Former New York Mayor Giuliani headlines Ralph Reed fundraiser
 By GREG BLUESTEIN Associated Press Writer
 ATLANTA (AP) _ Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York mayor considered a potential 2008 candidate for president, headlined a fundraiser Thursday for former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed in his run for Georgia lieutenant governor.
 The two politicians were effusive in their praise for one another as they entered the Atlanta fundraiser just before noon.
 ''I just want to say I believe Rudy Giuliani is one of the finest leaders in not only the Republican Party but in either party,'' Reed said.
 Giuliani responded: ''We're here to get you elected. It would be a great thing for Georgia.''
 Reed's campaign was looking for a boost before the July 18 Republican primary after being dogged by ties between Reed and Jack Abramoff, the powerful Washington lobbyist now facing prison time for conspiracy, tax evasion and fraud.
 The luncheon could also help Giuliani draw conservative support in a run for president. His endorsement of Reed comes weeks after the Rev. Jerry Falwell said he admired the former mayor but could not support him for president because of ''irreconcilable differences on life and family.''
 Giuliani supports abortion rights, gay rights and gun control.
 Reed's Republican opponent, state Sen. Casey Cagle, has challenged Reed's credentials and connections to Abramoff.
 Abramoff reportedly paid Reed's businesses $4.2 million to mobilize Christian voters against casinos that would compete with Abramoff's Indian tribe clients. Reed has not been charged with a crime and has said repeatedly that he regrets his work with Abramoff.
 Reed has never run for elected office but has often been a key strategist. He chaired the Georgia Republican Party in 2002, when the GOP pulled off upset victories and saw its first Republican governor win office since 1872.

If Republicans don't stick together...
Hillary will borrow this outfit for the Inaugural Ball

BYLINE: By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

BODY:


Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich agrees that Sen. Hillary Clinton is the Democratic front-runner should she make a bid for president in 2008. But winning, he says, is another matter.

"This is a country which has elected a peanut farmer, an actor who made movies with monkeys. I mean, you know, with chimpanzees. I mean, many things happen in America," said Gingrich, referring to Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

"But I think, you know, she has a lot of challenges, and there's a question whether or not there's a ceiling, that when you got down to the Hillary/anti-Hillary, whether or not she can break 50 percent in primaries," Gingrich said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Calling Clinton "formidable" as a presidential candidate, Gingrich said: "If we beat her we're going to beat her with better ideas. We're not going to beat her with some kind of negative campaign."

In recent weeks, the architect of the Republican takeover of the House in 1994 has traveled several times to Iowa and New Hampshire, urging congressional Republicans to rein in federal spending and focus on maintaining if not building their majority in the November midterm elections.

Gingrich downplayed suggestions that he might be plotting his own run for president.

"I doubt it at this point," he said. "I'm not ruling out running, but I'm also saying we have real things to do in '06. We have real things to do in '07. And it'll be nice to have a couple of years of talking about solutions, not just talking about ambitions."

From John's paper:

A majority of New York voters want Rudy Giuliani to run for president, and almost half say Hillary Rodham Clinton should go for it, too - but only 22 percent want Gov. Pataki to seek the nation's highest office, a new poll shows.

Albany (USA): Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton could have trouble carrying her own state if she runs for President in 2008.

 

As Republicans would nominate either former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani or Senator John McCain of Arizona, a poll of New York voters reported.

 

Lee Miringoff of Marist College's Institute for public opinion said the state-wide poll, conducted on Tuesday in conjunction with New York City's WNBC-TV, is bad news for the former first lady.

More from AP here.

Actually, that was one of the many endearing nicknames my staff had for me when I was editing the editorial page of the Washington Times. C'mon, John, you remember what it was like looking for a job just out of college in 1982. There weren't any. It was one nasty mother of a recession the like of which has not been seen since, including thebusting of the tech bubble. Is it true that Chelsea went to work for McKinsey for six figures when she got back from Oxbridge? Well, if it is, and deflating to 1982 dollars, that would be about $50,000 a year. I don't remember anybody starting our in the workforce at $50,000 a year, MBAs and lawyers possibly (possibly) excepted. Irving Kristol paid me $11,500 as assistant editor of the Public Interest, bless him. So I say these kids today have some nerve complaining! You tell 'em, Hillary!

