drag rudy? that shit kinda runs it self on the gop side, no?
that specific plan is unnec, yeah, as Rudy has about as good a shot at Repug nom as I do.
rudy might be worse than george w
that specific plan is unnec, yeah, as Rudy has about as good a shot at Repug nom as I do.
— Dr M (wjwe...), December 21st, 2006. (later)
he’s polling better than mccain right now.
worse than george w does not compute
HI DERE
i’m remembering that one case where giuliani released some dude’s sealed juvenile record to the press, in an attempt to justify the police’s shooting of him (the guy was unarmed).
plus being a horrible douchebag who just happened to not fuck up completely in public on 9/11.
that puts him almost on par, not worse, and also regardless of giuliani’s corrupt copland steeze I don’t think he sent too many christmas cards to ken lay
Rudy’s first public meltdown (“DON’T BE JERKY!!”) in primary season will send his campaign down the drain, assuming he gets that far.
whatever the case may be, if he does win it’s gonna be a shitty four years.
ken lay at least gave a lot of donations to art charities, as opposed to wanting the brooklyn museum’s funding to be cut over a chris ofili painting.
“Rudy’s first public meltdown (”DON’T BE JERKY!!“)”
lolz—did Giuliani actually say this somewhere...?
It was a regular line. Michael Grunwald, The New Republic in January 2001: “He is a divider, not a uniter. He demonizes anyone who disagrees with him as ‘idiotic’ or ‘crazy’ or ‘silly’ or ‘dangerous’ or ‘jerky’ (and quite often as ‘very, very idiotic,’ or ‘very, very jerky’). He is a beady-eyed bully, a ruthless egomaniac, a world-class control freak.”
Also, Dubya’s “This job would be a lot easier if I was a dictator” vs this:
“Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do and how you do it.”
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/r/rudygiulia142419.html
thanks, I had no idea know giuliani was a fucking asshole, guys
ken lay at least gave a lot of donations to art charities, as opposed to wanting the brooklyn museum’s funding to be cut over a chris ofili painting.
man I wish enron was still in business now and he wasn’t dead!! gee, art needs his help!!
i’m sure a lot of people still wish enron was in business, tom! they’d still have their pensions.
ok that is a correct zing
yeah as soon as people get a good look at that douche he’s douche toast. his politics and personal life also make him unelectable in a gop primary. i doubt he’s even gonna run. more likely angling for a vice nod or cabinet position or something.
he really is a horribly corrupt inhuman bully, but i doubt he’d be able to fuck things up as bad as gwb, just because he would have to follow him. now if he was president during 9/11, he might’ve had a shot.
“Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do and how you do it.”
haha. oh man, that’s like perfect Colbert.
yall really think giuliani would be unscrutinized enough in a vp run to not sink the campaign??
DICK CHAINIE
no not really—but he thinks he can be vp. kerik alone is enough to turn prospective suitors off.
xp
did you guys just sleep thru the last 8 years or what? “scrutiny” don’t mean shit in american politix.
common american political scrutiny: lol this guy wear dresses and hangs out with mobsters!
rare american political scrutiny: u guys think this war is really such a good idea?
High national poll numbers for Giuliani seem pretty strictly connected to memories of the days right after 9/11, where the only official responses anyone was seeing were those epically long press conferences, Giuliani answering patiently and calmly and seeming like the guy who’d rolled up his sleeves and had any kind of confidence in a plan to deal with something nobody could really imagine dealing with (while Bush meanwhile seemed to be just putting down Superfudge and asking people if “Afghanistan” had anything to do with blankets). It’s a nice memory, and even people who don’t like Giuliani were surely comforted by how he came off — in control, but not pretending to be “in control,” straightforward and pragmatic and “we’re doing what we can.” But yeah, as soon as people get any inkling of the guy’s long record of much less likeable crap here — a record that’s longer, wider, and way more full of shady crap than any two-term governor candidate could develop without actively trying, and extends from political issues to ethical issues to “personal character” issues and everything in between — the guy’s just not gonna fly very well. (At this point I think even Republicans are tired of defending their leaders and having to spin elaborate rhetoric around how Bush is great despite a million fairly evident flaws; I’m not sure they’re really gonna be up for it again.)
