New York's Own: Pinocchio on Campaign

TAPPED, “RUDY!MENTUM”

Scott Lemieux of The American Prospect lays it out there, pure and simple:

Don’t get fooled by Giuliani’s excuses. Rudy totally bombed in New Hampshire.

Lemieux targets Giuliani’s claims that his extremely poor showing in New Hampshire is the result of his proportionate campaigning policy – that is, he did not focus either his time or money on small states like Iowa or New Hampshire, but rather turned his resources to delegate-rich states where he would reap more for what he had sown.

Yet Lemieux points to an article that shows quite the opposite. In fact, “he spent more time and money there than anyone except Romney… mak[ing] his barely finishing ahead of Ron Paul especially embarrassing.”

Lemieux concludes by striking Giuliani out of the race, leaving McCain, Huckabee, and his money’s bet, Romney in the running for the Republican Party nomination.

Like Lemieux, I have written off the Rudynator a while ago, on both grounds of personal political preference (chiefly on social policy) and electability, and frankly, I think the two reasons overlap when it comes to the primary electorate.

It is no political secret that when candidates are trying to win the party nomination, they must shoot for their party’s ideological wing. If they can successfully appeal to the wings, then likely they will do well in the primaries, probably securing the nomination. That’s why over the past few years, we’ve seem Romney, no doubt dreaming of the GOP nomination, scrambling to ameliorate some of his more liberal views, particularly on abortion, to appeal to the Right.

The trick next for the two major Presidential candidates, of course, is to shift their views from the wings of the party to appeal to the general electorate, which is much more moderate than the primary electorate. This must be done skillfully enough so as to avoid catching the sticky title of “flip-flopper” that Kerry seemed to wear so well in the 2004 elections.

Which brings me to my point: Giuliani was either A) unable to master the art of altering his views to appeal to both the primary electorate with the knowledge that he would later have to refocus his campaign to appeal to the moderates, or B) he was too honest to change his views for the sake of victory.

If you ask me, his outright, boldfaced lying about his campaign’s commitment to victory in New Hampshire give me good reason to eliminate choice B.