An alert reader saved a web-image of AOL's front page at 2:45 PM that mixed up headlines and subheds about Hillary Clinton's criticism of young people's laziness and the Duke lacrosse-team case:

It looked kind of like like this before they pulled it down:

Hillary Apologizes to Chelsea
Charges Stem From Alleged Rape

Susan Estrich writes:

There is a new name on Democrats’ lips. Or rather, an old one. He is the one man who could stop Hillary Clinton.

If. If he runs. If the stars are right. But he could.

Chelsea says Mom, I'm not lazy!

        FORMER VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE MAKES SURPRISE APPEARANCE ON "SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE" MAY 13


        Mock Presidential Address Kicks Off Penultimate Episode Joins Returning Alum Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Musical Guest Paul Simon


        NEW YORK - May 13, 2006 - Former Vice President (and former SNL host) Al Gore made a surprise appearance on the landmark comedy show this evening, appearing in the  show's opening sketch, which imagined a parallel world where he was President...global warming was a thing of the past, gas was nineteen cents a gallon and George Clooney was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

A transcript of the mock Presidential Address follows:

DON PARDO: "And now a message from the President of the United States of America."

AL GORE: "Good evening my fellow Americans.  In 2000 when you overwhelmingly made the decision to elect me as your 43rd President, I knew the road ahead would be difficult.  We have accomplished so much, yet challenges lie ahead.

In the last six years, we have been able to stop global warming.  No one could have predicted the negative results of this.  Glaciers that once were melting are now on the attack.  As you know, these renegade glaciers have already captured parts of upper Michigan and northern Maine.  But I assure you, we will not let the glaciers win.

Right now in the second week of May 2006, we are facing perhaps the worst gas crisis in history.  We have way too much gasoline!  Gas is down to nineteen cents a gallon and the oil companies are hurting.  I know that I am partly to blame, by insisting that cars run on trash.  I am therefore proposing a Federal bail-out to our oil companies because hey, if it were the other way around, you know the oil companies would help us.

On a positive note, we worked hard to save welfare, fix social security and of course, provide the universal health care we all enjoy today.  But all this came at a high cost.  As I speak, the gigantic National Budget Surplus is down to a perilously low 11 trillion dollars.  And don't get any ideas.  That money is staying in the very successful lock box.  We're not touching it.  Of course, we could give economic aid to China or lend money to the Saudis again, but right now we are already so loved by everyone in the world that American tourists can't even go over to Europe anymore without getting hugged.

There are some of you would like to spend our money on some made-up war we could make up.  To you I say, 'what part of lockbox don't you understand?'  What if there's a hurricane or a tornado?  Unlikely I know, because of the anti-hurricane and tornado machine I was instrumental in helping to develop...but what if?  What if the scientists are right and one of those giant glaciers hits Boston?  That's why we have the lockbox.

As for immigration, solving it came at a heavy cost and I personally regret the loss of California.  However, the new Mexifornian economy is strong and El Presidente Schwarzenegger is doing a great job.

There have been some setbacks.  Unfortunately, the confirmation process for Supreme Court Justice Michael Moore was bitter and divisive.  However, I couldn't be more proud of how the House and Senate pulled together to confirm the nomination of Chief Justice George Clooney.

Baseball, our national pastime still lies under a shadow of steroid accusations.  But I have faith in Baseball Commissioner George W. Bush when he says, 'we will find the steroid users if we have to tap every phone in America.' 

In 2001, when I came into office, our national security was the most important issue.  The threat of terrorism was real.  Who knew that six years later, Afghanistan would be the most popular spring break destination, that Six Flags Tehran is the fastest growing amusement park in the Mideast and the scariest thing we Americas have to fear is ... Live From New York, It's Saturday Night!"

Gore also made an appearance on "Weekend Update" where he participated in a "Point-Counterpoint" with co-anchor about global warming, the subject of his forthcoming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth."  The former Vice President took the position that global warming is bad while Poehler contended that it was "awesome."

