First, Giuliani lost his top Iowa adviser to the White House. Jim Nussle, a former Republican candidate for Governor and Iowa Congressman, ditched the Giuliani camp to head the Bush Administration's Office of Management and Budget.
Usually, the head of the OMB is a steward who makes sure taxpayers' dollars are wisely spent. It's unclear what Nussle will actually do, as the Bush Administration's budgetary policies apparently focus on the value of taxpayer dollars as kindling, toilet paper, and as the subject of various experiments regarding bottomless pits.
But don't worry about Jim. I'm sure he'll be able to finally catch up on his reading and Nussle up to a good book (I don't care who you are, that's just plain funny).
It's tough to say how much this will actually affect his campaign, but still, what a slap at Giuliani. I mean, Rudy's top Iowa guy prefers an ineffectual position with an ineffectual administration to advising the frontrunning GOP presidential candidate? And this president isn't just a lame duck. He's a paraplegic albatross. Leaving Giuliani for said albatross is like saying, "Thanks for the job offer Rudy, but I've already got this great gig lined up polishing brass on the Titanic." Ouch.
Rudy's second migraine of the week came Monday, when Newsday disclosed the details behind Rudy's departure from the Iraq Study Group. You might remember late last year when the blue-ribbon panel commissioned by Congress to formulate recommendations for the White House's failing Iraq policy. What you might not remember is that Rudy Giuliani was originally a member.
So how did Rudy lose this prestigious gig? Newsday reports that Giuliani failed to report to any of the official meetings. On his truancy, chairman of the committee Jim Baker gave Rudy a ‘stark choice - either attend the meetings or quit.' Damn, Ambassador Baker. Don't you realize Rudy needed that panel to pad his foreign policy résumé? This is the biggest outrage since the NCAA determined that student football players need to actually attend class.
So what prior engagements kept Rudy from exercising his ‘leadership' in the most pressing issue of our generation? In a letter explaining his decision to quit the committee, the former mayor cited ‘previous time engagements'. For those of you that don't speak Giulianese, ‘previous time engagements' means making $11.4 million in speaking fees over a 14-month period.
So here's a guy who wants to be President solely based on his leadership and foreign policy credentials. The only problem is that he has no foreign policy credentials (for the record, being the mayor of a city that got attacked does not make you a foreign policy expert). Instead of beefing up his ‘Presidentiality', (I say it's a word; MS Word disagrees with me) he opted out of the ISG for his private-sector cash bonanza and campaign events to make nice with Republican nutjobs like Ralph Reed.
Aaaaand there goes your claim to leadership as well. So what exactly are people voting for, Rudy? Your winning personality and sex appeal?
As if that weren't enough, South Carolina Treasurer Thomas Ravenel was indicted on federal cocaine charges.
Why does this matter to Rudy? Why, Ravenel, is South Carolina's state chairman of Rudy's presidential campaign, of course!
The millionaire former real estate developer Ravenel was caught with less than 500 grams of Peruvian marching powder in 2005. Now 44, Ravenel is now charged with distribution of cocaine. Apparently, he bought the blow to share. Good for him. Most Republicans are well into their 60s before they learn to share.
The FBI agents reportedly became suspicious when Ravenel flew to a Rudy campaign event without the use of an airplane. Suspicions were confirmed when a vehicle in Rudy's motorcade broke down and Ravenel towed the vehicle the remainder of its journey using only his teeth. Luckily, the bad news of the indictment had little effect on Ravenel's mood.
This just goes to prove one of my long held theories: Republicans love cocaine. Seriously, it's like catnip for them. The party of "just say no" is, in actuality, the party of "just say when." All the way back to the 80s, there's nothing that young conservatives love more than sniffing Bolivian jitter dust off a male prostitute's ass. Anyone who didn't know that Alex P. Keaton was blown out of his mind and suffering from severe anal warts is just plain naïve. Family values, indeed.
Democrats are, of course, less discreet with their drug of choice: Weed, pot, ganja, sensimilia, the big Mary Jane. Whatever you want to call it, liberals are big fans. These disparate narcotic preferences go a long way in explaining why Democrats love pretty colors and nature, and why Republicans love intercontinental ballistic missilies.
Of course, the Rudy camp is distancing itself from Ravenel, who stepped down from his volunteer position on Tuesday. The incident was, nonetheless, a distraction for the campaign. Any day you have to profess to know nothing about an ongoing federal drug probe is a day you wish you could call a ‘do over'. That's Chapter 1 in ‘Everything You Need to Know About Politics, But Were Too Blown to Ask'.
Tough week Rudy. Sucks to be you.
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