Matt Ortega

In the documentary Giuliani Time, the former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is featured in a light not seen by the millions of Americans that view him as a hero from September 11, 2001. (See review in the Washington Post, 5/26/06.)

But what’s remarkable about Giuliani, and a point underlined in this flick, is how little sympathy he spared for those he ruled. He couldn’t abide complaints from the poor and he was antagonistic to public schools. As Giuliani notes in the film: “My father used to threaten to put me in public school . . . and that was a really frightening thought.”

Crooks & Liars produced a clip from the film where Giuliani made fun of a caller on his weekly radio show that criticized him and called him a “criminal.” The caller, interviewed in the film, has Parkinson’s Disease.

When “Giuliani Time” gives a glimpse of this Giuliani, it’s mesmerizing. So, the smiling mayor fields a phone call during his weekly radio show. The caller is angry about city cuts to food stamps and Medicare aid for the disabled.

Hizzoner is a pit bull to the chase.

“Hey, John,” Giuliani tells his caller, “what kind of hole are you in? There’s something that’s really wrong with you. . . . We’ll send you psychiatric help because you really need it.”

As it happens, the caller, John Hynes, needs real help. A disabled lawyer, he suffers from Parkinson’s disease, and he’s had his benefits cut off and he’s running out of medicine.

Nothing chills the blood so thoroughly as the sight of a powerful man turned gleeful bully.

Speaking of Giuliani, he was a guest on The Hugh Hewitt Show with conservative blogger and radio host, Hugh Hewitt.

Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) has introduced a new GOP classification, his second of this election cycle, in reference to himself: “Wilberforce Republican.”

New York Times blogger Sarah Wheaton explains at The Caucus:

If you don’t know who he is, never fear—Hollywood is coming to the rescue with Friday’s release of “Amazing Grace.” The film details Mr. Wilberforce’s successful, 20-year effort as a British member of parliament to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire. He was inspired by his evangelical Christian beliefs. And Mr. Brownback, a devout Catholic who was previously an evangelical Protestant, “is deeply inspired by William Wilberforce,” said Brian Hart, his campaign spokesman.

A March 2006 article in The Economist first named Mr. Brownback a “Wilberforce Republican,” referring to his faith-grounded efforts to end human trafficking, fight genocide and AIDS in Africa and to reform prisons.

The Kansas senator is running with the association. Two weeks ago, he introduced a bill to honor the British abolitionist, and today, he will participate in a panel discussion following a screening of “Amazing Grace” in Los Angeles.

Wonkette, as always, knows just how to mock Brownback’s attempt to capitalize on a recently released film that he has no connection with in order to make himself relevant.

Now, of course, other candidates have decided to hop on the film tie-in rebranding bandwagon, with Mitt Romney urging supporters to call him Ghost Rider and Mike Huckabee referring to himself, inexplicably, as a “Blood Diamonds Republican.”

(Hat tip: Wonkette)

MyDD blogfather Jerome Armstrong gets readers caught up on the status Republican candidates chances at winning the February 5 primary in California — well on its way towards being bumped up from June 3.

With Arnold’s support, the California legislature is making final plans to move the state’s primary to Feb. 5 (from its current place on the calendar, June 3)—a move intended to give eco-conscious voters in the nation’s most populous state more influence in selecting nominees. (Several other large states, including Florida and Michigan have also moved for earlier slots on the primary calendar, which could dilute California’s influence).

Senator John McCain, however, thinks he has California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s (R) nomination in the bag.

Is that kind of tough talk enough to earn an endorsement from California’s self-proclaimed “environmental warrior”? A reporter asked Schwarzenegger whether he was ready to endorse McCain, whom the governor called “a great Republican fighting for the environment.” Schwarzenegger, still on one crutch after shattering his femur in a skiing accident during his Christmas holiday, demurred. “We’re not doing presidential politics,” Schwarzenegger said coyly. “We’re here to talk about the environment.”

McCain, not missing a beat, leaned into the microphone. “I think it’s the endorsement, yes.”