Andrew Sullivan:

Hillary, moreover, may be one nepotistic step too far. Americans are sick of dynasties and to have potentially 28 continuous years of presidents from two single families begins to make the United States look like a banana republic or a Tudor and Stuart pas de deux. I’m not just thinking of the terrible task that future students are going to have, trying to remember which Bush and which Clinton came when and did what; I mean simply that in a country of 300m, we really should be able to look beyond two families for leadership talent.

More here . 

From the Scrapbook in the Weekly Standard this week: "The Scrapbook's good friend and colleague, Weekly Standard contributing editor John Podhoretz, has just published an important book that belongs on every conservative's desk: Can She Be Stopped? Hillary Clinton Will Be the Next President of the United States Unless. . . . We hear an echo of our favorite political novel—Trollope's Can You Forgive Her?—in the title (although, of Trollope's great female leads, the one Hillary reminds us of most is not Alice Vavasor but Lizzie Eustace). And the answer, in both cases, is yes. But you'll have to read the book to find out how to stop Hillary. We predict you'll finish it not just girded for combat but surpassingly well entertained. While there will only ever be one Trollope, Podhoretz brings great good humor, uncommon wit, and a novelist's flair to his task."

What's the best of all here is that Trollope is my favorite writer.

I think dynasticism is something you have to be against in principle. But I also think everyone is. Then you get down to cases. I can't remember whose analogy this was originally, and maybe it was even mine, but the family name is a kind of brand: Bush is Coke, say. Now, here's the thing: If you launch a product under the Bush brand, it is indeed going to get a lot of initial attention on account of the brand. There is simply no denying this fact; in politics, no doubt, it's a huge leg up. For starters, it's name recognition. Plus the positive association (in business terms, "goodwill") that goes with it. But, but, but . . . Is the new product Diet Coke, a runaway success, or New Coke, a disaster? That depends on what people think of the new product — whether it lives up to the positive association of the brand — not on the brand itself.

 
Oh, and another thing: Have you ever noticed that morticians tend to be the children of morticians? Why should we be surprised about the children of politicians going into politics? As for a certain HRC, sure, she got into the game because of her husband. But 1) this was no guarantee of success; she had to make it work, and she did. And 2) it's not obvious to me, anyway, that she couldn't have gotten to the United States Senate by any other route than the one she took. We'll never know, but she might well have done it on her own under different circumstances. She's good at politics. 

As someone who's spent the past five or so years intermittantly immersed in political families, I have to say I don't share Michael Barone’s concerns about dynasties, and that the facts don't match up to the fears.

A family name may secure an entry level seat (ie Patrick Kennedy, and several others), but above this dynasts don't rise without serious talent, and seldom beyond their own level of competence. TR had four sons, at least one of whom, all assumed, would one day hold high office; his first son and namesake did not make the cut to be governor. FDR's children did not get past Congress, where they were soon seen as jokes. For twelve years after the murder of Robert F. Kennedy, it was widely assumed his brother could have the White House whenever he wanted. As it turned out, he ran against Carter—whose approval ratings were in the low 30's—and lost. A massive investment of publicity, money, and celebrity backing has done nothing at all for the third generation of Kennedys, most of whom embarrassed themselves while in office, and are now left with one minor and none-too-bright congressman, whom no one expects to go further. John Quincy Adams got a huge boost from his father (and without him may never have gone into politics) but he made his own way up the ladder by distinguishing himself in what was then the accepted road to the presidency, which was through the State Department and/or a great embassy. (He was a bad politician, who lost when Andrew Jackson changed the rules on him, but this is a whole other story.) Likewise, it is hard to see Jack and Bobby Kennedy—and George and Jeb Bush—as anything other than major political talents; and the main effect of their families on them was that Jack and W got to run for president a cycle before they might have otherwise done. They all had a huge advantage going in in their family fortunes and web of acquaintances (which is in itself a machine in the making), but luck in politics comes in a great many ways: Nixon and Reagan were approached by wealthy men eager to back them, and a great many people get a huge boost by being picked for vice president, which often has more to do with quixotic motives—“balance,” etc—-than merit itself.

