I'm for: Rudy!

Last month I posted the first in what I promised would be a series of Republican Presidential candidate endorsements. In that one I endorsed former Governor Willard Mitt Romney. I wrote that I would endorse lots of the Republican candidates, because none of them scared me. In response, one of Nettertainment's valued readers wrote:

Given the American voters' uncanny knack for electing Republican candidates regardless of how awful they seem, I really think you should only endorse someone you could live with being in the White House for the next eight years.

I couldn't live with Nixon, I couldn't live with Reagan, I couldn't live with Cheney & Bush Puppet. But I did.

The fact is, people live through all types of regimes. The only question is how much they damage you during their rule. Is it an abstract abridgment of civil rights -- i.e. someone else takes the hit, but my family skates through those years? Or do they come after me, maybe for speaking my mind right here?

I believe that, in a democracy, you get the government you deserve. Maybe the past two Presidential elections were stolen by Mr. Rove and company. It doesn't matter. America needs to vote decidedly if not overwhelmingly against these villains, otherwise we're not really evolved, are we?

The scariest of the chest-thumping, after-shave touting, chickenhawk GOP Presidential candidates is former NYC Mayor Rudolph William Louis "Rudy" Giuliani. Rudy appears tougher than salesmen like Mitt because (a) as a U.S. Attorney he won some tough convictions, (b) New York City, (c) he stood a lot taller than Mister Bush on 9/11 -- even though he made the single worst terrorism protection decision prior to that day, in essence beefing up his travails through bullheaded, egotistical executive judgment.

After the failed 1991 attack on the World Trade Center, Rudy rejected the expert recommendation to put the Emergency Command Center across the East River in Brooklyn, away from the target. Instead, Rudy mandated that it be built right under the World Trade Center itself -- the site of the only attack to date by terrorists on American soil.

Well, at least it made him look more courageous when he escaped the predicted attack there on 9/11/2001.

Rudy's image takes a continuous beating from the very public servants he claimed to be behind, the rescue heroes of the post-9/11 effort. These firemen very credibly claim that Rudy's image build-up after the attack is just a pile of lies:

What Giuliani showed following 9/11 is a disgraceful lack of respect for the fallen and those brothers still searching for them. He valued the money and gold and wanted the [World Trade Center] site cleared before he left office at the end of 2001 more than he valued the lives and memories of those lost."

-- IAFF General President Harold Schaitberger

But what makes Rudy so appealing for a blanket GOP Nettertainment endorsement? Is it his brilliant grasp of the domestic agenda Americans are clamoring to have addressed?

Rudy Giuliani seems to know next to nothing about virtually every national policy issue -- ironically, given his campaign presentation, though not so odd if you consider his actual career in office, he knows more about domestic policy than foreign policy.

Including his tone-deaf healthcare plan?

But Mr. Romney took aim at Mr. Giuliani’s recent proposal to offer people $15,000 in tax deductions to help them buy health insurance. “We have to have our citizens insured, and we’re not going to do that by tax exemptions, because the people that don’t have insurance aren’t paying taxes,” he said.

Mr. Giuliani countered, arguing that the best way to increase the number of people with private insurance was to give them the deduction to encourage them to buy policies. “They’ll have an incentive to own their own health insurance,” he said.

Is it his lack of understanding of crucial current foreign affairs issues?

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) Thursday repeated his challenge to debate foreign policy with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and offered Giuliani a "reading assignment" of books examining U.S. policy toward the Middle East...

...He recommended that Giuliani read four books that outline causes for al Qaeda's hatred of the United States, including the 9/11 Commission Report and Chalmers Johnson's 2000 book, "Blowback."

Is it his platform of four more years of nerve-rattling fear-mongering?

Rather than a reasoned discussion — rather than a political campaign advocating your own causes and extolling your own qualifications — you have bypassed all the intermediate steps and moved directly to trying to terrorize the electorate into viewing a vote for a Democrat, not as a reasonable alternative and an inalienable right … but as an act of suicide.

This is not the mere politicizing of Iraq, nor the vague mumbled epithets about Democratic “softness” from a delusional vice president.

