America's Mayor loses my respect

Call me naive. Call me gullable. Call me overly-optimistic. I mistakingly thought that maybe even though Rudy Giuliani refers to himself as a Republican, he might still be a candidate that I could see myself voting for in the next election. As it stands now, none of the declared candidates are getting me very excited.

Rudy seemed like a decent enough candidate that fit most of my qualifications. You see, I'm somewhat conservative when it comes to fiscal issues and issues regarding the military, national security, and illegal immigration. I also consider myself pretty damn liberal on social issues including abortion and civil rights (like gay marriage and the legalization of drugs). So, Rudy and me seem to jive on a few things.

However, Rudy totally jumped the shark yesterday as he revealed himself to be just another of the many fear-mongers hiding under the cloak of the Republican party. Yesterday, at a Lincoln Day dinner in New Hampshire, Rudy puked this bile from his beak:

"We're going to win that war whether there's a Republican president or a
Democratic president or any other president. The question is going to
be: How long does it take and how many losses will we have along the way?
And I truly believe that if we go back on defense for a period of time,
we're going to ultimately have more losses and it's going to go on much
longer."

“If any Republican is elected president — and I think obviously I would be
best at this — we will remain on offense and will anticipate what (the
terrorists) will do and try to stop them before they do it.”

"If one of them gets elected, it sounds to me like we're going on the
defense. We've got a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. We're going
to wave the white flag there. We're going to try to cut back on the Patriot
Act. We're going to cut back on electronic surveillance. We're going to cut
back on interrogation. We're going to cut back, cut back, cut back, and
we'll be back in our pre-September 11 mentality of being on defense."

"I want to be your president because I think I understand this at least as
well as anyone else and I think better than most."

Well, now. This certainly turned my stomach. Instead of writing my own retort to this, I'll turn it over to one of the few intelligent voices daring to call "Bullshit" on folks like Rudy, Mr. Keith Olbermann. Here is Keith's Special Comment on yesterday's edition of 'Countdown' on MSNBC.

Good luck in your presidential run Rudy. You've already alienated a big portion of right-wingers with your liberal stances on gay marriage and abortion. Now you've basically driven away anyone who considers themselves a Democrat. Thats a fairly small target audience you've left yourself with...