For the religious right, that is. Rudy Giuliani, surging ahead in the polls, is now the preferred candidate of the conservative GOP primary electorate. Go figure. Warning – the gender politics of the video over the fold are dodgy. But I don’t imagine that fundies would think that for the same reasons I do.
Here’s a scary transcript from this afternoon’s PM — Bruce Wolpe is talking about McCain’s (to me) bizarre announcement on Letterman that he is going to run for office.
Later in the segment he says that there’s no real down-home bottom-line Reaganesque conservative in the Republican race yet, that Guiuliani freaks out the hardcore right for the reasons you suggest, and that therefore the person to keep one’s eye on is (shudder) Newt Gingrich, whom he calls ‘a strong Conservative who is looking at this situation, biding his time and he knows if he gets in the race he would drive a tsunami of Conservative support because there isn’t a real red meat Republican Conservative in the race right now. And that is the challenge and dilemma of the Republican Party.’
Transfixed as I was by the Mixed Metaphor of the Year (a tsunami of red meat — and it’s only just March), I was still a bit freaked out by this. I mean, Gingrich, for whom G. B. Trudeau’s gravatar (as it were) has long been a round black bomb with a short, lit fuse … Eek.
And a ‘driven’ tsunami, at that.
Sounds like the next big thing in SUV’s.
Gingrich, Guiuliani, McCain?
Get down on your knees and pray for a Democrat in 2008.
(Although each is prolly better than GW. They are all reality based afaik.)
I don’t think Gingrich is very reality based.
I wouldn’t rate his chances, Dr Cat. The guy is nuts.
If Ohio stays GOP I really can’t see how a Dem can win 08.
Rudi has the chance of realigning the poltical map if the GOP is smart enough to make him the candidate. He is amazingly articulate in NYC sort of way.
He could actually put California in play if he made the right moves with Arnie supported him.
I keep saying that it is long way off so we still don’t have a good idea.
I will say this though those who are losing popularity now will not have a chance in a years time.
If the current situation is anything to go by, that is a bit of a non sequitur.
(With all due deference to the Pirate Queen! God knows I hope Your Majesty is correct.)
All my NYC friends point out the big problem with Rudy is that basically he’s a complete prick. That regardless of his ideology and managerial competence, he is just not a nice person to know. And that under the withering scrutinity that all Oval ones have to suffer these days, he’d last barely a week before completely blowing his stack.
On the other hand though, if you think what the USA needs at its helm now in these unstable times is a volatile and aggressive New Yorker with a very short fuse, then vote Rudy!
Better to be a prick than to be useless. McCain would be better but Giuliani is still much better than Bush.
McCain has folded under every attack from the socially conservative Republicans: remember all the negative swill about him fathering a mixed-race child, and he couldn’t even mount an effective rebuttal about his (half-West Asian) daughter’s adoption?
He used to be pro-choice and pro-marriage equality for same-sex couples. He’s folded on both of those as well.
Giuliani might be a prick but at least he hasn’t totally caved to the social conservatives. McCain, despite being heroic when younger, is a wimp now.
Shorter John McCain on Letterman: ‘I’m “with it.” I’m “hip.”‘
Perhaps John Howard could take a leaf out of the playbook of American “modern conservatives” later this year by announcing the election date during a surprise sleep-over in the Big Brother House.
That’d give the Ruddster a turkey-slapping he wouldn’t soon forget.
I reckon the Dems would love Gingrich to be a candidate. He’d be the George McGovern of the right – the proverbial drover’s dog would win against him in November 2008.
McCain has got to be the front runner for the Repubs at the moment as he’s clearly the most electable of them in spite of Iraq, but it’s likely a better candidate will emerge from the shadows. But the religious right/crony capitalist alliance is really on the nose with most of the country now so you’d have to favour the Dems to win anyway.
If the Dems don’t/can’t win in 08, then they really should just resign en masse, and anyone with half a brain left should jettison the nitwits and just start a whole new party. After 8 years of catastrophic bungling and very serious damage done to the US (to say nothing of other places), anything short of a landslide victory will be evidence of incompetence on a virtually criminal scale… nearly commensurate with that of the incumbents.
And yet, it’s not out of the question.
