Our friends at the Washington Post report:
For months, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s name has drifted in the periphery of the 2012 Republican presidential race, something more than a pipe dream but short of a full-fledged candidacy.
That all may change soon, according to New York Rep. Pete King. King said at a dinner with reporters that Giuliani is “very close to saying he’s going to run”, adding: “If he were to make the decision today, he would run.”
…The reason why? “He is worried that no one in the field can beat President Obama,” said the source. “He would consider supporting someone he felt would be a good president and could beat Obama. He doesn’t see that right now.”
While Giuliani is clearly taking a hard look at running, it’s difficult to see how he could overcome the problems that afflicted his 2008 presidential bid – in which he began as a frontrunner but failed to win a single primary or caucus before dropping from the race.
Last Wednesday, we discussed the difficulty that Republicans were having closing the gap between their desire to make Barack Obama a one-term President, and the reality of their lackluster field of potential 2012 presidential candidates. On Wednesday, much of the talk was about the hope that Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels would get in the race and rally conservatives.
Daniels took his name out of the running this weekend.
So today, one can say truthfully that the field is wide open for Rudy Giuliani, the quasi-moderate former mayor of New York with his mile-long train of baggage you learned about in 2007, to challenge apparent frontrunner Mitt Romney for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination. As much as it is for anyone, and as much of a “prize” as that may turn out to be.
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Giuliani will always be the President of 9/11.
We will never forget.
And, that’s not a good thing.
how he dissed Community Organizers during the ’08 Redneck National Convention. It will be my pleasure to tear into him on the blogs if he runs. Run, Rudy, Run.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
would be a good president and could beat Obama… if he could ever get nominated.
Thank God.
How come so many lefties
want Huntsman to runare afraid of Huntsman?Is it the McCain syndrome?
If he runs, he more than likely wins.
What is McCain Syndrome? Is it kind of like being a flip flopping loser who picks a less than one term Governor and incompetent halfwit as a running mate? Because I’m pretty sure Huntsman isn’t suffering from it.
It’s picking through the use of open primaries, a candidate that the R base already can’t stand.
Huntsman has Barbour out telling people “Of course he’s more conservative than Obama!” That should be evident.
Plus, I have a problem taking a job from someone and then running against them. It doesn’t seem cricket.
Huntsman can claim and probably legitimately that when your President asks you to serve, you serve. God knows, there is precedent for that. (Think Secretary of Defense Gates)
It hurts Obama far more than it hurts Huntsman. How do you claim Huntsman isn’t competent enough to be President when you picked him for a major assignment within your own Administration? Being the ambassador to China isn’t quite the same as getting a diplomatic post in Austria. It actually carries a little gravitas.
But hey, far be it from me to tell the GOP how to pick their candidate out of a primary. I bow to your party’s expertise.
Palin/Bachmann 2012!
And Democrats somehow engineered his primary win?
And here I thought it was the R base wanting someone “mavericky”.
…where most of the Republican candidates raised their hands saying they didn’t believe in evolution, then spent the next week trying to explain.
Those were the days…
Really
The Tea Party will forgive him for serving in the Obama Administration for the primary and independents will forget he worked for the Obama Administration in the general. The recent polls I’ve seen show that 57% of the respondents think Obama is going to win reelection. I’m gosh Huntsman is just going to clean Obama’s clock because he really really believes in the Ryan Budget and privatizing Medicare. Good luck selling that scenario MOTR.
where I said he will never make it out of the primary as the candidate.
I don’t fear Huntsman. I don’t believe he has a chance of winning a GOP primary but, even if he did, I don’t buy the idea that he would certainly beat Obama in 2012.
And, by the by, Dem Kathy Huchul just handily won NY-26, one of the surest sure thing districts for Rs in the country, with 47% to the R Corwin’s 43% with 97% reporting. The Ryan plan and a Tea Party candidate taking 9% helped her make history.
She also ran on not rewarding companies for exporting jobs and not asking struggling Americans to keep on subsidizing Big Oil among other things. But mainly one of the most reliably red constituencies in the country, with a Republicans holding a large registration advantage, hated the coupons instead of medicare plan enough to actually elect a Dem.
Rs will try to downplay this but it’s huge. It puts so many R pols squarely between a rock and a hard place with purist Tea Partiers quite willing to show their displeasure with Rs by running competing candidates even if it helps Dems win elections in close races and in places where they haven’t won in over a hundred years. In NY-26 make that very well over a hundred years.w
Politically long washed up Giuliani and even Trump now talking about getting back in? I love the smell of GOP flop sweat in the morning. It smells like victory.
I’ll admit he’s a loooongshot in the primary. But he’s got conservative credentials on taxes and spending from his time as governor of Utah. Pundits keep talking about how the Tea Party is very right but also pretty libertarian – if that’s the case (and I’m not sure that it is, I think Tea Partiers are more or less just ultra-righties), they shouldn’t have a problem with Huntsman. Combined with support from the dying sane/moderate wing of the GOP and it could (maybe?) be enough to overcome terrible name recognition and a moderate image.
In the general, see MotR’s points first and foremost. Huntsman gets to be taken seriously (in a way that, say, Ron Paul doesn’t) because governor and ambassador to China are two big time positions. He’d be the most qualified non-incumbent nominee on foreign policy issues since maybe GHW Bush. Most importantly, he’d have appeal among moderates that [insert any other potential R nominee] wouldn’t have. That cracks the 2008 coalition (eminently crackable given the president’s approval ratings) and gives the middle of America a viable option outside of voting for the incumbent when the economy still hasn’t recovered.
I don’t “fear” Huntsman because I don’t think he will win the primary. But if he does… I was going to type “watch out” but I’m not gonna anymore. I’d vote for Obama, but I think Huntsman would be a good president.
but they are going to have all those photos of Huntsman shaking Obama’s hand and being his right hand man. If you are going to vote for a reasonable alternative then why go with Obama Lite?
Someone to the left of Attila isn’t going to be able to hit all the dog whistle fear buttons that are the signature campaigning tactics of conservatives. “Vote for me because I can do a reasonable job” isn’t what conservatives in the 21st century are about. It is fear of tomorrow and only they can prevent the doomsday scenario that they paint. This guy doesn’t look like he is up to that task.
“I’m not nearly the douche Arnold is!”
It’s a coin toss
someone please wake me when Cheney announces.
I’ll give you my opinion. He’s a fucking crook.
9/11 my ass. Look at who got contracts after that.
nothing much that distinguishes him from the rest of the field.
I’d have to agree with you.
Say, what’s two times zero? Math was never my strong suit.
.
and if last week’s Rapture didn’t get him,
I think Fred Thompson, playing Ronald Reagan, has a good shot.
.