Giuliani Hints and Recent Hires

Rudywatch update:

"There's a real good chance," Giuliani said Saturday, another coy response to what has been a constant question on the campaign trail.

The shift in campaign organization, however slight, is an indication that Giuliani likes the response he's received as he gauges support while traveling the country. Behind the scenes, Giuliani has been busy supplementing his cadre of New York loyalists with Washington-savvy political operatives, establishing a fundraising network, and setting up a campaign headquarters - signs of a campaign moving forward.

The article - and all media coverage, when it comes to Giuliani - underscores his lack of support among social conservatives because he's the "not anti-gay, twice divorcee" candidate, which is fine by me, of course. But I'd like to think some of those Washington-savvy operatives are hard at work at how the different aspects of the Rudy narrative will play among primary-season voters - and studying, with academic intensity, the South Carolina bitch-slap that McCain expereinced in 2000 at the hands of a Bush campaign that was intently going after the base.

It's entirely possible that consensus - or at least an electorally significant plurality - can be acheived behind a candidate like Rudy. But it will require bigger-picture thinking on some issues. A perfect example is judicial appointments, an item on which social and libertarian conservatives do inevitably agree, if they set aside the flamethrower social issues and consider the frightening implication of a runaway judiciary armed with an expansionist agenda.

On this issue - while providing copious, likeminded linkage - Nixguy observes:

Rudy is not a conservative in the gut on social matters. But he will nominate the kind of judges that social conservatives want on the bench. And that’s the bottom line here.

And elsewhere Bill Sloat at The Bellwether Daily picks up on the news that Rudy has gotten serious here in the Buckeye state by hiring Brian Tringali, an experienced pollster. There's no way that snake-oil spinmeisters can create a powerful candidate from thin air - but hopefully folks like Tringali can take Rudy's gravitas and phenomenal compentance at the helm of government and (with the help of some data points from polling) tailor it to an obvious and trustworthy message that clicks with Red State voters.

Meanwhile, Josh Nelson is promoting re-hashed, speculative reasons why various Republican candidates may or may not be viable. These types of cartoonish, B-movie analyses should be encouraged, since it causes folks on the Left to congratulate each other over how much they have figured out the evil conservatives.

Tags: Rudy Giuliani, 2008