"America's Mayor" Campaign Going Boom DOT Bust?

For weeks and weeks, GOP presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani has been pouring all his time and resources (and we've learned that his campaign, even before Mike Huckabee's, has run out of money in ways that make it impossible to pay all staffers) into key primaries like Florida's after doing very badly in Iowa, New Hampshire, and others.

However, it's unlikely Giuliani, mayor of New York City on September 11th, 2001, will win even Republican voters when it's time for the Empire State to cast ballots. But if he does as badly in the upcoming Florida primary as polls suggest, how can the man who sold out the firefighters and other 9-11 rescue workers, who took billions in no-bid contracts not just from the Bush Administration but from our supposed sworn enemies, and who should have an in among Floridians who were former New Yorkers, stay in the race? Despite his focus down there, he's halved his polling numbers since November (from 36 to 18%).

The Republican debate in Florida is tonight on MSNBC. Urg.

Fred Thompson Drops His Presidential Race

Not that his poor showing in Republican caucuses and primaries ever proved he was actually IN the race for GOP presidential nominee race for this November but...

Let me say that using the "I need to stop to care for my ailing mother" statement is about as ridiculous as Karl Rove quitting the White House "to spend more time with my (Manson) family (of Bushies)." A) Fred is no spring chicken so mama's got to be pretty old b) Fred doesn't look like the bedpan-and-chicken-soup server type and c) well, I suppose Fred's wife, who looks to be about the right age for one of his granddaughters, is not likely to want to spend all her time and designer wardrobe at mama's house while Fred plays nursemaid (which he won't). Thompson's wifey, if you notice, could never answer the most basic questions about his campaign; probably because it interfered with her shopping.

But that aside, Fred's leaving the race poses an interesting situation. Of all the GOP candidates, I'd call him the only true conservative (McCain is only part of one, and Huckabee and Romney aren't any part of one in the classic sense of the term). A lot of classical conservatives, I don't believe, will vote for a Huckabee or Romney or Giuliani and have voiced discomfort with McCain in the past.

Here's another difference with Fred that I actually appreciated. Fred Thompson refused to play the religion card. He indicated early on that his relationship with his God was private, his business. I appreciate that; it's how I feel about my faith, as well. People who don't seem to be more likely NOT to force their God down the throats of others.

I can't think of a faster path to hell (in whatever form you think it may take) than to use God and Christ as a selling point for your election (and frankly, I've never seen a more unholy lot than all these Republican so-called Christians on the campaign trail this year).

So let me actually thank Fred (and add that I hope he does not return to acting, because he's even worse at that - other than playing himself - than he is as a Republican candidate) for not hitting us over the head with his faith on a daily basis.

John Edwards: Stay or Go?

Steve Benen at The Carpetbagger Report discusses the big question(s) before 2008 Dem presidential candidate (and John Kerry's VP choice in the 2004 race), John Edwards, regarding whether it's time for him to pack it in or continue on toward the Dem convention this summer which is what Edwards has said he will do.

As I've said, I'm undecided at this time. However, Edwards (along with Dennis Kucinich) comes closer to my "ideal" candidate than do Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama who, IMHO, are too willing to make concessions I don't like, don't believe are good for the country in its current shape (which isn't all that good). To me, both represent the DLC approach to Democrats which I find too much like middle ground Republicanism to help Democrats as a whole. If the Republicans don't want to elect moderate Republicans, why should Dems do it for them?

Interestingly enough, I did NOT support Edwards in 2004 though I came to support the Kerry-Edwards' ticket simply because Edwards was on it and I saw a progressive-ism growing in him that seemed utterly absent from Kerry. The Edwards running today is a much-changed man, I believe, from 2004 and I do NOT believe this is an act. John Edwards' approach on universal health care, the working class, and so many other issues.

Right now, his campaign isn't doing super great. But what's strange is that he's got at least half the delegates of Obama and Clinton WHILE, where Republicans like Thompson and Giuliani barely have a handful of delegates BETWEEN them, pundits aren't shouting to push Fred and Rudy off the campaign trail as they are with Edwards. Why? What's the difference? Could it be that Edwards is simply not "corporate money" enough for the DLC crowd while among Repugs, Rudy and Fred will definitely sell their souls?

