8:48PM
Giulani as the neo-con candidate
Issandr El Amrani
Rudy Giuliani apparently wants to be known as the neo-con candidate in the US presidential race. I was aghast enough that he chose pro-Israel agitator Martin Kramer as his Middle East advisor, but now he's gone one step further and taken on grand-daddy of all neo-cons Norman Podhoretz as his foreign policy advisor:
And here's Podhoretz foaming-at-the-mouth piece in favor of bombing Iran, which is an interesting example of the paranoid delusional mindframe.
WASHINGTON, July 23 (UPI) -- Republican candidate for the presidency Rudy Giuliani, the leading hawk among presidential hopefuls, has appointed Norman Podhoretz senior adviser for foreign policy.Well, at least we'll know clearly where he stands. It's rather alarming, though, considering that Giulani (despite being a well-known nutter) has the potential to appeal beyond the Republican mainstream and cross-over to some Democrats and swing voters because of his more liberal social views, has taken foreign policy advisors that only care about Israel. If he's elected, we're not likely to see the same drift on US foreign policy outside the Middle East that we saw during the Bush administration. With these people (and with neo-conservatives more generally) it's Israel, Israel, Israel.
A founding member of the neo-con movement, Podhoretz, in the June issue of Commentary magazine, called for an immediate attack on Iran. Either we bomb Iran now, or "we could wake up one morning to find that Iran is holding Berlin, Paris or London hostage to whatever its demands are then." The geopolitical label for the process is the "Islamization" of Europe, which neo-cons say is a rerun of Hitler's conquest of Europe in the 1930s and 40s.
Giuliani's eight-member foreign policy team also includes Martin Kramer, an Israeli-American expert on Shia Islam at Harvard and a fellow with both the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the Jerusalem-based Shalem Center ("for the development of Zionist thought"). Kramer once said the tendency by American Middle Eastern academics to neglect radical Islam as an issue was partly to blame for the failure to anticipate the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
And here's Podhoretz foaming-at-the-mouth piece in favor of bombing Iran, which is an interesting example of the paranoid delusional mindframe.
Reader Comments (12)
Don't be afraid of Guiliani he's a hashara only us NYkers who were here before and after 911 know the truth about that roach. And in due time the whole world will know that even his own fire dept, the guys that bore the brunt of 911 are repulsed by him. Everytime I see his ugly mug on TV and know that Osama made this loser I get angry. He was a big zero before 911 and sure as hell he still is. It's the Falaheen in the midwest that fell for his 911 myth and in due time he will get exposed insha alaa.
From Harper's magazine:
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/08/0081631" rel="nofollow">A fate worse than Bush:
Rudolph Giuliani and the politics of personality
Saad, unfortunately the average American voter only knows him as the "Mr. Steely Resolve on 9/11." If only all Americans could be New Yorkers (come to think of it, that may be taking things a bit too far.)
Hisham, thanks for the link.
Kramer and Podhoretz.... Two more reasons (as if I needed any others) not to vote for Rudy.
"Saad, unfortunately the average American voter only knows him as the “Mr. Steely Resolve on 9/11"
Issandr, proving again that he lacks even a weak grasp of the American political culture.
Neo-con is weak. The man's a fascist. Hope he gets the nomination, and I hope that a New York fireman runs against him as an independent.
Also check out Salon's take: "http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/12/05/giuliani/index_np.html" rel="nofollow">Two parts hubris, one part paranoia."
Are the Republicans really so bereft of ideas that they're again exploiting the suffering of a Democratic city for political gain?
Eff Giuliani, eff Hillary, and eff the two-party system for giving American voters such a sorry cast of characters as choices.
Fred, care to elaborate on how Giuliani is perceived by mainstream Americans outside of New York?
He was the mayor of New York.
He seems to be well liked by most people.
He was even in a movie once.
But I doubt that he can win the Republican vote.
If he is running against Hillary, Hillary will win.
Besides, everyone in America is PRO Israel. Duh.
Well, everyone except the the Muslims and the Nazi's.
Not that those groups should be grouped together by any means. But the Muslims are kinda screwed on Israel because
it's totally a country now and no matter what they do that will not change.
Honestly now. Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. Again and again and again until someone changes their mind or everybody dies.(Hopefully the former will happen someday)
I wouldn't worry about Mayor Julie. There are too many photos of him looking pretty in a pink dress for him to appeal to the Republican base, who will stay home in droves if he gets the nomination, and there are too many people who will love circulating those photos as it gets closer to election time. Mayor Julie looking pretty in pink would be the ultimate whisper smear campaign.
In short, while Mayor Julie has a favorable perception now amongst mainstream America which has little knowledge of his rule of New Yawk, if he becomes the Republican front-runner the Democrats aren't going to have to do a thing -- his own opponents will circulate the pretty-in-pink photos. If he still manages to lock up the nomination after that, it will be as a damaged candidate whose own base looks at him with suspicion.
Hilary and Obama are still ahead of Il Duce in the polls, last time I checked.
The one thing that worries me is that McCain no longer works as an effective ideological counter-weight to Romney-Guliani's extremism. And either two are sure to grab the Republican ticket.
Giuliani has a lot of appeal outside New York as a straight talker. Only downside is he may not fire up the social conservative base enough for a general election much the way Kerry couldn't fire up the Democrats base against Bush.
Kerry actually fired up the Democratic base quite well against Bush. For example, young people turned out in unprecedented numbers to vote for Kerry -- a larger percentage of young people than have ever voted in a modern U.S. election.
The only problem is, Bush got his own base fired up too. Add in a little help from his campaign manager in Ohio, who was also in charge of counting the votes in Ohio (remember Stalin's dictum that it doesn't matter how the people vote, what matters is who counts the vote), and that was all she wrote.
Ain't *no* way that Mayor Julie Annie is going to fire up the Republican base the way Bush did. He's from New Yawk, and everybody in the Republican base knows that all those yankees up in New Yawk are, like, these heathen sinners transvestites gays probably cook little boys for dinner kinda people, and those pretty in pink pictures of Mayor Julie Annie pouncing around in a pink dress with pink feather boa will make that situation only worse. And right now the majority of Democrats and independents would vote for the Democratic candidate even if the Democrats nominated a blue dog, simply out of disgust for Republican mis-rule of America over the past few years.
- Badtux the Cynical Penguin