Armstrong, however, points out that the California Republican Party changed their winner-take-all primary to a sprint for 54 Congressional Districts in a new “winner-take-all by Congressional District” model, reports the Sacramento Bee.

Jimmy Camp, punk rocker and Republican political operative, will be working on the Rudy Giuliani for President campaign. So says Orange County Register columnist Frank Mickadeit:

Maybe it isn’t uncommon for a rock musician to live on the streets of L.A. and San Francisco, to drink to excess, to take a lot of drugs, to rob people out of desperation, to get stabbed in a seedy hotel room, or to disappear for days while loved ones don’t know whether you’re dead or alive. But it is uncommon among Orange County’s in-demand Republican political campaign managers. And that’s what Camp is.

This morning, for example, he’ll be working for Janet Nguyen, monitoring the supervisor race recount. He expects to spend the next two years working for Rudy Giuliani’s California campaign. And while he and Mike Schroeder are on opposite sides of those races, they have worked together on many campaigns, among them the historic recall of a turncoat Republican who helped keep Willie Brown in power.

[...]

By 1988, he was ready to tone it down. He played in O.C. bands, but he’d stopped the drugs and cut back the booze. During this period, he scored a job working political phone banks for former O.C. Republican Chairwoman Lois Lundberg. He had no interest in politics. He’d never even voted. He took it strictly for the hours – the 5 p.m.- 9 p.m. shift let him play and party late and sleep all day. But something happened. He became a supervisor. Then Lundberg started farming him out to GOP campaigns around the state. He got hooked on politics.

“It’s the sport of it. The adrenaline rush,” he says. He went to closing down campaign offices as often as he closed down bars. And people like Schroeder, then chairman of the state Republican party, took notice.

“He’s one of the great political gym rats,” Schroeder says. “If you didn’t stop him, he’d work deep into the night.” And while unabashedly maintaining his rocker trappings – he still makes his raw, earthy music; he still has the tattoos he collected as a punker; you rarely see him in a suit.

“Some of the more conservative (politicos) are taken aback by the tattoos and leather jacket,” Schroeder says, “but that goes away as soon as they realize how good he is at what he does.”

Visit Camp’s official website here.

The Carpetbagger debunks a recently released poll [PDF] on Iraq published for the New York Post.

* “Even if they have concerns about his war policies, Americans should stand behind the President in Iraq because we are at war.”

* “The Democrats are going too far, too fast in pressing the President to withdraw the troops from Iraq.”

* “I support finishing the job in Iraq, that is, keeping the troops there until the Iraqi government can maintain control and provide security for its people.”

* “A stable Iraq is the best way to protect America from the nuclear threat of Iran.”

* “Republicans in Congress have gone too far in their criticism of the war and the President.”

* “I don’t really care about what happens in Iraq after the US leaves, I just want the troops brought home.”

It’s likely a conservative would look at the wording of these “questions” and believe they’re objectively worded, but they’re clearly not. These are basically the White House’s carefully-worded talking points. They’re designed to register certain responses, which naturally brings the validity of the poll into question.

Also, take a look at the survey sample:

21. And, thinking a little about your political attitudes… Do you consider yourself to be…

Conservative,

Moderate,

…OR…

Liberal

… on most issues?

18% VERY CONSERVATIVE

20% SOMEWHAT CONSERVATIVE

39% MODERATE

12% SOMEWHAT LIBERAL

9% VERY LIBERAL

1% NOT SURE

1% REFUSED

Respondents were skewed 38 percent right-leaning to 21 percent left-leaning. The margin, 17 percent, nearly eclipses the sample size of left-leaning respondents. But the pollster frames the sample this way:

39% TOTAL CONSERVATIVE

59% TOTAL MODERATE/LIBERAL

Ipso facto, the narrative is ‘wide support for Iraq policy’ is created and sent out into the ether, followed by chants of “liberal media” and the ‘MSM’s suspicious neglect‘ of the poll.
Rupert Murdoch still doing his best on Iraq…