What's your take?

Benazir Bhutto's Assassination

Since Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf plunged his country of Pakistan into one of its maddest states ever in his efforts to control the results of voting a few months ago that threatened to unseat him, it became not a question of IF his major opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto, twice elected and twice unseated as a Muslim country's first major woman leader, would be assassinated, but when.

I find much about the reaction to her death to be completely disingenuous. The first was the Bush Administration's reaction, acting like they were saddened when I doubt they were; my biggest questions with her death, in fact, center around just how much involvement Musharraf - who was to face Ms. Bhutto in elections in less than two weeks - and the Bushies may have had with her assassination earlier today.

While we've heard that the Bushies really wanted her there in a power sharing arrangement with Musharraf, there is far more evidence that neither Musharraf nor Bush actually did want her there, since the progressiveness she represented is hardly what the Bush Administration wants in trying to control that part of the world.

But I am just as suspicious concerning the rush by the Bushies and their ilk - including "I see 9/11 everywhere" Rudy Giuliani - to identify al Qaeda as responsible for Bhutto's death. Sure, Bhutto did not pose herself a good candidate for al Qaeda; she also wasn't who Musharraf and Bush want either.

In truth, there are any number of groups and individuals who could have put the hit on this woman. Sadly, the more the Bushies point to al Qaeda and boast "they know" Osama bin Laden is behind it, the more questions I feel arise as to their own culpability here. After all, the Bushies - and this is clear right from their administration HERE at home - are no champions of democracy; they like the "absolute monarchy" kind of arrangement. While Bush is hardly the first "monarch" to decide who lives and dies, a hell of a lot of destabilization and attempted coups around the world since 2000 (including the short ouster of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez) point right back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Think About Next Thanksgiving

When we approach Thanksgiving 2008, we _should_ already know who won the 2008 presidential race (but it's hard to exclude the possibility the Bushies will pull either a 2000 vote cheat/a 2001 "Rudy tells NY he must stay mayor after 9-11"/a Musharraf end-run around democratic vote this last month).

I suspect certain things will be true by then and while I'll tender some here, please keep in mind that what I predict does NOT mean what I necessarily want to have happen AND that I'd like to see what your predictions are for this time next year.

Mine:

* I don't think it's a given that the Democratic candidate WILL win the 2008 presidential race as much as some would like to believe it is; in fact, because we've allowed "fair election" policies to languish rather than get enacted, we've made it more likely there will be incredible shenanigans pulled in 2008

* IF a Dem wins, it will be Hillary - a choice that many Dems and Republicans will not embrace; if it's Hillary, we have ourselves to blame

* If a GOPeeuponus wins, it will be Rudy Giuliani, and that will be a disaster for the world as well as just us

* Before the 2008 race, we will be in a fight with Iran - whether it's full blown war which I expect it to be or not, it's still wrong

* A fight with Iran will make the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq seem like child's play; it will further bankrupt us financially and militarily and will ensure that those who want to hurt us have more free rein to do so because our resources will be committed in Iran

* Iran's Ahmadinejad was RIGHT about one thing this week: the American dollar is worth almost nothing; the longer the current GOP policies prevail, the worse our dollar will get and more and more and more Americans will suffer

* ALL of the bad inherent here CAN be changed if WE get involved and give as much passion and energy to changing events as we do to carping about what is wrong; NOTE this: it's critical - we can affect a change but only if we DO something more than complain and blog and slog

What say you?

The LIE Of Rudy Giuliani's Moderate Progressive Nature

Lies and damned lies.

The myth that Rudy Giuliani is not only the most progressive of the GOP wannabes running for his party's 2008 Republican presidential nomination but SOOOO moderate even Dems would vote for him is one big lie. Glenn Greenwald in his Salon blog tackles this and is brave enough to call a heinous lie just that. Here's a snip:

The most transparent and destructive fallacy being recited by our Beltway media class is that Rudy Giuliani is a moderate or centrist Republican. Examples of this fallacy are everywhere.