And it makes me wonder… (cliched chord progression)
It would if voting in the US were compulsory, but I think Wolpe’s view (see link in first comment) was that hardcore hard-right American social conservatives would emerge from the woodwork to vote for him in droves.
The Christian right is increasingly focused on the war aginst Islam, Giuliani is their man here, he’s made clear he will appoint the right judges and as for his personal life, well Christians can accept hypocrisy. I think Giulani is the American Philip Ruddock.
OPleaseBlobNo. I’m now having visions of Ruddock in drag being air-kissed by Trump.
My brane, you bastard, my brane!
correct me if I am wrong…..
My take is that the electorate is still basically slightly right of centre. The northern states are prime to see a Northern GOP candidate for a change as they have no problems choosing GOPers for governors like they have with Pataki, Romney and the CT guy whose name escapes me for the moment. I would also include Califonrnia since Arnie.
The other important thing is that Americans always like Governors as Prez as against congressmen. Rudi would be identified with this group simply because of NYC’s size ( large budget) and the fact that the NY mayor has such strong admin powers.
If Rudi can hold his poll ratings- a big if- so early in the piece he may just make it.
As for Rudi being thought of as a prick…. he currently has the highest positives of any candidate.
To be perfectly honest the Dems performance in Congress at this stage is underwhelming top say the least even from a Dem perspective.
In any event at 52-48 these days is considered a landslide and ominous for Hillary which is why negatives are so important. You just don’t want to many people hating you.
Meant for JPZ
JC — I agree that “negatives are important. You don’t want too many people hating you.” This is part of the reason I think the Dems have a big problem, in spite of the fact that they shouldn’t.
For instance, I’m no big Hillary-watcher, but people tell me she’s been a surprisingly effective Senator (wouldn’t really know, m’self); on the other hand, she gives off a tremendous odor of distrust to a lot of people. She’s probably a good enough brawler to get the nomination, but I think she’s too disliked to win. It’s absurd, given epic-level GOP incompetence in office, that they may win again due to Dem electoral incompetence; but I think that’s a high probability. Obama (neophyte and wishful-thinker) and Edwards (unaccomplished cipher) give off similar bad vibes, regardless of any positive achievements they can point to (in the case of the latter two, that’s some pretty slim pickin’s).
But then, neither McCain nor Giuliani is a clear-cut winner type. The field right now is full of weak contenders on both sides — it’d be a good time for some ballsy small fry (like Clinton in ’92) to come sailing in out of left field and clean all their clocks. But I have no idea who that person would be. It may yet prove to be Obama, if he can play smart. The US can’t afford another GOP true-believer (and after the way Bush lied about his real priorities in the 2000 campaign, it’s unforgivable that the Dems can’t find a way to capitalize on this, and tar all front-rank Repubs as disingenuous maniacs; it’s simply unprofessional on their part to not manage this. Rove woulda done it to *them* if the tables were turned.)
Part of Giuliani’s problem is that 9/11 really only gave him a charisma boost; but as all New Yorkers know, his real legacy as a man in power (and the reason there should be a solid-gold statue of him in Times Square, but not necessarily a seat in the White House) is the way he reversed the absolute tidal wave of crime and social disintegration that was engulfing NYC in the 80s and early 90s. For this he is a true hero, but the scenario is not replicated on a large national scale. The problems of the US at the moment are not the problems of NYC writ large; they will require a national-level statesman to do it, and I just don’t see Rudy as that guy. He’s too regional, he’s too urban, he’s too Noo Yawk, and as Nabakov hinted, you have to be a real street-fighter to be a good NY mayor, and also a bit of a nut, which is not the same thing as what you need to be a good president. Ed Koch was another guy who couldn’t make the jump to national politics for similar reasons.
Though who knows; the two guys I think I could be most wrong about, are Rudy and Obama. Either of them might step up and prove to have hidden reserves that make them brilliant if they can get in, despite what look like shortcomings right now.
But if you want my real opinion, I think that Iraq has become a technician’s problem, that needs to be solved not by a politician, but by a knowledgeable manager with transparent intentions and motives, who is politically inclusive and morally positioned beyond reproach — if such a person exists. But that would be an appointment, not the president himself, who by definition does not have the credibility, whoever he or she is. I think the real domestic issue is simpler and more obvious.
