Way back when, before I really knew all that much about him, I thought that Rudy Giuliani might be someone I'd want to have as one of my elected representatives. He had a good reputation as a Federal prosecutor, and seemed straight-forward and incorruptible. I was interested in the idea of his taking on the sleezy Al D'Amato and his Long Island-based Republican political machine (the same machine now lying in near ruin thanks to George Pataki), and perhaps becoming New York's junior U.S. Senator.
As it happened, Rudy decided not to challenge D'Amato, and ended up as the Mayor of New York — thanks to the Republican voters of Queens and Staten Island — and I got the opportunity to watch him in that capacity, as one of the many subjects he ruled over. And as I got to know him better, I got to like him less, until (with the singular exception of his performance at the time of 9/11) I got to fairly well despise him.
You could call it The Giuliani Effect: the closer he gets, the worse he looks, the more he campaigns, the softer his support becomes — something that potential voters in the campaign for the Republican Presidential candidacy are finding out for themselves.
As I see it, the current showdown between Huckabee and Giuliani is excellent for the Democrats, and therefore for the cause of righting this country from the disastrous course it's been set on by the Republicans. I never believed that Giuliani had a chance of getting the Republican nomination, because, despite all his personal character flaws, he is much more socially liberal than his party, which is bound to alienate the evangelicals and conservatives who are the party's bulwark. Enter Huckabee, who appeals to that very constituency, but is (in my opinion, anyway) unelectable.* The result could well be
...one possible outcome that should alarm Republicans of all ideological stripes - the religious and the irreligious, the right-to-lifers, the gun-rights advocates, the supply-siders, and the neoconservatives alike. A two-way knock-down-drag-out fight between Huckabee and Giuliani could completely destroy the coalition that Ronald Reagan built by combining social and economic conservatives with anti-Communists.
Well, that would indeed be excellent, and the coalition is ripe to be pulled apart, since it was never based on a commonality of ideas or desires, but on the fact that neither the social conservatives or the economic conservatives had a ghost of a chance of holding power without each other, because most of the ideas of each group are rejected by the bulk of the American people.
Now, however, Huckabee's people are pissed off. They've begun to realize that Bush and Cheney were just using them, and have no real interest in instituting the parts of their agenda that are most important to them, since their ideological thrust was focused elsewhere. The Administration would occasionally throw them a bone whenever they needed their support or felt their ardor slipping, but did relatively little (thankfully) to turn the clock back and undo the socal changes that most upset the religious right and their allies.
So, unless Fred Thompson or John McCain come up the middle as compromise candidates (Mitt Romney's Mormonism works against him there), it could well be that we see Huckabee and Giuliani locked in head-to-head battle, with Huckabee's popularity with the evangelicals growing stronger, and Rudy's support alternately waxing and waning as the Giuliani Effect works its magic.
But even if a compromise candidate is settled on (and Fred Thompson certainly scares me, since he's just the kind of candidate who could win the whole thing), the question is whether the coalition can be put back together again afterwards, and whether it will hold together enough to elect the President. I don't think so - I think that the signs have been there for quite a while that its time is up. ______
* Call it The Huckabee Principle: the American people will never elect a man named "Huckabee" President of the United States.
Update:Steve Benen noticed the same thing a couple of weeks ago.
absolutist
aggresive
anti-Constitutional
anti-intellectual
arrogant
authoritarian
blame-placers
blameworthy
blinkered
buckpassers
calculating
class warriors
clueless
compassionless
con artists
conniving
conscienceless
conspiratorial
corrupt
craven
criminal
crooked
culpable
damaging
dangerous
deadly
debased
deceitful
delusional
despotic
destructive
devious
disconnected
dishonorable
dishonest
disingenuous
disrespectful
dogmatic
doomed
fanatical
fantasists
felonious
hateful
heinous
hostile to science
hypocritical
ideologues
ignorant
immoral
incompetent
indifferent
inflexible
insensitive
insincere
irrational
isolated
kleptocratic
lacking in empathy
lacking in public spirit
liars
mendacious
misleading
mistrustful
non-rational
not candid
not "reality-based"
not trustworthy
oblivious
oligarchic
opportunistic
out of control
pernicious
perverse
philistine
plutocratic
prevaricating
propagandists
rapacious
relentless
reprehensible
rigid
scandalous
schemers
selfish
secretive
shameless
sleazy
tricky
unAmerican
uncaring
uncivil
uncompromising
unconstitutional
undemocratic
unethical
unpopular
unprincipled
unrealistic
unreliable
unrepresentative
unscientific
unscrupulous
unsympathetic
venal
vile
virtueless
warmongers
wicked
without integrity
wrong-headed
Thanks to: Breeze, Chuck, Ivan Raikov, Kaiju, Kathy, Roger, Shirley, S.M. Dixon
recently seen
i've got a little list...