The Washington Post's Jonathan Weisman yesterday twice asserted during his "chat" that Giuliani was a moderate -- first rejecting the notion that the GOP is purging moderates by citing the fact that "the frontrunner in the presidential campaign is Rudy Giuliani, an abortion rights, gay rights, gun control advocate," and thereafter claiming that GOP political operatives want Giuliani as the nominee because "they think Giuliani will mobilize moderate Republicans and independents who lean Republican." Today, his Post colleague, "mainstream" enforcer Shailagh Murray, insisted that while Ron Paul is well outside the mainstream, Rudy Giuliani is squarely within it.

The very idea that Giuliani is a "moderate" or a "centrist" is completely absurd. Regarding the issues over which the next President will have the greatest influence -- foreign policy and presidential powers -- Giuliani is as far to what is now considered the "Right" as it gets. His views on foreign policy are far more radical and bellicose even than Dick Cheney's, and his view of presidential powers makes George Bush look like Thomas Jefferson.

This whole "moderate" myth is grounded exclusively in Giuliani's non-doctrinaire views of social issues. But that's pure fallacy. Political ideology doesn't function like mathematics, where two numbers situated on opposite extreme poles can be averaged together to produce a nice, comfortable number in the middle.

That isn't how political ideology works. A warmonger with authoritarian impulses and liberal positions on social issues isn't a "moderate" or a "centrist." He's just a warmonger with authoritarian impulses and liberal positions on social issues.

Even Giuliani's allegedly "liberal" positions on social issues are completely overblown. Outside of judicial appointments, Presidents actually have very little impact on issues such as gay rights, abortion and gun control. Other than judicial appointments, what impact has George Bush had on those areas? Virtually none.

Yet when it comes to the one instrument Presidents can actually use to shape social issues -- judicial appointments -- Giuliani's decisions will be anything but liberal. He has said repeatedly that he would "appoint judges like Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Alito, Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas" -- the most conservative justices on the Court. And his closest legal confidants are the by-product of relationships he formed at the Reagan DOJ -- people like Ted Olson and Michael Mukasey -- and his appointments are almost certainly going to comport loyally to Federalist Society dogma.

Rudy's Man In Stripes?

Considering Bernie's size, let's hope the prison stripes aren't horizontal.

Is it true? Is the man Rudy Giuliani tried to foist off on us as Department of Homeland Security chief, a man with a most checkered past and much of it tied right to Rude Rudy, former NYPD chief Bernie Kerik, about to be indicted?

A federal indictment against former police commissioner Bernard Kerik is expected as early as this Friday. Government sources say that if the indictment is unsealed on Friday, Kerik is expected to surrender at the Westchester Federal Courthouse in White Plains, N.Y.

The sources say Kerik has told his close friends and members of his legal team that he expects the potential indictment to come before the statute of limitations expires on Nov. 15 on charges that could include tax evasion and bribery.

If the indictment is leveled against Kerik, it will be the latest twist in the tale that began when the child of a prostitute rose to police commissioner of New York City, achieved heroic proportions in the shadow of the collapsing World Trade Center, was gifted a diamond-encrusted chief's badge, awarded millions of dollars in stun gun stock options by business clients and given the proffer of a presidential appointment by President George Bush to head the Department of Homeland Security.

Is it just me or did some of the strangest and worst people benefit outrageously much from 9-11? Bush, included.

Maybe Pat Robertson can pray for him. God knows, I pray for Pat (to be delivered to hades where he belongs where he will fight the devil for dominance).

Satan's Sidekicks: The Marriage of Rudy Giuliani and Pat "Your Blood, MY Diamonds" Robertson

Wow.

The great savior (of his own ass), Pat Robertson, who pretends to be a preacher and philanthropist so he can smuggle blood diamonds out of third world nations via his missionary and "humanitarian aid" planes, has thrown his complete support behind Rudy Giuliani for the GOP presidential nod for 2008.

I mean, if you were the Repug candidate, wouldn't YOU want a man like Pat, who blamed 9-11 on gays and liberals, who has threatened the U.S. Supreme Court and suggested institutions like the U.S. State Department SHOULD be blown up to fulfill God's will (threats that would get the rest of us serious prison time, btw), and who spouts nothing but hateful invective toward anything NOT Pat Robertson-centric?

