Rudy Giuliani

So long Rudy. Thanks for giving us the biggest fall in U.S. political history.

The rumor throughout the pundit world is that Rudy could be dropping out tomorrow if he doesn't do well in Florida today. It will be interesting to see what happens. I'll have the election tracker up a little later.

Also

There are reports that a large number of Democrats are even heading to the polls, despite Florida being stripped of delegates. It will be interesting to see those results also.

Following up on a post last week about Rudy defending his decision to move the emergency operations center into WTC 7, we now have more proof of people warning him it would be a bad idea:

The New York Police Department produced a detailed analysis in 1998 opposing plans by the city to locate its emergency command center at the World Trade Center, but the Giuliani administration overrode those objections. The command center later collapsed from damage in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.

“Seven World Trade Center is a poor choice for the site of a crucial command center for the top leadership of the City of New York,” a panel of police experts, which was aided by the Secret Service, concluded in a confidential Police Department memorandum.

These are becoming ridiculous

Josh has a nice summary of the ad

Okay, we've got another Rudy ad out and it's reaching the point of true pathos as Rudy tries to extend his 9/11 brand to anything else that is actually relevant to voters' lives. In his latest attempt, which you can see below, Rudy explains how among the Republican candidate only he's brave enough and tough enough to come out for a national catastrophe fund ...

There is something else I noticed in this new ad. A possible subliminal message:

I'm glad we don't have to worry about this asshole becoming President:

Rudolph W. Giuliani likens himself to a boxer who never takes a punch without swinging back. As mayor, he made the vengeful roundhouse an instrument of government, clipping anyone who crossed him.

In August 1997, James Schillaci, a rough-hewn chauffeur from the Bronx, dialed Mayor Giuliani’s radio program on WABC-AM to complain about a red-light sting run by the police near the Bronx Zoo. When the call yielded no results, Mr. Schillaci turned to The Daily News, which then ran a photo of the red light and this front page headline: “GOTCHA!”

That morning, police officers appeared on Mr. Schillaci’s doorstep. What are you going to do, Mr. Schillaci asked, arrest me? He was joking, but the officers were not.

While we here the media try to make up new news, let us not forget the real news. Rudy Giuliani is trailing Ron Paul by 6-1 in delegates - or 8-0 by the MyDD delegate counter on the right. This is the big news of the election - the previous front runner of the GOP is getting owned by the guy he calls crazy!

OUCH! Pretty bad when Rudy is trailing McCain by 12 points. in his home state.

This is a sign of how bad things are in the GOP

Under pressure from fundraisers and friends, Sen. Mel Martinez has decided not to endorse presidential candidate John McCain, who was planning to campaign Monday in Miami with the popular Florida Republican to help win crucial votes in South Florida's Hispanic community.

A big factor in Martinez's decision: He feels badly for McCain's opponent, Rudy Giuliani. After all, the former New York mayor was a Martinez supporter, and thought he had a shot at Martinez's support.

[SNIP]

''Mel's a tower of Jell-O,'' said Republican operative Roger Stone, a McCain backer. ``He was committed to McCain, and given McCain's role in the fight over immigration and given the fact he's going to win South Carolina tonight, Mel Martinez should have done what he said and gone with the guy who will be president.''

Ouch - sounds like some people are upset with old Mel. I love watching a good cat fight.

Rudy is making up excuses for his failures on 9/11. First up is the radio system:

But there's one key detail he won't clearly explain: Why firefighters on 9/11 had the same faulty radios that failed them in 1993, when the World Trade Center was first attacked.

When asked about the issue Thursday at an Associated Press appearance, Giuliani suggested it was an insurmountable technological hurdle that couldn't be cleared in his eight years in office that began Jan. 1, 1994, and ended just after 9/11.

A technology hurdle? I was on a fire department in a city of 24,000 people. We had the upgraded radio systems in 1988 and a lower frequency back up. That was 13 years before 9/11. It wasn't technology - that was there.

But that's not the only excuse Rudy is making. I really like this one:

The firefighter union and Riches also take Giuliani to task for insisting on placing an emergency response headquarters in the World Trade Center, even though he had been warned not to do so because it was a terrorism target.

A reader writes in to TPM and highlights how Rudy was the front runner one year ago amongst Republicans and majority of the Democratic field. Today he is struggling to survive, placing it all on Florida. This is something the media doesn't really seem to be talking about.

For someone who talks about law and ethics as much as Rudy, he sure is one crooked bastard.

Has a new ad in Florida - A Spanish speaking ad. Of course he is exploiting 9/11 in it; just in another language. How do you spell hypocrite?

And as soon as I read that I spewed coffee all over from laughing. An agent of change? Seriously - then why is he hiring all these Bush advisors for his campaign? Why does he sit there and act like Dubya has done no wrong? If that's change then I want that status quo!

Hillarious! If he can't handle a crying baby, how can he handle terrorists?

Jake Tapper from ABC apparently thinks it's newsworthy that Giuliani went to church yesterday:

This morning former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani attended church -- the first time he has apparently done so during this campaign.

Giuliani, according to ABC News' Jan Simmonds, this morning joined worshippers in the pews of the El Rey Jesus Church, a Spanish evangelical church in Miami, Florida. He also addressed the congregation.

I guess this puts an emphasis on the fundamentalist view Republicans have; that if someone don't go to church they can't lead. Remember when religion had no bearing on elections? Yeah it would be nice to go back to that time. Instead we have thrown away one of the cornerstones of our nation, and that will lead us down a dark path.