GIULIANI IS STUMBLING BADLY IN THE FUNDRAISING DEPARTMENT-- & HIS ONE ASSET EVEN WINGNUTS LIKE, HIS SUPPOSED "LEADERSHIP" IS FRAUDULENT TOO

The new issue of Newsweek offers a quickie glimpse into who the Republican whores running for president are offering to mortgage our country's future to. Romney, of course, as we've already seen, is a wholly owned subsidiary of a whacky religionist cult and he gets almost all of his money from their network. When an aide to Florida Governor Charlie Crist pilfered a copy of Giuliani's top secret campaign-strategy documents and sent them to McCain's campaign, everyone who was interested learned exactly how Giuliani planned to win the presidency. So far... it's pretty much not working out the way he wanted it to.

According to the Newsweek story so far he's only managed to sign up "only about a quarter of the major Republican donors he set out last November to enlist as fundraisers for his presidential campaign, records show."

That anemic track record serves as another indication that key conservatives aren't yet sold on Giuliani, experts say, a problem that could become exacerbated by his recent decision to acknowledge his support for abortion rights.

Giuliani won over just 24 of the 89 donors on two lists of sought-after fund-raisers found among the leaked fundraising strategy documents from October to December of last year.

He lost 21 of them to his rivals Arizona Sen. John McCain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

But more significantly, 44, or half of those on the two lists, have yet to publicly commit or contribute to just one candidate in the crowded GOP field.

Of the 25 big-name donors Giuliani personally phoned between October 30 and November 3, 2006, only 6 have "publicly aligned with Giuliani. And of the top 10 on that call list, Giuliani won three, McCain four and Romney two. One is uncommitted."

But for me the most interesting part was who these crooked bribe takers have been able to get money out of-- keeping in mind that these people give contributions as investments, not as presents. "Donors Giuliani lost to Romney include Chiquita Banana's Carl Lindner in Ohio, AutoNation's Wayne Huizenga in Florida and Swiftboat funder Sam Fox in Missouri. Those lost to McCain include lawyer Larry Bathgate of New Jersey, investor Henry Kravis of New York, and FedEx's Fred Smith of Tennessee. Still, Giuliani has rounded up powerhouses such as Texas Rangers owner Tom Hicks and oilman T. Boone Pickens."


Perhaps worse for Giuliani's prospects than the so-so money performance are the dark clouds over his supposed leadership. Remember, this guy has little in common with the GOP wingnut base. He's a former Democrat who is kind of pro-choice, kind of pro-gay, kind of pro-immigrant, pro-gun control and enthusiastically pro-cross-dressing. But the Republican base has still embraced him, albeit primarily because they see him as less dishonest and untrustworthy than McCain (whose obvious senility is making it tough for him to convince voters to take him seriously), and because he's not a Mormon or a Scientologist.

In the light of day maybe Giuliani really was just in the right time at the right place-- and not an obvious sissy and coward like Bush. Decisiveness? Determination? Self-confidence? Maybe not so much. "Today, with evidence that thousands of people who worked at ground zero have become sick, many regard Mr. Giuliani’s triumph of leadership as having come with a human cost. An examination of Mr. Giuliani’s handling of the extraordinary recovery operation during his last months in office shows that he seized control and largely limited the influence of experienced federal agencies. In doing that, according to some experts and many of those who worked in the trade center’s ruins, Mr. Giuliani might have allowed his sense of purpose to trump caution in the rush to prove that his city was not crippled by the attack."

“The city ran a generally slipshod, haphazard, uncoordinated, unfocused response to environmental concerns,” said David Newman, an industrial hygienist with the New York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, a labor group.

City officials and a range of medical experts are now convinced that the dust and toxic materials in the air around the site were a menace. More than 2,000 New York City firefighters have been treated for serious respiratory problems. Seventy percent of nearly 10,000 recovery workers screened at Mount Sinai Medical Center have trouble breathing.

City officials estimate that health care costs related to the air at ground zero have already run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, and no one knows whether other illnesses, like cancers, will emerge...

Mr. Giuliani has said very little publicly about how his leadership might have influenced the behavior of the men and women who worked at ground zero. Mr. Giuliani, whose image as a 9/11 hero has been a focus of his run for president, declined to be interviewed for this article. His representatives did not respond to specific questions about the pace of the cleanup, the hazards at the site and Mr. Giuliani’s reticence about the workers’ illnesses.


Moreover, many of the people who ran agencies for Mr. Giuliani or who handled responsibility for the health issues after he left office would not comment, citing the pending litigation.

They love him in South Carolina. In New York City, where he was mayor... well, every single poll shows that any Democrat would beat him-- and that even current Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who has talked about running as an independent, is preferred by most voters.


UPDATE: AND HE SMELLS LIKE A CROOK

What does a crook smell like? Well, he certainly surrounds himself with criminal elements; even tried to saddle poor Bush, who certainly has enough of his own bad actors around him, with a criminal as the head of his Homeland Security Dept. But yesterday's Washington Post had a story I had missed about how Giuliani has managed to capitalize on his highly dubious "expertise" as a terror fighter-- to the tune of $100 million. Not bad for someone who caused a lot more problems than he solved. And to top it all off, it looks like his "firm," doesn't actually do anything (hey, that sounds familiar; he didn't do anything to prepare NYC either); it's just like a phony Goodhousekeeping Seal of Approval, something that looks good and could serve as an inoculation when something goes wrong.