Actually, if offered the financial and moral support of Pat Robertson vs. being boiled alive in oil, let me be the first to climb in that big vat. Pat's support holds sway only with the most extreme of the Christian fascists.

The old Rudy - the REAL Rudy - would have run from such an endorsement. But this is the Giuliani whose career was considered over on September 10th, 2001 and the very next day, on his way to being raised as a national hero AND a billionaire based on a total litany of noun-verb-911.

Fred Thompson And Women's Rights: Demand Abortions End While Pocketing Money To Ease Restrictions

Well, former Senator (I doubt he was ever a human being, so I won't refer to him as a former one) Fred Thompson keeps proving that he has the baldfaced lying ability quite apparently required to be a "popular" Republican presidential candidate AND president. After all, only conservative compassionate Christians - as practiced by the likes of the Bushies, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson - can break all the commandments while insisting they're anointed by God himself.

While Fred has joined the extreme nutcase fringe of fat old white men who demand the right to tell women what to do with their own bodies, The Times reports Fascist Fred pocketed money as a lobbyist on behalf of those who want to lessen draconian restrictions on abortion counseling for those centers that accept federal funding for family planning. Only, of course, Felonious Fred "can't remember" doing so.

Apparently this Republican is going to start the classic Ronald Reagan defense strategy a little early. Perhaps Fred can hire some of those philandering GOP cocaine drug dealers to help out, just like Rudy Giuliani.

If You Missed The Third Republican Presidential Debate...

Here's the transcript from last night's b.s. boogie. [My favorite part was the technical glitches and the asides.]

P.S. Don't eat this on a full stomach. Or when you're sitting or standing close to sharp objects (thankfully, none of these GOPers seem all that sharp themselves).

Dr. Dobson, Don't Let The Door Hit You In The Ass On Your Way Out The Door

It's moments like this when I'm sorry Jerry Falwell didn't take the "Focus on the Family" folks, Pat Robertson, and others when he went (and trust me, their destination will NEVER be heaven).

Religious conservative leader James Dobson will sit out the 2008 presidential election if former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is the Republican presidential nominee, he wrote Thursday in an online column.

In a piece published on the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily, Dobson wrote that Giuliani's support for abortion rights and civil unions for homosexuals, as well as the former mayor's two divorces, were a deal-breaker for him.

"I cannot, and will not, vote for Rudy Giuliani in 2008. It is an irrevocable decision," he wrote.

"If given a Hobson's -- Dobson's? -- choice between him and Senators Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, I will either cast my ballot for an also-ran -- or if worse comes to worst, not vote in a presidential election for the first time in my adult life. My conscience and my moral convictions will allow me to do nothing else."

In New York City, A Race of Mayors For President Brings Surprises

While the Washington Times reports that current New York City mayor, Michael Bloomberg, will run as a third-party 2008 presidential race candidate, a poll in New York shows that in a race between Bloomberg and former NYC mayor, Rudy Giuliani, Bloomberg wins.

Tonight's GOP Presidential Debate

Soooooo....

• Who is planning to watch?
• Which of the candidates, if any, will make it even somewhat clear he thinks Bush is doing a miserable job, in Iraq if not across the board?
• Who do you think, of the 10 or so Republican candidates, is apt to do best?
• Who will be the greatest assclown (paying my 10-cent royalty to the ever-wonderful Jurassic Pork of Welcome to Pottersville for the use of the term) of tonight?
• Will you be able to keep yourself from breaking a rib laughing too hard when Tommy Thompson, a man for whom multi-syllabic words presents a challenge, tries to answer a tough question?
• Will you need to take a very long and very hot shower afterwards?

Of these folks, the only ones I can possibly take seriously are Chuck Hagel (usually very good and moderate but can easily prostitute himself with some regularity) and Ron Paul, the Texan Libertarian anti-war fellow who doesn't stand a chance. Huckabee isn't too egregious either, but I'm uncertain whether he simply tells us what he thinks we want to hear; this we don't need.