xpost Yeah scrutiny tends to fail when it involves supposedly “boring” issues where you have to follow some sort of paper trail to figure out exactly what horrible thing someone did, but given NYC politics, Giuliani has problems that are a lot gaudier (and even more personal/dramatic) than that! Plus even if no one of them stuck in any huge way, I don’t know how you’d run a campaign when your opponents could pick any one of a thousand damning/shady historical notes to try and lob into every week on the trail — after a while there’d just be a general sense of “scandalous” (cf Clinton), and while some candidates might be able to stay issue-focused and make their scandal-detractors look desperate and smeary, I’m not sure Giuliani’s naturally inclined to pull that off; it would take some really rigorous handling and advising to keep him to that sort of thing, and he doesn’t have the face or tone for it in the first place.
lol are you trying to say that somehow george w. bush wasn’t completely scrutinized pre-2000, or that he didn’t have as horrible—or perhaps even worse, depending on your perspective—flaws and flubs as giuliani? yeah i guess being a drunk drivin’ draft dodger isn’t so bad afterall!
Rudy is not a Good Ol Boy, and that’s about the diff in Jesusland.
Getting back to the thread question, the Dems will do anything they (quite frequently mistakenly) think will win elections; it’s the party of gabbnebs more than ever.
gore ran as a boring pedantic clinton supporter and got 51, kerry ran as a particle of antimatter and got 49, being a drunk drivin’ draft dodger is pretty bad but it doesn’t stop you from being able to comfort morons who are afraid of absolutely everything
which is all you need to get through the electoral college, is my point
the draft dodging didn’t stick as it wasn’t actually blatant and the drunk driving became part of his personal narrative of redemption. but what makes rudy so radioactive is the combination of his gross political/personal history and his generally unappealing manner/appearance.
like his past says he’s an asshole and he looks like an asshole and he acts like an asshole.
gwb’s past was that of an aimless drunken rich frat boy, but to a lot of people he seems ordinary, optimistic and strong. (and then in 04 they just had to let him clean up the mess he made or whatever)
and yeah, he ran against really clueless candidates.
dr morbius it was always the party of gabbnebs except now not even gabbneb understands why hillary is catching 50% hey hey thumbs up -
you guys all still think three-quarters of this country loves dubya, don’t you?
uh no
giuliani or mccain would be AWESOME as GOP candidates because I think after the next two years of continued dubyabungle and nonstop negligent misrepresentation etc. those two bastards would sink like a stone, voters are TIE URD of ugly old men telling them to be scared and lying about how great american life is
we just have to make sure obama’s balls drop in time or something
but yeah definitely we should not violate any of our own “principles” vis a vis respecting all of our varied usual constituencies in order to win, because I’d rather know that we did the right thing by cross dressers than have a nationwide single payer healthcare system, tax reform, or a cut in the military budget. This is politics after all
obama is to make an announcement in the next week, or so cnn said, yesterday
I’m not sure you’ll see any Dem offer a cut in the military budget until 2028 (if there are no more 9/11s in the mean).
also Rudy’s Xdressing is of the fratboy variety, not Paris Is Burning, baby.
oh obama’s there already. don’t confuse a little stealth with indecision.
agreed that the current gop strategies and coalitions have run their course—the reagan revolution is over. the dems are even getting over their electability/defeatism ticks. not saying this is a long term win for the dems (although it is certainly pointing that way short term)—but it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out.
also totally agree that two years will be plenty of time for people to decided that they’d rather not see mccain’s pork chop face ever again.
also Rudy’s Xdressing is of the fratboy variety, not Paris Is Burning, baby.
yeah but he had a homo roommate who he thought was an actual person deserving of rights and stuff.
ethan can you link to that thread?