Continuing a name does not mean more of the same: as a politician, W has nothing in common with his father (whose approach he avoided.) JFK was wholly unlike his father; Bobby was unlike him, and Ted, one imagines, makes them spin in their graves. Given all this, I am at a loss at what there is in a name that's so frightening. People so far have been amazingly competent in weeding out the weedier dynasts, and letting the solid growths stand.

It's a Friday Flashback from 1999, the June 28 issue of National Review :

The Mystery of Hillary Clinton

The First Lady no one knows.

Mark Steyn

I confess I've always had a soft spot for Hillary Rodham Clinton. But then, asked to name my favorite Marx Brother, I usually cite Margaret Dumont. In A Night at the Opera and A Night in Casablanca, she was the haughty, imperious grande dame standing on her dignity while Groucho prowled around, waggling his cigar at every other woman in sight. The rock, the anchor of every great double-act is always the straight man, and the best straight man-or woman-is one who never really gets the joke in the first place.

And so it goes in that long-running gag-fest Two Terms at the White House: Like Groucho, the leering Clinto waggles his (unlit) cigar and staggers from one catastrophe to another, but through it all Hillary Rodham Dumont remains ever more serene and queenly. It's a magnificent performance, and harder than it looks: While most of the country seems content to have a president who's a laughingstock, the First Lady has to glide by, pretending that the thongs and DNA aren't there. To the public, Bill's the funny one, with his amusing pants-drops and distinguishing characteristics. But, to old showbiz pros, to connoisseurs, that kind of shtick's a little obvious: The genius in the act is Hillary. Not many of us would relish having to stand in front of an audience and crank out the same old lines night after night at rally after rally, in the stilted cadences of that computerized voice in your car that tells you to fasten your seat belt: "I. Am. So. Proud. Of. My. Husband. And. Our. President. Bill. Clinton."

One can sympathize with Mrs. Clinton's frustrations, but even so she seems determined on a huge gamble: The stooge has decided to step out as a solo act, a star in her own right. The precedents are hardly encouraging. True, Dean Martin made it after Jerry Lewis, but the First Lady doesn't sing-at least not to the authorities. Yet, amazingly, she's all but decided to run for New York's Senate seat. Local Democratic-party bigshots are deliriously egging her on with cries of "Six more years!"

HER TIME TO SHINE?

Now you might disagree with my take, but that's okay. With the First Lady, you can fumble around but you can never really get a firm grip on her: She remains all things to all men, unlike her husband, to whom all women are all things. To me, she's Margaret Dumont. To the American people, she's the beloved First Doormat. To those feminists who drove around with "I'm Voting for Hillary's Husband" stickers, she's always been the star: It's just taken the rest of us a while to figure it out. But now we're ready, and so's she. It's Tina after Ike! Cher after Sonny! The diva without the dork! Or, at any rate, Ethel Merman at the end of Gypsy, the stage mother who's sacrificed her own life to promote a child prodigy who'll never grow up: "What did it get me? Scrapbooks full of me in the background." Not anymore. The First Lady is stepping into the spotlight to claim her due: "This time-for me!"

And who can blame her? To the investigators in Ken Starr's office, she's always been the brains of the Clinton operation. In It Takes a Village, the account of her first steps in breast-feeding is prefaced by an aphorism: "We learn the rope of life by untying its knots." Mrs. Clinton's trick was in preventing the rope of her life from unraveling completely: Though one might detect a pattern of behavior from that long-ago Arkansas land deal to the firing of the travel-office staff, she was too clever to leave any fingerprints. Unfortunately, the chief executive of Clinton Scandals, Inc., left her husband in charge of one small branch office: sex. And, sadly, Mr. Clinton's small branch has done for the entire operation. Unlike his canny wife, the president left a trail of fingerprints and more on everything and everyone he touched. In the biographical dictionaries, instead of a few vague references somewhere in the 15th paragraph to "controversies surrounding their financial affairs," the entry for William Jefferson Clinton will now begin: "Second president to be impeached." His hapless consort's only chance of rewriting history is to gamble on double or quits: "William Jefferson Clinton, 42nd president, now best remembered as husband of 44th president, Hillary Rodham (q.v.)."

