How Long Can This Guy Last?

First, let's acknowledge the fact that Rudy Giuliani is a pro-gay, pro-immigrant, pro-choice, pro-gun-control, cross-dressing Catholic Republican with a vicious authoritarian streak. I mean, the guy is a mix between Caligula and Khomeini.

Right wingers shouldn't vote for him because of his liberal beliefs, and liberals shouldn't vote for him because of his right-wing behaviors. That in itself should have been enough to have deep-six'ed his candidacy, but it hasn't.

Then come the scandals:

First, Rudy Giuliani recommended a guy he knew was a soon-to-be-convicted criminal, Bernard Kerik, to President Bush as a nominee for the head of the Department of Homeland Security.

Then, Rudy Giuliani hired a Catholic priest to work for his consulting firm months after the priest was accused of sexual molestation. (The priest still works for him as well.)

Then, it was discovered that Rudy Giuliani was using New-York-City-tax-paid motorcades (i.e. police and vehicles) to chauffeur his mistress around the Tri-State area, and the costs of those trips were mixed in with other city government expenses to hide them.

Then, he tried to claim that he had spent as much... if not more... time at Ground Zero in Manhattan than most of the workers recovering bodies there, and that he was "exposed to the exact same things they were exposed to." (It was actually 29 hours lifetime total.)

On top of all of this... now we discover that his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, worked with a company which mines personal data on Americans, and received a commission for winning them a government contract, and receiving such a commission is eeee-legal in America.

And yet he is still hanging in there.

However.... we can all agree on three things:

• First: Nobody gets caught at everything.
• Second: The worse the thing you did, the better you hide it.
• Third, as corollary to first and second: The shit tends to hit the fan bigger and harder and smellier as time goes on (and it is usually safe to assume that the biggest and last turd is so bad, and so well-hidden that you never get to find out about it).

Therefore, the one thing that is likely is, people aren't going to have to make the hard decision of whether to vote for a Republican Robespierre-in-drag or a Democrat this year, because this guy is going to... has to... crater long before he wins the nomination.

(I'm just sorry that your other Republican choices... save one... barely qualify as an improvement.)

But seriously: I nominate Rudy Giuliani as the Worst Republican Presidential Candidate. Yes... even worse than Alan Keyes. Hell: You can even vote for Tom Tancredo before you vote for the Manhattan Mussolini for all I care.

---

UPDATE:

I guess we now have our answer as to "how long can this guy last?": Giuliani has dropped dramatically to...

• third in Iowa polls, 30 points behind the leader,
• third in New Hampshire polls,
• fourth in South Carolina polls,
• third in Florida, and
• third in Michigan.

The lesson: People... even Republican primary voters... figure stuff out eventually. Giuliani is toast... thankfully.