Hearing again and again that Rudy Giuliani is the GOP frontrunner for the Republican Presidential candidate is sickening. What a huge mistake! And with John McCain as the second top-runner.... hoboy.

Rudy Giuliani: Dem Presidential Win Puts U.S. At Greater Risk For Another 9/11

Oh, please, Rudy! You've said some very stupid, pandering things since 2001 but this is about the worst.

Go put on another dress and go looking for the next Mrs. Giuliani you flaunt in public l0nnnnnnng before you file for divorce.

Maureen Dowd: "Daddy's In A Panic, And Mommy, Too!"

MoDo from her April 10th Times column (better late than never?):

Washington - The mind reels at the mind.

The Times’s science section devoted itself yesterday to the topic of Desire, the myriad ways in which the human mind causes the body to get turned on.

It now seems that instead of desire leading to arousal, as researchers once believed, arousal may lead to desire.

The brain, as D. H. Lawrence once wrote, is a most important sexual organ [syd note: also, famously, Woody Allen's second favourite], and men and women have extremely varied responses to sexual stimuli.

As Natalie Angier, The Times’s biology expert, noted, research has shown that women differed from men “in the importance they accorded a man’s physical appearance, with many expressing a comparatively greater likelihood of being aroused by evidence of talent or intelligence — say, while watching a man deliver a great speech.”

This could explain why many Republican women are so frustrated. They have been deprived of the bristly excitement of hearing their men on the stump delivering great speeches for quite some time now.

The Daddy Party, sick with desire for a daddy, is like a lost child. John McCain, handcuffed to the Surge, announced yesterday he has the support of Henry Kissinger. Why not just drink poison? As the Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi slyly said, “Leave it to Mitt Romney to shoot himself in the foot with a gun he doesn’t own.”

Rudy Giuliani, already haunted by the specters of Bernard Kerik’s corruption and Judy Nathan’s conjugal confusion, yesterday made things worse. He did the same thing John McCain did in South Carolina in 2000, a sickening pander the Arizona senator told “60 Minutes” Sunday that he did “for all the wrong reasons.” As Marc Santora reports from Montgomery, Rudy said he would leave the decision about whether to fly the Confederate flag over the Alabama State Capitol to the people of Alabama.

Even cable news showed little interest in President Bush’s big speech on Iraq yesterday, as he continued to excoriate Democrats for hurting the troops by trying to get an exit strategy, a day after Moktada al-Sadr’s spokesman denounced the Liberator as “the father of evil, Bush” while Sadr thugs burned and shredded American flags and shouted, “Leave, leave occupier.”

Four years ago, the conservative commentator Kate O’Beirne thrilled at the sight of President Bush strutting in his flight suit and mocked Bill Clinton’s doughy thighs, noting, “Women don’t want a guy to feel their pain, they want a guy to clean the gutters.” But on “Meet the Press” Sunday, she sorrowfully admitted that Republicans had lost their national security swagger because of Iraq, and now have “a real brand name problem” and “a competency problem.”

“It used to be people thought they might not much like big government, but they can run it,” she said of her party’s leaders. “Now they seem to like it fine, but not be able to run it at all.” A point underscored by this week’s Time cover: “Why Our Army Is at the Breaking Point.”

Get the rest at Rozius.

Rudy's Kerik Fiasco

Considering that 2008 GOP presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani admits that he KNEW of Bernard Kerik's purported ties to mafia/organized crime back SEVERAL years ago, when Kerik was in the running for New York City's top cop appointment (which he got), it also means Giuliani knew of these and other substantiated allegations about Kerik's lack of character, lack of honesty, and many other lacks WHEN Rudy told President Bush to appoint the credibility-challenged Kerik as Tom Ridge's replacement as Director of Homeland (In)Security. [Mind you, Giuliani has some very questionable aspects, too, including some substantiated claims of his own ties to the mob.

From the Political Wire:

"Federal prosecutors have told Bernard B. Kerik, whose nomination as homeland security secretary in 2004 ended in scandal, that he is likely to be charged with several felonies, including tax evasion and conspiracy to commit wiretapping," the Washington Post reports."