You want to see a landslide of historic proportions? Whichever candidate could manage to say three simple words, and really mean them, would win one of the biggest victories you’ve ever seen in US politics. The three words are: No. More. Immigrants.
None at all? Or just no more illegals from Mexico?
Fark.
Well, that’s the huddled masses taken care of then.
So, when are they chiselling the poem off the statue?
Dr. Cat — the Constitution, so far as I know, enshrines no well-meaning poems about huddled masses. It does, however, make rather pointed mention, right at the top of the page, to “ourselves and our Posterity.” So perhaps the foreign masses, being neither of those things, could all huddle in China for a change; I hear their economy’s going absolutely nuts. Next superpower and so forth. I’d say it’s the place to be. Run, don’t walk!
Be that as it may, I was mainly talking about a political and electoral question. As in any ostensibly self-governing society, it ought to be the people who decide who “ourselves” are — not cost-cutting corporations, not the Mexican Consulate, not real estate developers, not the ACLU, and not the National Council of La Raza. Voters, I believe, have had no confidence for a very long time that stuff like alleged “immigration reform” has anything at all to do with their welfare or their wishes. A candidate who was willing to step forward and address the issue frankly and comprehensively, and who was willing to make it clear that it was the people’s priorities that he represented — meaning the people of the US and not the people of Mexico, NAFTA, the rest of the world, and/or shareholders — would I believe find an absolute geyser of support. I think that the candidates pussyfoot around the thing, fearing to offend this or that micro-constituency, all the while not realizing that the center would provide them with such overwhelming support that they could comfortably ignore the fringes. But then again it’s just a hunch, and nobody ever got rich by betting on *my* political instincts.
It’s true that Pat Buchanan got beat down on this issue in the past; but then again, that was 20 or so million Mexicans ago. I think the mood maybe has shifted just a smidgen since then.
No more immigrants?
Well that would be Tom Tancredo in a heart beat, but somehow I don’t see him getting off the ground.
Look, you’re right on the immigrant issue. It can be the sleeper issue of 08.
It’s still to early.
No. More. Immigrants.
Pauline Hanson.
Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Enoch Powell.
etc
You one old-fashioned kinda guy, j_p_z.
wbb — Le Pen? Really?
I dunno, man, you’ll have to pardon me if I find the whole smear-by-association thing a tad unpersuasive.
Do you always contemplate the entire world in terms of absolute abstract principle, with no reference to context, or the changing patterns of physical reality?
I think a fair observer would have to say that on the whole, the US has been extraordinarily generous to foreigners and immigrants, throughout the 20th-cent. and into this one. Especially in the past 25 years, which has seen the largest uptake of foreigners in our history, eclipsing the “Ellis Island” period of the early 20th-cent. And settling in all quarters of the country, not just in the Atlantic seaboard cities, as was traditional in the past. Roughly speaking, there are more foreign-born people living in the US now than there are people in all of say Spain or Italy, and on the whole we’ve been surprisingly patient and jolly about it. I don’t think anyone can fairly accuse us of being Blue Meanies on that score.
But there is a growing feeling amongst voters that our hospitality is being abused; that frankly there comes a point when enough is simply enough; and that our government is paying far more attention to the desires of business and special-interest groups, than it is to the wishes of the citizenry. And I don’t think those are particularly zany points of view. They deserve to be questioned, criticized, subjected to scrutiny, naturally; but if your starting point is already to call the other side names, I can’t help wondering what sort of ammo you’d have left in say, Round 2, to say nothing of Round 20.
Are concepts like scale, proportion, time-frame, rate of uptake vs. rate of absorption, meaningless to you? If so, then I bet you’d make a brilliant anaesthesiologist. We won’t get into the even knottier issues like erosion of civic culture, or the questionable ability of the public purse to continue coping.
JC — yeah, I don’t think it will actually happen, because I think the candidates will treat the whole thing as too much of a land-mine. And besides, it’s not at all clear that any of them actually agree with the position. (They oughta be grilled on it, though; even more so than Roe v. Wade.) All I’m saying is, considering the mood of the country, from a vote-getting perspective, I think there’s gold in them thar hills. But I doubt any of them will go for it; either too afraid of getting smacked by the lobbies, or too many special interests of their own to answer to, instead of the electorate. They’ll make some noises, and then it’ll be back to business as usual.