Any Republican running is going to have one other real liability from the outset: how to deal with the current and amazingly unpopular prez while on the campaign trail. It’s not a repeat of 2000, where Gore was running away from Clinton even though Clinton had pretty high approval ratings because Clinton was a polarizing figure. Bush’s approval is in a semi-historic toilet, and the Rove strategy of trying to win with just the South is going to be very problematic in light of the 2006 results. Seems to me that no matter who they nominate the R’s might actually be in trouble.
by the time of the election bush’s approval will likely have set the record—gop is fucked in 08. especially w/bush deciding to just go whole hog crazy w/the war. which actually surprised me, i was expecting him to take one for the team and follow baker’s recommendations. guess i’m just naive.
in some sick weird way I imagine that reid is backing the “more troops yes plz” as a wash strategy; reid doesn’t actually care, he’s just harry ol’ asshole incumbent reid, but helping bush fuck himself into a hole even harder and faster is a net plus for dems especially in the wake of the ISC report
reid changed his mind—who knows what the fuck he was thinking.
After initially indicating an openness to the “surge” idea (providing that “it’s part of a program to get us out of there”), incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) issued a statement yesterday that he’s no longer open: “I don’t believe that more troops is the answer for Iraq.”
i think his initial comment was taken slightly out of context and he was just trying to be more clear. but I can’t remember why I think that.
i was expecting him to take one for the team and follow baker’s recommendations. guess i’m just naive.
No, but, see, George W. Bush makes decisions from his gut, doesn’t listen to the pollsters, and gives’em hell, Harry.
it’s actually true, weird.
why the fuck does anyone still take either ethan or morbs seriously?!?
nobody takes anything seriously, this has been going on all along.
Just let me know when teh Dems make it Teatime on Buttercup Lane, Eisbär.
sure, morbs, when you convince me that a full-throated dem party commitment to full NEA funding to things like “piss christ” is a surefire election winner.
anyway, a link to the tpm article/comment in question re: dems alleged exploitation of homophobia and rudy-in-drag would be nice — it would be nice to know that we are reacting to something, you know, real.
don’t know what reid was thinking, my guess is.. dems might be in charge of the funding and can hold hearings and whatever but they can’t actually force Bush to do anything re: conduct of the war. so maybe this stance is.. mostly about not allowing W to somehow blame dems for whatever he decides to do, or for his inability to decide. if he really thought a surge in troops right now was absolutely necessary then do it, don’t float the idea out there—the real decision on next action has probably already been made & just postponed until after the holidays so this is all bluffing, anyway.
that was re: iraq of course, not ‘homophobia’
“a full-throated dem party commitment to full NEA funding to things like ”piss christ“ is a surefire election winner”
wtf is this 1985?? does Morbs really cite this as a major Democratic failing...? I mean it was annoying at the time, but so much worse shit has been done under Democratic auspices, that’s a funny thing to harp on.
It’s the strawman caricature stylee so beloved by ILX Dems, Shakey
a full-throated dem party commitment to piss lol
the only thing they have a full-throated commitment to is trying to stay in office.
does the democratic party plan on winning elections...
Look, you could’ve probably answered your own question right there.
love how pointing out dem failings brings out the party hack defend-at-all-costers as if the rnc gonna be stealing talking points from ilx. grow the fuck up.
i am so resigned to my entire life being: disgusted by democrats/even more appallingly disgusted by republicans jesus fucking christ people aaaaargh/relieved at being disgusted by democrats, repeat.
(meanwhile: good music, good food, hopefully not getting exploded)
the pointing-out of dem failings on ilx is frequently.. tautological. damn the no-good SOB politicians what with their constantly doing politics!
ditto
exploiting voter homophobia is an essential trait of politics? is race-baiting also?
ditto
just because you wrote the thread title doesn’t make it so
Attorney Bobby Segall told the committee earlier today that if the party disqualified Todd for not filing a financial disclosure form with the party chairman...
are we supposed to read between the lines here, or what?
You’re going to have to explain to me what that has to do with the national party.
ehh i subbed dem party out for ‘the left’ in the title at the last minute cuz i didnt wanna get in arguments like this—i really just meant WONKS INTERESTED IN ELECTING DEMOCRATS
and the backpedal begins
j/k
(no homophones)
starting half-assed pol-troll threads at work /= backpedalling
now see i like that guy.
So does that woman to his right.
schumer seems pretty amped too.
what, his wife? xp
DAN EXPOSED AS RACIST
BOOTS FOR PRESIDENT
I AM SO RACIST TOWARDS PEOPLE I DON’T KNOW, YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE IT
hahaha