Kerik's indictment could set the stage for a courtroom battle that would draw attention to Kerik's extensive business and political dealings with former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who personally recommended him to President Bush for the Cabinet. Giuliani, the front-runner for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination according to most polls, later called the recommendation a mistake."

WINS-AM reports Kerik rejected a possible plea bargain.

Indictment for Kerik currently looks like a most distinct possibility.

Rudy Giuliani Clarifies His Promises If Elected As President

While some Americans were appalled at the news tendered up this week from GOP Presidential hopeful in 2008, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, where he announced his wife would be allowed to sit in on all major policy meetings, Prudy Rudy expanded on his post election win plans:

• Giuliani's third wife, Judy Nathan, will not ONLY sit in on policy meetings, she will lead an effort to turn all women into submissive spouses willing to do anything for their men in power (Rudy states this is most necessary because he needs Nathan to be busy so she won't notice when he starts letting his new mistress follow him around to all public appearances as she did when Ms. Nathan was the floozy following him about Manhattan like an ardent cocker spaniel while he was still married to Donna Hanover)
• Giuliani will appoint his former top cop, Bernard Kerik, to be the Minister of Truth; instead of feeling like Kerik, in light of many lies and corruption and kickbacks and evidence that Kerik like Rudy himself has strong ties to organized crime (what we used to call "the mob" or "mafia", Rudy thinks this actually makes Kerik a stronger candidate
• Any attempts by the Vatican to punish Rudy for his multiple marriages and menages a trois will be met by Rudy sending the Pope to Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo) as an enemy combatant
• If his children continue to refuse to campaign for Rudy, Giuliani will simply draft them and send one to Afghanistan and the other to Iraq

The Blame Bush Game: I Disagree That McCain and Giuliani Play It Well

I find myself seriously disagreeing with the premise in this Op/Ed by Thomas B. Edsall in Thursday's The New York Times, entitled "The Smoke-Filled War Room." I do NOT find that Rudy Giuliani or "Mr. Straight Talk" Senator John McCain make any great effort to blame the failings on the president and the rest of the at-best-incompetent-but-more-likely-treasonous Bush Administration.

Most of the time, "America's Mayor" (gag) and "I'm such a big war hero that I have no problems insisting our troops continue on in Iraq just so I can win the 2008 presidential bid" do nothing but worship at the mismatched socks of the Emperor Bush. What say you?

THE Democratic majority in the House is trying to set policy for the Iraq war by committee — a fractious and divided committee.

If the Democrats really want to play a role in the current Iraq debate, they should take a look at what John McCain and Rudy Giuliani are up to. These two Republican presidential contenders are pinning the blame for the current morass squarely on President Bush, rather than tackling the far more contentious project of how and when to bring the war to an end.

The Democratic leadership, meanwhile, instead of hammering Mr. Bush, has busied itself behind closed doors, producing a toothless, loophole-ridden resolution that showcases the party’s generic antiwar stance while trying to establish troop readiness requirements, benchmarks for Iraqi progress and withdrawal timetables. The resolution — more precisely, a set of deals intended to paper over intraparty factions — is the result of a process better suited to a highway bill than national security.

Frank Rich: "Bring Back The Politics of Personal Destruction"

Eh? Can't say I miss that - and with the Bushies and the severe right wingnuts practicing destructive hate speech on a second-by-second basis, I doubt we have to worry about not getting our fill of it (like a GOP Congressman from Texas saying Dems' failure to support Bush's endless failures caused the stock market to tank earlier this week).

But here, without further delay, is the March 4th Frank Rich column in The New York Times, of which I give you a heaping sniplet or you can read in full at Rozius Unbound:

If you had to put a date on when the Iraq war did in the Bush administration, it would be late summer 2005. That's when the bungled federal response to Hurricane Katrina re-enacted the White House bungling of the war, this time with Americans as the principal victims. The stuff happening on Brownie's watch in New Orleans was recognizably the same stuff that had happened on Donald Rumsfeld's watch in Baghdad. Television viewers connected the dots and the president's poll numbers fell into the 30s. There they have largely remained - at least until Friday, when the latest New York Times-CBS News Poll put him at 29.