$sweetie in drag and Ronnie Walker, that’d be good. I’ll get busy with Photoshop this weekend. We could even have our own mini contest here on LP, like
this…
Surely the winning candidate would have to be a little more, shall we say, nuanced than that.
Let’s take the words at their face value.
Could any seriious candidate shut the door entirely on any new arrivals? Someone’s grandma from Sicily? That promising entrepreneur from Madras? … Aw, c’mon!
So, once the door’s allowed to be opened a chink to admit Deserving Folk, then our Hypothetical Nativist Candidate has the problem of explaining to a plethora of interest groups and lobbies why the chink fits that other group, but not theirs. That’s a political quagmire that makes Iraq look like a skating rink.
However, there is another reading. “Immigrants” is an iceberg word. Only the tip shows in the forum of public debate. Who is and who is not an “immigrant” in the murky world of focus group-driven semantics and echoing dog whistles often goes much deeper than the designation of nationality showing on the passport.
In short, thec word “immigrant” can mean Someone Not Like Us. S/he may have the wrong skin tones. S/he may have the wrong shaped lips. S/he may worship the wrong gods.
Thus, which is the “immigrant”?
The British passport-holding Miss Marple from Little Rutting on the Wold, via Bradford.
or
The British passport-holding Abu Jihad from downtown Bradford.
How is our Hypothetical Nativist Candidate going to spin this one to political effect?
Katz — oh, for cryin’ out loud.
“Surely the winning candidate would have to be a little more, shall we say, nuanced than that.”
Well, uh, yes; surely. Psst. Don’t tell anybody else this gigantic secret, but… one of the basic rules of negotiating is, you start out by demanding a lot more than you actually expect to get in the end. If you start out demanding only what you want, then you get a lot less than what you want. I certainly hope you have somebody who does your automobile shopping for you.
Your use of the ancient word “Nativist” is to my mind, as an analogy or a reference point, historically and analytically kind of shallow, and neglects a sober view of the ways that things change in the world from one era to another. To me it suggests that either a) you aren’t aware of the sheer scale of what’s happened here and its consequences, or else b) you just don’t care. You’re perfectly entitled to both views, naturally; but I think you should appreciate how they butter no parsnips with me.
“echoing dog whistles”
Well, it certainly took you long enough, I’ve been standing here on the corner waiting! But who’s really doing the dog-whistling here? Seems to me there’s dog whistling for the hoped-for ‘racist’, just as surely as there’s other kinds, and frankly I just won’t have it. It’s downright unintellectual, and anti-intellectual to boot. To oversimplify the issue that drastically is either childish, insane, or a Trojan horse for a hidden agenda; and in any category, I ain’t buying. Racism as a political term has become something like the Ernie Bushmiller of rhetoric. Learn to put more than one rock and one chair in the frame, for Sluggo’s sake.
“‘Immigrants’ is an iceberg word.”
You bet your bippy it is; not only that, it’s an actual fucking iceberg. The population of the US has increased by 100 million people in my lifetime, which is only about 40 years, largely a result of immigration. Come sit in traffic in a large American city; come have a look at a public school. Oh, forget it, why do I bother…
“The British passport-holding Abu Jihad from downtown Bradford….”
Where, and when, did you get this crazy idea that Abu Jihad, or anybody else for that matter, has an a priori right to settle in somebody else’s country strictly on their own account, without any consideration at all of the other country’s sentiments? If I were in a pissier mood, I could write quite a pungent little mini-essay about how this itself is a far more virulent species of racism than the one you’re trying to wave at me on a stick. But we’re trying to stay classy ’round these parts, if we can manage it.
I keep forgetting that everybody on the planet is born a ‘pre-American,’ and they’re only waiting for the paperwork to go through before they just show up and claim their birthright. Actually, I guess youse can even skip the paperwork, too, none of it seems to matter, right?
My view is based on the idea that sovereignty is derived from the people, and that it is the expressed will of the people, –viz., not the will of multinational corporations, and not the will of lobbyists for foreign governments hungry for easy population control and remittance cash– which ought to prevail in matters of government, which matters include, ‘who can come to live amongst us’? My view is based on the classical ideas of self-government and representative democracy. The opposing view would appear to be based on vague and newly-invented rights and principles which have no very serious political pedigree that I can discern; they are essentially a Will To Power of various interested parties.