But, if you don't buy the First Doormat or First Feminist, how about this? To Tony Blair, in one of his creepier bits of sucking-up (even by his standards), she's another Princess Di. The two women shared, apparently, the same "qualities of dignity and grace." At the White House banquet at which he made the observation, the thought hung awkwardly in the air, it being perfectly obvious that the two couldn't be more different, save for the fact that they're both strong women married to wimpy, weak-willed adulterers. But try to picture Princess Hill demurely fluttering her kohl-ringed eyes and murmuring, "Well, um, you see it was all a bit difficult because there were really three of us in this marriage"-actually, for the Clintons, make that 33.

No, if Mrs. Clinton's a princess of any kind, she's a pre-Diana royal duchess. In Britain, Bagehot advised the Royal Family not to let "daylight in on the magic," something that's proved all but impossible in an age of forensic media scrutiny. But Mrs. Clinton has managed it: She's spent her entire adult life in public, and yet the mystery has been illuminated by not a shaft of daylight. Indeed, media deference in the United States is curiously reminiscent of that in Britain up to 20 years ago, when lame, awkward attempts at humor by, say, Princess Alexandra or the Duchess of Gloucester were fawningly hailed as evidence of natural wit and the ability to connect with ordinary people. Bill Clinton has discussed his boxers and briefs on TV; taken his penis along to a naval surgeon to be examined for the Paula Jones suit; and had his semen processed by the FBI crime lab. Now imagine asking Hillary what kind of bra she wears. We know everything about Bill Clinton except an inkling of what his wife is like. After a year of unparalleled public scrutiny, the truth of their marriage is more unknown and unknowable than ever. Is it, as longtime friend Sen. Dale Bumpers suggested, that Hillary was blissfully unaware of Bill's lapses? The First Family, roared the old Ozark hogswill peddler in a teary speech during the president's trial, "has already been about as decimated as a family can get . . . There's been nothing but mental agony, sleepless nights . . ." Maybe he's right, but who knows? Maybe back home Bill and Hill were watching ol' Dale and weeping with laughter.

TRUE CLINTONISM

"We all have a little Clinton in us," wrote Margaret Carlson in Time. The question America has to ask itself right now is whether any of us really need a little more. The Clintonistas (and there are still quite a few of them out there) are beginning to come on like those old-time Soviet Communists who used to insist that, despite all its evident failures, there was nothing wrong with Communism: We just hadn't had the right type of Communism. Likewise, we're told after eight years, there's nothing wrong with Clintonism: We just haven't had the right Clinton. It is, in its way, an audacious plan: an artful way to dodge the Twenty-Second Amendment and ensure that the Clinton era stretches lazily into the new millennium, to the 2008 presidential election and beyond. If it works, it will at least legitimize retrospectively Hillary's tenure as First Lady. This is the only country in the Western world in which the consort of the head of government is given a semiformal role, an office, and a staff. Mrs. Clinton's presence in the White House derives from the fact of her marriage to the president. If that marriage is a sleazy travesty of what most Americans, even today, understand by the term, then Hillary Rodham Clinton is not merely the most pathetic First Lady in history but also the most illegitimate First Lady.

For a year, Mrs. Clinton provided the respectable cover for the people's torpor: "If Hillary doesn't care," they told pollsters, "why should we?" Some went farther. The Republicans, wrote Susan Ager in the Detroit Free Press, "are punishing Bill Clinton for thrusting upon America a First Lady who is smart, gutsy, accomplished and opinionated."

Mr. Clinton has certainly been thrusting upon America, but the First Lady is one of his less successful efforts. "Smart"? How many other smart women would let themselves be maneuvered into posterity as a creepy psychological case study in denial and displacement? "Gutsy"? Undoubtedly. She pioneered the White House scorched-earth policy, assailing her husband's accusers as "a vast right-wing conspiracy." But, if there is a vast right-wing conspiracy, it seems most likely to turn out to be a cunning plan to plant an oral-sex fiend in the

Oval Office who's too busy being serviced or sued by subordinates to attend to his left-wing wife's schemes for mandatory federalized child care. "Accomplished"? Well, sadly, between the sex and the lawyers' meetings and golf with Vernon Jordan, the Clinton presidency ran out of time to accomplish things: That's the problem with trying to promote your agenda through a more popular, likeable partner. "Opinionated"? Absolutely. Mrs. Clinton has publicly come out in favor of a Palestinian state, not exactly a surefire winner in a New York Senate campaign.

