Roy Cohn and Rudy Giuliani

Josh Marshall of Talking Points memo asked for help in answering "who's the Republican [he'd] least like to see the Democratic nominee run against." He almost lands on an answer: Rudy Giuliani. But he thinks that perhaps all the negative baggage Rudy brings to the race might mean that he would be a great one to campaign against.

I think Josh has been reading too much of David Broder and Joe Klein.  Rudy will win the nomination.  The GOP has nothing to do with "values" and never did.  For at least half a century it has been about protecting the haves against the have-nots. Of all the candidates running for the GOP nomination, the one with the clearest racist record is Rudy. And so he is leading the pack. Rudy will protect us not just from attacks by Al Qaida, but also from Hip Hop, Homosexuals and Hispanics. In the Conscience of a Liberal, Paul Krugman quite correctly emphasizes the centrality of racism to American politics. Rudy is the guy who wrote the book.

If Giuliani is nominated, Marshall suggests that there "should be some sort of revolt on the right." Perhaps there "should" be a revolt, assuming that the right actually believed in what it says. But the religious right is the party of Fallwell, Haggard and Jim Bakker. The G.O.P. is the party that did not hesitate to insult all wounded veterans when it distributed band aids with purple hearts at their convention - in order to mock John Kerry. If Josh Marshall thinks that Erik Prince, CEO of Blackwater, or his sister, married to Amway, would stop sending money to Republicans because of Giuliani's serial marriages, he has got to look at Prince testifying in Congress again. Would a Prince have stopped his support of Joseph McCarthy because he employed the gay Roy Cohn?

Rudy Giuliani is the candidate of the neo-con/A.E.I segment of the Republican party. His foreign policy will strictly adhere to the dictates of A.E.I. "scholars" like Podhoretz and Wolfowitz. He will get all the money he needs from this sector. On the more populist level, he'll be the candidate who protects you and me from "them."

He'll be a very formidable candidate, and possibly the 44th President of the United States.

P.S. In Marshall's piece he graciously credits Andrew Sullivan for finding the apt characterization of Rudy by Jimmy Breslin as "A small man in search of a balcony."  Sullivan is not so gracious, and fails to link to his source for the quote.