I rescind my previous endorsement of McCain

[bascule]

After recent events, if I were to pick a Republican candidate, it'd be Guiliani. While I applaud McCain for both eschewing CPAC (which Guiliani did attend), and for lambasting Ann Coulter for using the word "faggot" at the event, it's pretty obvious what he's trying to do, and it seems to be failing on both sides. Liberals who saw him as a respectable conservative maverick willing to buck some of the retardedness which began to permeating the Republican party saw him playing more and more to his conservative base, supporting both Bush and the war, and then eventually to a degree capitulating to the administration on the use of torture. Conservatives at the same time saw him as being too liberal, and eschewing CPAC was certainly a slap in the face for them. Michael Savage recently called McCain a hippie. I think Obama got the play-to-moderates formula down: rather that doing things which will appeal to one side or the other (and at the same time piss the other side off) don't do anything offensive and hope everyone likes you!

 

So anyway, I watched much of the CPAC coverage. From that it's pretty clear Mitt Romney was the candidate favored by hardline conservatives, and Giuliani managed to piss them off by being "too liberal". And yes, I agree, Giuliani is liberal enough to earn my respect at least.

 

So, to kick off my newfound support for him, here's a quote from Le Tigre's My, My Metrocard:

 

Oh f*ck Giuliani!

He's such a f*cking jerk!

Shut down all the strip clubs

Workfare doesn't work

[Sisyphus]

Giuliani can't win, though. He's basically one-note ("I was near ground zero!"), and he's probably too New York Italian to appeal to a national base once they get to know him. He's a bully, and loses his temper, and occasionally and unpredictably turns draconian when something angers his sensibilities.

[ecoli]

Giuliani can't win, though. He's basically one-note ("I was near ground zero!"), and he's probably too New York Italian to appeal to a national base once they get to know him. He's a bully, and loses his temper, and occasionally and unpredictably turns draconian when something angers his sensibilities.

 

When has Guiliani lost his temper?

[Sisyphus]

To my knowledge, not since he's started campaigning for President. But how long can he keep that up?

[Pangloss]

McCain himself hasn't changed a whit, but now that McCain is actually running, his liberal support that we've been hearing about for all these years (the "if there were one Republican I could vote for, it would have to be McCain....") will begin to evaporate, much like the candidates' need for the extremes after the primaries. That's politics.

 

In fairness, though, part of the reason for that is because people will learn more about him than they might have known before he was as prominent in the news. And of course many of the "I'd vote for him" statements made previously were due to single-issue topics. That's politics too.