I noted the other day how Romney’s “I will consult the lawyers on Iran” answer wasn’t a good move. As ABC News reports Giuliani has picked up on it.
“Going to war is the most serious decision a president can make,” said Adm. Robert J. Natter, former commander in chief of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet and an adviser to Giuliani. “Lawyers should not debate while our national security is on the line. In these momentous decisions, we need leadership, not litigation.”
Fred Thompson and Ron Paul are also commenting. See the article for more.
Rudy Giuliani will speak to the National Rife Association to “clarify” his position on gun rights. He said of the meeting:
“There are certain agreements and disagreements with every single group,” noted Giuliani, talking about the event with reporters in Reston, Va. “When I go before the NRA, I’m going to try to emphasize areas I think in which there is a great deal of agreement. And as I have said many, many times, my 80 percent friend is not my 20 percent enemy.”
Giuliani has been under attack for his previous actions and positions on guns for which the former mayor hasn’t always been seen as a ‘80% friend’ by the NRA. As mayor and a federal prosecutor Giuliani enacted legislations that put restrictions on gun purchasing. His initiatives were seen as important steps in curbing violence in NYC but were vehemently opposed by the NRA.
“We should open the organization’s membership to any willing state that meets basic standards of good governance, military readiness (and) global responsibility, regardless of location.”
One day after Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., sharply questioned the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Rudy Giuliani blasted his Democratic presidential rival, accusing her of spewing “political venom” in the Iraq war debate.
“I don’t know what she’s trying to say when she’s accusing a general of the ‘willing suspension of disbelief,’†Giuliani said Wednesday on the “Randy and Spiff” show, a radio program which airs in Atlanta. The former New York mayor repeated his criticism of the Democratic frontrunner for president later in the day Wednesday during a media availability in Akron, Ohio.
The news today is that Giuliani is slipping in the polls and so I have to imagine attacks on Clinton and democrats will only be on the rise in the coming days/weeks.
A story from the Washington Post and seen when visiting the site:
The campaign took the site down over the week, said spokeswoman Maria Comella. The new site will launch Tuesday morning with some new features, campaign officials said.
It is not at all unusual for popular Web sites to go dark for a few hours for maintenance. But in a primary race that is being fought as much online as offline — where voters and potential donors are surfing the net 24/7 — it’s rather curious to shut down a site for more than a day.
Not to be a jerk about it but one could make the argument that there wasn’t much to take down in the first place. They could have easily just put up an index.html file that says “Rudy Giuliani, Please Give Money” and it would have amounted to Giuliani’s Web presence thus far.
I’ve had a hard time figuring out just what the people at JoinRudy08.com do all day long anyway. I run ElectionGeek on what amounts to $20 a year and I have more information about Rudy Giuliani stored up in this place then was ever gathered at JoinRudy08.com. Including a rather glib assessment of his handshaking. Beat that!
Giuliani has basically spent a ton of money thus far, if I am reading the expenditures right it was over a half million dollars in “Web SVC” this quarter for what amounted to a template with a couple pictures and paragraphs thrown in with an online money transaction system.
I could not even begin to tell you the kind of Web site I could bring you for half a million dollars a quarter. Certainly I could do better than loading up a pre-built CMS onto a server, opening a merchant account and taking labor day off.
I caught some of C-Span’s ‘Road to the White House’ coverage tonight. Rudy Giuliani was visiting a sea food restaurant in New Hampshire and going around shaking peoples hands. It was an interesting sight.
Now reason #1,554 why I probably would not make a good presidential candidate has to deal with shaking hands. I am not a fan of the practice. I remember a few years ago when Donald Trump wanted to run as a reform party candidate. He was open about his displeasure for the ritual and many discussed the political and social effects it would have. (Though I have since seen him embrace the practice of handshaking on his show The Apprentice and doubt his not being president had anything to do with hand shaking.)
After weeks of top-tier democrats squabbling with one another its nice to see a change of pace. Now top-tier Republicans are ready to go at it.
Today Fred Thompson, who isn’t running yet, took a swipe at Rudy Giuliani. On his Web site Thompson wrote:
When I was working in television, I spent quite a bit of time in New York City. There are lots of things about the place I like, but New York gun laws don’t fall in that category.
Anybody who knows me knows I’ve always cared deeply about the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. So I’ve always felt sort of relieved when I flew back home to where that particular civil liberty gets as much respect as the rest of the Bill of Rights.
Thompson of course was going after Rudy Giuliani whom he mentioned later in the post:
Now, the same activist federal judge from Brooklyn who provided Mayor Giuliani’s administration with the legal ruling it sought to sue gun makers, has done it again. Last week, he created a bizarre justification to allow New York City to sue out-of-state gun stores that sold guns that somehow ended up in criminal hands in the Big Apple.
Meanwhile Mitt Romney has also been swiping Giuliani over NYC’s status as a “sanctuary city” or place where illegal immigrants can go without fear of prosecution.
Today Rudy Giuliani echoed Newt Gingrich and said he sees a Clinton/Obama ticket and says he will defeat them easily. There is something I don’t quite understand about Giuliani’s electoral math though or his thoughts about winning the presidency.
He has continually stated he is the only Republican with a chance of taking NY State & California. But a Clinton/Obama ticket would undoubtedly guarantee a win for the Democrats. I couldn’t possibly imagine California not handing a victory to Obama and I couldn’t see NY State not handing a victory to Clinton or vice versa.
I think most Republicans can easily spot that NY & California won’t be heading their way anytime soon. Frankly they will have a hard enough time keeping non-amazingly-left-leaning states. So why would they vote for Giuliani if his big plan is to take NY/California and he just asserted the liberal/moderate dream team of 2008 running against him? Because he thinks he can rally Republicans against Clinton/Obama?
The Swamp find Giuliani relating his plan for combatting rising Health Care costs to Plasma screen tests:
“Plasma TVs. Gosh, they used to cost $15,000. They now cost $2,000. Or the TV’s that used to cost $3,000 or $4,000. They now cost $200 or $300. How did they get driven down in price?” Giuliani asked the group rhetorically on Sunday.
“They didn’t get driven down in price by lower quality. The quality’s higher. They got driven down in price because millions and millions of people bought them. And then, the people who made them realize that we can price the product much lower, but if we sell a lot of them, we make more money. That’s not happening with our health care,” he said.
Though he says he’ll release more details in the next few months, Giuliani’s says his plan is aimed at a broad middleâ€â€an estimated 45 million Americans who make too much money to be covered by Medicaid and earn too little to be covered by an employer-sponsored insurance policy or afford one on their own.
Not to sound like a skeptic but under this logic why am I paying $4 for a bottle of 24 Advil’s which is basically a mild pain reliever thats been around for quite awhile and used by millions of people and bought in bulk by hospitals all over the nation? Shouldn’t Advil cost like, a cent or two a pill instead of sixteen cents and shouldn’t it be going down in price every year instead of up like TV’s do?
We know a large percentage of costs associated with health care already are administrative costs which include advertising to stay competitive? If everyone is fighting to get you to buy into their private program wouldn’t that raise the cost of advertising & overall marketing?