Elliott Abrams
Steven Abrams (Kansas BofE)
David Addington
Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson
Roger Ailes (FNC)
John Ashcroft
Bob Bennett
William Bennett
Joe Biden
John Bolton
Alan Bonsell (Dover BofE)
Pat Buchanan
Bill Buckingham (Dover BofE)
George W. Bush
Saxby Chambliss
Bruce Chapman (DI)
Dick Cheney
Lynne Cheney
Richard Cohen
The Coors Family
Ann Coulter
Michael Crichton
Lanny Davis
Tom DeLay
William A. Dembski
James Dobson
Leonard Downie (WaPo)
Dinesh D’Souza
Gregg Easterbrook
Jerry Falwell
Douglas Feith
Arthur Finkelstein
Bill Frist
George Gilder
Newt Gingrich
John Gibson (FNC)
Alberto Gonzalez
Rudolph Giuliani
Sean Hannity
Katherine Harris
Fred Hiatt (WaPo)
Christopher Hitchens
David Horowitz
Don Imus
James F. Inhofe
Jesse Jackson
Philip E. Johnson
Daryn Kagan
Joe Klein
Phil Kline
Ron Klink
William Kristol
Ken Lay
Joe Lieberman
Rush Limbaugh
Trent Lott
Frank Luntz
"American Fundamentalists"
by Joel Pelletier
(click on image for more info)
Chris Matthews
Mitch McConnell
Stephen C. Meyer (DI)
Judith Miller (ex-NYT)
Zell Miller
Tom Monaghan
Sun Myung Moon
Roy Moore
Dick Morris
Rupert Murdoch
Ralph Nader
John Negroponte
Grover Norquist
Robert Novak
Ted Olson
Elspeth Reeve (TNR)
Bill O'Reilly
Martin Peretz (TNR)
Richard Perle
Ramesh Ponnuru
Ralph Reed
Pat Robertson
Karl Rove
Tim Russert
Rick Santorum
Richard Mellon Scaife
Antonin Scalia
Joe Scarborough
Susan Schmidt (WaPo)
Bill Schneider
Al Sharpton
Ron Silver
John Solomon (WaPo)
Margaret Spellings
Kenneth Starr
Randall Terry
Clarence Thomas
Richard Thompson (TMLC)
Donald Trump
Richard Viguere
Donald Wildmon
Paul Wolfowitz
Bob Woodward (WaPo)
John Yoo
guest-blogging
All the fine sites I've
guest-blogged for:
Be sure to visit them all!!
recent listening
influences
John Adams
Laurie Anderson
Aphex Twin
Isaac Asimov
Fred Astaire
J.G. Ballard
The Beatles
Busby Berkeley
John Cage
"Catch-22"
Raymond Chandler
Arthur C. Clarke
Elvis Costello
Richard Dawkins
Daniel C. Dennett
Philip K. Dick
Kevin Drum
Brian Eno
Fela
Firesign Theatre
Eliot Gelwan
William Gibson
Philip Glass
David Gordon
Stephen Jay Gould
Dashiell Hammett
"The Harder They Come"
Robert Heinlein
Joseph Heller
Frank Herbert
Douglas Hofstadter
Bill James
Gene Kelly
Stanley Kubrick
Jefferson Airplane
Ursula K. LeGuin
The Marx Brothers
John McPhee
Harry Partch
Michael C. Penta
Monty Python
Orbital
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
"The Prisoner"
"The Red Shoes"
Steve Reich
Terry Riley
Oliver Sacks
Erik Satie
"Singin' in the Rain"
Stephen Sondheim
The Specials
Morton Subotnick
Talking Heads/David Byrne
Tangerine Dream
Hunter S. Thompson
J.R.R. Tolkien
"2001: A Space Odyssey"
Kurt Vonnegut
Yes
Bullshit, trolling, unthinking knee-jerk dogmatism and the drivel of idiots will be ruthlessly deleted and the posters banned.
Entertaining, interesting, intelligent, informed and informative comments will always be welcome, even when I disagree with them.
I am the sole judge of which of these qualities pertains.
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the story so far
unfutz: toiling in almost complete obscurity for almost 1500 days
If you read unfutz at least once a week, without fail, your teeth will be whiter and your love life more satisfying.
If you read it daily, I will come to your house, kiss you on the forehead, bathe your feet, and cook pancakes for you, with yummy syrup and everything.
(You might want to keep a watch on me, though, just to avoid the syrup ending up on your feet and the pancakes on your forehead.)
Finally, on a more mundane level, since I don't believe that anyone actually reads this stuff, I make this offer: I'll give five bucks to the first person who contacts me and asks for it -- and, believe me, right now five bucks might as well be five hundred, so this is no trivial offer.
Way back when, before I really knew all that much about him, I thought that Rudy Giuliani might be someone I'd want to have as one of my elected representatives. He had a good reputation as a Federal prosecutor, and seemed straight-forward and incorruptible. I was interested in the idea of his taking on the sleezy Al D'Amato and his Long Island-based Republican political machine (the same machine now lying in near ruin thanks to George Pataki), and perhaps becoming New York's junior U.S. Senator.