Dearie me Japerz, such emotional excess cannot be good for a person of your …ah … experience.
Furious agreement. Then furious disagreement. But always fury.
Nativism arose in the US in the 1840s as a reaction against the Irish influx. America has always been an immigrant society. I doubt that the percentage of native-born was much higher in 1840 than it is today. There is a “sober” view for you that avoids the rhetorical excesses so conducive of moral panic.
Who said anything different? If Americans want to keep Abu Jihad out of their country, that’s Americans’ concern. The world begins to take notice, however, if the US admits Miss Marple but bans Mr Jihad, even though they acquired their British passports at the same place on the same day.
What a scarily self-flattering notion. You’re welcome to harbour it, of course, if it makes you feel good (or bad).
Am I permitted to agree with this in a non-furious way?
Yes it’s true, Katz me china, when I am furious I do talk about Ernie Bushmiller a lot.
It’s only when I am *reeeeally* steamed that I start to get into Chester Gould and Mister Al Capp.
Just so there’s a little perspective around here.
signed,
The Jeep
(in an Elzie Segar way, not a GM way)
I’ve been giving this one a bit of thought myself, JPZ, and it seems to me that, as Katz suggests, it’s mainly actual Americans who believe that. From where I’m sitting in front of my computer it seems to me that every second completely enraging pop-up ad is for a CHANCE TO WIN A GREEN CARD, complete with flashing bells and whistles and fireworks, plus rhetoric whose fundamental, unspoken assumption is that everyone on the planet is desperate to move to the States.
This and many, many other comparable bits of self-aggrandising self-representation may be a self-fulfilling prophecy; if America goes on taking it for granted that everyone is just hanging out to go there, and if it tirelessly, fulsomely advertises itself thus on a global scale, you can scarcely be surprised when you get a lot of takers. Advertising can convince people that they want all kinds of things.
But having followed the fortunes of Lymphopo, formely Liz of Grannyvibe, since before they found her grapefruit-sized Stage 4 tumour, and having read Operation Eden since its inception — and NB none of the people involved in either blog are immigrants — I have seen exactly how the US currently seems to treats its sick and its poor, and would consequently rather chew glass than move there (though healthy and solvent, at least for the moment) myself.
And I’ll stick my neck out here and say I’m fairly sure most of my countrypersons feel the same, even after ten years of this government. So I doubt you’ll get a lot of sympathy, or even comprehension, here.
If you’re using Firefox, you might want to check out the Adblock Plus extension.
Dr. Cat — well let me say that I am very sorry for your friends’ troubles. I suspect that a thorough phenomenology of the American health-care fuck-up would tend to confirm rather than refute most of my positions; but it’s a complicated line of thought, and I don’t want to sit here trying to score points off of somebody’s misfortune. That argument will be for another day, perhaps. In the meantime, I hope your friends have a lasting improvement in their situation, whatever it may be.
I’ve (naturally) never seen the irritating pop-up ads you complain about, but my guess would be that they are paid for by immigration lawyers and advocacy organizations, not by my government. If so, it would again confirm some of the things I’m talking about. But then, permit me also to speculate that you’re not exactly in the targeted market demographic: you already live in a nice, tidy, well-run, non-massively-overpopulated, English-speaking Western country. Why indeed would you want to move to a place that will in short order be none of those things?
“[I] would rather chew glass than move there.”
Fantastic. One down, three and a half billion to go.
btw, I’m bemused by the fact that people don’t seem to realize that my “pre-Americans” remark was a bit of steam-venting sarcasm. Funny, these cross-cultural miscues. There also seems to be a bit of a lingering undertaste in these parts that I’m some sort of tub-thumping yank jingoist, which I promise you I’m not. I can’t tell if that’s all just lost in the telephone lines, or if I communicate poorly, or if it’s because I’m a contrarian by disposition, or if youse just have a hidden cultural bias of your own. Probably a little bit of all of the above. I’m reminded of the hapless Japanese businessman who was floundering linguistically in America because in English, there are few-to-none formally-coded ways to express social hierarchy and formality/informality. Desperate to seem casual, but not sure how to do it, he jokingly said to his American host’s wife, “Jesus Christ, it’s fucking hot today, isn’t it?”