Still, for now only two obstacles stand in her path. The first is the soi-disant "feral New York media": The First Lady could suddenly find herself facing brutal, searing questions like, "Mrs. Clinton, do you think part of the reason for this vast right-wing conspiracy is that many Americans still have trouble accepting the idea of a First Lady who is smart, gutsy, accomplished, and opinionated?" "I'm glad you asked me that, Katie . . ." The New York Times, for one, has already lapsed instinctively into the same disapproving tone of moral equivalence that distinguished much of its Cold War coverage. The First Lady and Mayor Giuliani: She's "controversial," but so's he; she inspires as much enmity as affection, but so does he; she's ruthless and unforgiving towards her enemies, but so's he; she hasn't been hit on by Bill Clinton recently, but neither has he. On the other hand, she looks good in pants, while he looks better in Julie Andrews's dress. So at least the voters will have a clear choice on something.

The other obstacle is the people of New York, renowned for their tough, in-your-face savvy. They're not like those patsies in New Zealand, to whom Mrs. Clinton revealed, concerning the distinctive spelling of her first name, that she had been named after Sir Edmund Hillary, conqueror of Everest. Those schmucko losers Down Under lapped it up, at least until the great man pointed out that he hadn't conquered Everest until 1953: Hillary Rodham was born in 1947, when Sir Edmund was an obscure New Zealand beekeeper and an unlikely inspiration for young parents in a Chicago suburb. If she tries that sappy stuff in the Empire State, she'd better make sure it's a beekeeper from Plattsburgh or Binghamton.

But by then it'll all be over. Nothing in Hillary's past suggests anything other than a tin ear for democratic politics. It was the First Lady, remember, who advised her husband to come down tough on Ken Starr in his speech to the nation after his grand-jury deposition last August. For three minutes, the public got a glimpse of the real Bill Clinton-petulant, vengeful, unrepentant-and his presidency briefly trembled. This is the woman who paid tribute to the murdered Yitzhak Rabin by recalling how, during negotiations with Yassir Arafat, she was generous enough to offer to let him stay inside for a cigarette, in violation of her smoke-free White House policy, if it were really, truly important to Middle East peace. Now there's tolerance for you.

The cruel fact is that, whenever the citizenry have been exposed to the smart, gutsy, accomplished, opinionated side of Hillary, they've recoiled in horror. She has a basic likeability problem, an observation I offer not in a mean-spirited partisan way because, God knows, the GOP's got it in spades. But she's the one woman President Clinton will never have to say "You might want to put some ice on that" to. She puts ice on everyone else: In the hurly-burly of a Senate race, she'll be frosting up the room at a hundred paces. If the Democrats want to nail their colors to the Clinton mast yet again, let them go ahead. Even the Republicans may not screw this one up.

I’ve noticed several posts on various NRO blogs over the last few days about Hillary’s lack of support from left-wing extremist, Daily Kos-types. I think it’s very important not to ever count on this apparent lack of support when Election Day rolls around. One thing I’ve learned from liberals: just because they truly and wholly believe something today with every fiber of their being and will fight until the last breath in their body to defend it, doesn’t mean they’re going to feel that way tomorrow. In fact, it’s almost a definite that they’re not. Working for a national television station, I’m almost constantly surrounded by liberals. During the run-up to the 2004 election, not one of the 20-plus liberals in my immediate work area was supporting John Kerry. There was a Howard Dean group and a Wesley Clark group. John Kerry was the joke of the group, ridiculed for among other things his motorcycle stunt on the Tonight Show. To a person, every liberal claimed that there was no way they could “ever vote for that man”. However, when it came right down to it, every last one of them voted for Kerry. To say a liberal wouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton because of some “principle” fails to recognize that liberals have no principles, at least none that last more than a few days.