The Giuliani Papers

Giuliani's Returns to Fear Factor in Desperate Florida Speech

Giuliani is attempting to boost his sinking poll numbers with his speech in Florida today. The WSJ reports:

While Rudy Giuliani extolled the greatness of America to a crowd of several hundred supporters today in Florida, the undercurrent of the address–in large part meant to reenergize his campaign—was one of fear. “Today American remains that shining city on a hill, but there are those who live to extinguish that light, who plot and prey in darkness and wait and want for weakness,” declared a video that featured images of masked Arab men with guns shown prior to the former New York City mayor’s 30 minute address.

Giuliani referenced the September 11th terrorist attacks only once, but reiterated that the Islamic terrorism presents the “big challenge for our generation” and said his end result is the same as Ronald Reagan’s statement on how he could end the Cold War. “They Lose. We Win,” he said.

Giuliani’s speech comes at a tenuous time for his campaign, as the increasing fluidity of the Republican race has again raised questions over the Giuliani campaign’s strategy of focusing on Florida’s Jan. 29 primary and the “Tsunami Tuesday” Feb. 5 primaries—as opposed to the early states–as the best path to lead him to his party’s nomination. (For more on that read today’s Wall Street Journal article)

Tony Fabrizio, a Republican strategist who worked on Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign but is unaffiliated with any of the candidates, said Friday that the Giuliani camp may have overestimated their strength in this race. Early polls regularly showed Giuliani as the national Republican frontrunner. “These people have sat and played it safe every step of the way like this nomination was theirs. It was never theirs,” Fabrizio said.

Giuliani's Promise of More War

This will be the ultimate deciding issue in the 2008 election. It just has to be. Doesn't it?

George Packer in The New Yorker:

Giuliani has surrounded himself with a group of advisers—from Norman Podhoretz to the former Pentagon official Michael Rubin—who, having got Iraq spectacularly wrong, seem determined to make up for it by doing the same thing in Iran. Giuliani approaches foreign policy in the same mood of barely restrained eagerness for confrontation with which, as mayor of New York, he went after criminals. He has essentially promised to go to war with Iran in order to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons, and he recently suggested that waterboarding is only torture when the wrong people are doing it, and blamed the “liberal media” for giving it a bad name.