Monday, September 17, 2007

RUDY GIULIANI

MoveOn's Ad Hitting Giuliani: Swing and a Miss

The MoveOn.org ad against Rudy Giuliani would carry more weight if the Iraq Study Group was some widely-hailed, significant group of leaders in the public's mind. One week after unveiling their proposals, they had a 46 percent approval rating, and 32 percent of Americans had no opinion on the ISG. Forty-one percent of Americans said the Group "did not have a clear plan for handling the situation in Iraq." I can't imagine that about nine months of obscurity have enhanced the group's reputation. I wonder how many Americans could name a member, or even two of their recommendations.

MoveOn describes the chance to serve on the Iraq Study Group as "the chance to actually do something  about the war", which I think is an unsupportable assertion. The ISG report came and went; today, nine months later, you don't hear many lawmakers calling for Bush to immediately enact its hodge-podge of recommendations. The Iraq Study Group ended up being a widely-hyped, but ultimately generic and predictable stew of old recommendations. In the list of Rudy sins, this doesn't even make the top ten.

Finally, MoveOn labels Giuliani's decision not to serve on the ISG as "a betrayal of trust." You get the feeling the guys at MoveOn just have an itchy trigger finger when it comes to accusations of "betrayal"?

"John, I asked you to forward that e-mail to me, and you forgot. This is a betrayal!"

"Jane ate the last doughnut in the break room. This is an intolerable betrayal!"

UPDATE: Oh, by the way, thanks to Campaign Spot reader Chris for reminding me that one of the recommendations of the ISG was... Gen. David Petraeus' surge.

Further, adding more American troops could conceivably worsen those aspects of the security problem that are fed by the view that the U.S. presence is intended to be a long-term “occupation.” We could, however, support a short term redeployment or surge of American combat forces to stabilize Baghdad, or to speed up the training and equipping mission, if the U.S. commander in Iraq determines that such steps would be effective.

So MoveOn is criticizing Rudy for not joining a group that made a policy recommendation that they denounce. Brilliant.

09/17 04:05 PMShare