This is casualties on a partisan basis — of the naked assertion that Mr. Giuliani’s party knows all and will save those who have voted for it — and to hell with everybody else.

And that he, with no foreign policy experience whatsoever, is somehow the messiah-of-the-moment.

Or is it the company he keeps?

Federal prosecutors have told Bernard B. Kerik, whose nomination as homeland security secretary in 2004 ended in scandal, that he is likely to be charged with several felonies, including tax evasion and conspiracy to commit wiretapping.

Kerik's indictment could set the stage for a courtroom battle that would draw attention to Kerik's extensive business and political dealings with former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who personally recommended him to President Bush for the Cabinet.

Or those he's choosing to help get him elected?

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) was Capitol Hill’s invisible man yesterday, lying low even as his ties to the notorious “D.C. Madam” threatened to become a political crisis for the conservative lawmaker...

...The most immediate campaign consequences came not for Vitter, who is up for reelection in 2010, but for GOP presidential front-runner Rudy Giuliani. Vitter’s endorsement of the ex-New York City mayor was intended to lend Giuliani conservative heft, but the Louisianan forced his candidate to dodge scandal yesterday in New Hampshire.

Or maybe it's his personal character. You know, that issue Republicans claim to own, putting Family Values in capital letters.

Giuliani married his second cousin, Regina Perrugi. After 14 years, he divorced her, but got an official "annulment" -- a decree from the Catholic Church that the marriage never really happened (for 14 years!!), thus allowing remarriage in the Church.

Ah, the magic of annulment. Almost a decade and a half...begone!

Then there's his second marriage, with children, where his wife, Donna Hanover, and kids found out in an unexpected way that, after flagrantly cheating on her for years with a staffer among others, he was leaving their family:

Southern Baptist Convention leader Richard Land, for example, described Giuliani's breakup with Hanover as "divorce on steroids." Hanover learned her husband was seeking a divorce from television after he announced the decision at a press conference.

"To publicly humiliate your wife in that way, and your children _ that's rough," said Land. "I think that's going to be an awfully hard sell, even if he weren't pro-choice and pro-gun control." Marital history and family values have been bubbling just below the surface of the Republican campaign for months.

Class all the way!

Then there's the woman he broke up his home for, his third and current wife, Dr. Judith "Don't call me Judi!" Nathan. America currently has an openly prevaricating Chief Executive. Are they ready for a First Lady who lies for her own convenience as well?

Judith Nathan had been married twice, and not once as generally believed, before she wed Rudolph W. Giuliani in 2003, aides on the Giuliani presidential campaign said last night.

She's got a strong sense of direction:

The train of her pale Vera Wang dress was studded with Swarovski crystals; on her dark-red hair perched a Fred Leighton diamond-and-pearl-encrusted tiara.

"There is a reason why she wore that tiara at her wedding: she really does see herself as a princess," says another former Giuliani aide. "Not as a queen. Queen is her goal. Queen is who she wants to be."

It's good that she wants to be Queen. After all, she's good with the help:

If Giuliani's third wife became less popular as time went on, it was in part due to the feeling that she had a private list of Rudy loyalists she wanted fired. "The atmosphere is slippery, but not always venomous," says one. "You just realize there's an agenda there: she's worming her way in so she can push you out." Papir, for instance, was fired five years ago after word got around that he had called Judith a "princess" behind her back. But there are others, two sources say, of whom she patently disapproves. "Kate Anson, his scheduler, and this was the person who was so nice to her—everyone likes her!" says one Giuliani friend, holding up fingers to enumerate those of whom Judith disapproves. "Matt Mahoney [now deputy senior political adviser]—he loves Rudy. And Tony Carbonetti too, that's the other person Judith hates.… He would never be confrontational. His job is Rudy." A shrug. "Anyone supportive of him, close to him—Judith wants them fired. A lot of the senior staff … She just gets furiously jealous and treats them like shit!"

But the best reason for me to back Rudy to win the GOP nomination comes from another member of his family:

Even his daughter is voting against him.

ENDORSED.