BocaGuy: I promised no more Rudy, but I couldn’t help myself.
The evil that men do lives after their mayoral stints—and even 9/11
Wayne Barrett
February 5th, 2008
Rudy Giuliani may now be a footnote in the 2008 presidential campaign, but it's important to remember how close he came to becoming this election year's looming specter—one that would haunt America far into the future. We are such a 24-hour news-cycle nation that it's already getting hard to remember that Giuliani topped the national polls for 11 months, often with double the percentage points of his closest competitor, and was even leading in Florida as late as November 2007.
As dismally as he performed in all six caucuses and primaries, he still might have been the GOP's strongest general-election candidate, doing for them in the Northeast what Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton did for the Democrats in the South: drawing voters from the other party's base. If Giuliani could have won in January and February, transcending the rigid social orthodoxies of his party, he might then have soared to the White House in November—a prospect made all the more chilling by the war drums he so cavalierly pounded. Asked how he'd take on terrorism, he told the Tampa Tribune recently that he'd "get rid of the nation-states that support it," which alarmed the paper's conservative editorial-board members so much that they endorsed John McCain. Should Iran continue to pursue its fantasy nuclear-weapons program, Rudy vowed to "set them back" five to 10 years. Waterboarding? His reaffirming metaphor for it was his own mob interrogations as a federal prosecutor. Even children came in for his warlike bombast: When a 36-year-old mother attending a New Hampshire event with her child dared to ask why Rudy's son and daughter weren't supporting him, the former mayor replied, "Leave my family alone, just like I'll leave your family alone"—and it came off as a threat. ... ( more )
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