Did you see reports on the Winthrop poll showing Clinton well ahead of the pack, and Giuliani edging out McCain?
It’s probably not what it seems. At least, the McCain people don’t seem very worried. Richard Quinn gives some fairly good reasons why the latest ARG poll — which shows McCain 9 points ahead — is more reliable. More about that over the weekend.
The point is that for today, the news was Rudy stealing the show from McCain — and it put me in mind of a somewhat more egregious case of that, back during the GOP convention in New York in 2004.
McCain had this huge, huge party at Cipriani on Wednesday night — actually, more like Thursday morning — with a very expensive spread of food and drinks (see below) and Joe Piscopo as emcee.
Here’s the thing, though — Rudy shows up on the stage, which was fine (you can’t keep Rudy off the stage, as this slide show from Slate reminds us), and Joe Piscopo puts his arm on his shoulder and sings him a song…. well, here’s how I wrote about it back then:
The entertainment included Darrell Hammond and Joe Piscopo of Saturday
Night Livefame.
(I last saw Joe at the Democratic convention in 1988. Times
change.) Next thing you knew Mr. Giuliani was up there between Sen. McCain and
the SNL guys, and Mr. Piscopo was doing his patented (though rusty) Sinatra
impression. With his arm around Rudy, he sang to the tune of "The Lady is a
Tramp:"
"We hope one day ‘Hail to the Chief’ will be his theme song
That’s why the
mayor is a champ."
It seemed a tad insensitive to the purpose of the evening, since the point was supposed to be giving McCain’s presidential hopes a boost.
Anyway, McCain was good-natured about it, as you can sort of see if you click on the above, smaller picture (sorry about the quality — low light levels). But it couldn’t have been his favorite moment of the evening.
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I wouldn’t believe a word out of Richard Quinn’s mouth– including “a” and “the.”
And you wouldn’t be alone, R!
Benito”Il Duce” Giuliani may be ahead, but Ron Paul surely put him in his place at the SC debate. Hiz Honor the Mayor ain’t got a chance in SC regardless of McCain. Why?
Se Fred! See Fred run ! See Fred win!
Benito”Il Duce” Giuliani may be ahead, but Ron Paul surely put him in his place at the SC debate. Hiz Honor the Mayor ain’t got a chance in SC regardless of McCain. Why?
See Fred! See Fred run ! See Fred win!
Maybe Guiliani is ahead because he has demonstrated that he can effectively run a large, diverse city and have positive results (New York); that he can do so in extreme circumstances (N.Y. 9/11 and thereafter); and that he doesn’t need to use violent argument ad hominem to do so (at least I don’t think he’s lied to get us to engage in a crazy war without adequate preparation).
Ron Paul put Guiliani “in his place at the SC Debate?”
He’s lucky that the others (less McCain, of course) didn’t open a can of Jack Bauer on his butt. The audience of GOP faithful would have cheered like Romans at the Coliseum.
If you’re that far off the mark on events that have already happened, I’m more than a little doubtful about your predictions.
Wonders never cease – I actually agree with RTH, probably for the first time in a year. There is no way Paul would ever get more than 5% of the vote, even if all the other Reps suddenly dropped out of the race. The guy’s so out of it it’s hard to tell who’s more whacked: Ron Paul or the lefty Nutroots.
RTH et al
You missed my point entirely. I know Paul has no chance at the nomination. However Benito “Il Duce” Giuliani acted astonished at the truth. We did invite 911. I’ll lay another reason why… not only do to foreign policy but also by not being prepared to stop the attack itself. As for Paul being a wacko? The man probably is the only strict constitutionalist in the race.
Pretty much all polls show McCain trending downward. Pollster.com has a good summary, and a discussion of recent polls.
It’s clear the McCain campaign is starting to panic.
It’s almost comical the way campaigns rally around poll results they happen to like, but do their best to discredit results they don’t.
But it looks to me there are so many undecideds, it’s still anyone’s race.
Ron Paul tells the truth about foreign policy blowback and the Imperial GOP candidates act as if someone peed in their Cheerios.
Why am I not surprised?
However, if I were scoring the “debate” for effect on ignorant independents and cro-magnon party faithful, I’d give the “win” to Giuliani.
As usual today, the artful (but false) sound bite triumphs over the more difficult to digest truth.