Now this pattern is repeating itself: a searing re-enactment of the Iraq war's lethal mismanagement is playing out on the home front, again with potentially grave political consequences. The Washington Post's exposé of the squalor at Walter Reed Army Medical Center - where some of our most grievously wounded troops were treated less like patients than detainees - has kicked off the same spiral of high-level lying and blame-shifting that followed FEMA's Katrina disasters.

Just as the debacle on the gulf was a call to arms for NBC's Brian Williams and CNN's Anderson Cooper, so the former ABC anchor Bob Woodruff has returned from his own near-death experience in Iraq to champion wounded troops let down by their government. And not just at Walter Reed. His powerful ABC News special last week unearthed both a systemic national breakdown in veterans' medical care and a cover-up. The Veterans Affairs Department keeps "two sets of books" - one telling the public that the official count of nonfatal battlefield casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan stands at 23,000, the other showing an actual patient count of 205,000. Why the discrepancy? A new Brownie - Jim Nicholson, the former Republican National Committee hack whom President Bush installed as veterans affairs secretary - tells Mr. Woodruff "a lot of them come in for dental problems."

Yet 2007 is not 2005, and little more damage can be inflicted on the lame-duck Bush White House. The long-running Iraq catastrophe is now poised to mow down a second generation of political prey: presidential hopefuls who might have strongly challenged Bush war policy when it counted and didn't. That list starts with the candidates long regarded as their parties' 2008 favorites, John McCain and Hillary Clinton.

Senator McCain, who, unlike Senator Clinton, fervently supports the war and the surge, is morbidly aware of his predicament. This once-ebullient politician has been off his game since a conspicuously listless January "Meet the Press" appearance; on Thursday, he had to publicly apologize after telling David Letterman, in an unguarded moment of genuine straight talk, that American lives were being "wasted" in Iraq. (Barack Obama had already spoken the same truth and given the same pro forma apology.) Last week a Washington Post-ABC News Poll confirmed Mr. McCain's worst political fears. Rudy Giuliani now leads him two to one among Republicans, a tripling of Mr. Giuliani's lead in a single month.

Mr. Giuliani is also a war supporter and even contributed a Brownie of his own to the fiasco, the now disgraced Bernard Kerik, who helped botch the training of the Iraqi police. But, unlike Mr. McCain, Mr. Giuliani isn't dogged by questions about Iraq. To voters, his war history begins and ends with the war against the enemy that actually attacked America on 9/11. He wasn't a cheerleader for the subsequent detour into Iraq, wasn't in office once the war started, and actively avoids speaking about it in any detail.

What makes Mr. Giuliani's rise particularly startling is that his liberal views and messy personal history are thought to make him a nonstarter with his own party faithful. These handicaps haven't kicked in, the Beltway explanation has it, because benighted Republican voters don't yet really know that "America's mayor" once married a cousin or that he describes himself as "pro-choice." But perhaps these voters aren't as ignorant as Washington thinks. After the flameouts of Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, Rick Santorum, Ralph Reed and other Bible-thumping politicos who threw themselves on the altars of Terri Schiavo or Jack Abramoff, maybe most Republicans could use a rest from the moral brigade. Maybe these voters, too, care more about the right to life of troops thrust into an Iraqi civil war than that of discarded embryos used in stem-cell research.

Get the rest here.

Shifting Allegiances?

As reported by Political Wire:

Two interesting trends in the 2008 presidential race were uncovered in the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll:

• African American voters, "who little more than a month ago heavily supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton... now favor the candidacy of Sen. Barack Obama."
• White evangelical Protestants now clearly favor Rudy Giuliani over Sen. John McCain, "despite his support of abortion rights and gay rights, two issues of great importance to religious conservatives."

In the Democratic race, the poll found Clinton with 43% support, trailed by Obama at 27% and Edwards at 14%. None of the other Democrats running received more than 3%.On the Republican side, Giuliani leads with 44% to Sen. John McCain's 21%. Newt Gingrich had 15% support.