Rudy Giuliani | bradwarthen.com

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 Live fame.
(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.

Spread

Robert Ariail had an idea for a cartoon for today that would have shown the GOP going off and leaving John McCain behind.

I asked him to explain it, and as is so often the case, he said it had something to do with reports that were all over television — which he watches, and I don’t. If I were to start watching TV news, I would do it as much as anything so that I could raise myself in Robert’s estimation. He tends to respect my opinion on cartoons except when I say, "What’s that about," and he throws up his arms and says "Everybody’s talking about this." To which I sniff and say if it’s a national story and it wasn’t on the front of The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal, it must not be very important. But I’m just covering up for my own insecurity. We all triage our time. One way I do is to avoid television.

In this case, I talked him out of that particular idea on other grounds. But I later saw what he had been talking about. I went to the credit union and the tellers had FoxNews on a tube behind the counter. It was going on about a poll showing Rudy Giuliani substantially ahead. (And yeah, I probably should have seen that in the WSJ, but I didn’t.)

I was unimpressed, not least because even if they had been trying to predict a particular primary within days before the vote itself, such results are notoriously unreliable. Primary voters are more difficult to predict than general.

But I think I know something about primary voters after all these years, and while I might prefer Giuliani to some seeking the GOP nomination, I don’t see much chance that the partisans who turn out for these affairs will.

I want them to pick McCain, of course, but I realize they might not. One thing I feel pretty sure about, though, is that if they pick someone other than McCain, it won’t be Rudy.

I don’t always agree with the views touted by National Review, but its latest cover story, by Ramesh Ponnuru, makes a great deal of sense to me. An excerpt:

Actually, McCain’s campaign is doing better than it seems to be. It is true that the unpopularity of the Iraq War, and specifically of the surge he has long advocated, is dragging his poll numbers down. It is true as well that in many polls he is now behind Rudolph Giuliani.
But Giuliani is a useful opponent for McCain. The good news of the senator’s season is that another rival, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, has so far failed to unite the Right behind him. In a McCain-Romney race, Romney would have most conservatives and portions of the party establishment behind him — and might win the nomination.
Giuliani is a different story. He supports taxpayer funding of abortion, sued gunmakers for selling guns, and went to court to keep New York City from giving the names of illegal immigrants to the federal government. Polls show that many Republican voters are unaware of these aspects of the former mayor’s record. It is hard to see how he wins the nomination once they learn about them. In a three-way race, some people who prefer Romney to McCain will nonetheless back McCain to head off Giuliani. This year, then, a real threat to McCain has failed to materialize — and a fake one has replaced it.
McCain’s apostasies from conservatism, unlike Giuliani’s, are well known. The mayor’s polls form a ceiling. McCain’s could be a floor, if conservatives are willing to reconsider their view of him. If they do, then the current Giuliani moment will be succeeded by a McCain moment. I think conservatives will give him a second look — as they should.