Return of the Swift Boaters

The Nation reports:

More than three years after John Kerry's bitter defeat, at the dawn of what looks like a far more promising campaign cycle for the Democrats, the party is still haunted by the specter of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Once upon a time, "Swift boat" denoted an obscure military vessel, but thanks to the activities of this group it has come to represent movement conservatism's penchant for ruthlessly (and effectively) smearing any and all political opponents, from a sitting senator and war hero to an 11-year-old boy with a cranial fracture.

Research by The Nation into Federal Election Commission records of the group's top twenty donors reveals that they've been remarkably active in this cycle, contributing and bundling nearly $200,000 to presidential candidates. This does not bode well. During the last presidential campaign, the wealthy backers of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth--now rebranded as Swift Vets and POWs for Truth--didn't do their real dirty work until the general election, where as a tax-exempt 527 group they operated outside the restraints of direct campaign contributions. We may wish we were done with the Swift Boaters, but they aren't done with us.

In 2004 the top twenty donors all gave (with one exception) at least $50,000 to the group. The top three--Houston home builder Bob Perry, Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens and billionaire drugstore impresario and investor Harold Simmons--gave a combined $9.5 million ($4.45 million, $3 million and $2 million, respectively). Calculating the influence of these and the slightly less wealthy Swift Boat donors during this cycle is a touch more complicated than simply adding up their contributions. Each one exerts far more influence as a bundler, given the federal restrictions on individual giving, which limit donors to a maximum of $4,600 per cycle. So The Nation looked not only at the contributions of the donors themselves but also at those of their family members and employees. It's an imperfect method, since some employees are clearly contributing of their own volition (such as one employee of a Simmons company who gave money to Hillary Clinton), but it gives a rough estimate of who's backing whom and to what extent.

The most notable recipient of Swift Boat largesse is John McCain, erstwhile front-runner and Stand Up Guy. When the Swift Boat ads were first unleashed, McCain was alone among his Republican colleagues to condemn them. A fellow Vietnam veteran, a good friend of Kerry's and a former target of smears about his own service, McCain called the ads "dishonest and dishonorable," a "cheap stunt," and he urged Bush to condemn them. But in pursuit of the GOP nomination, McCain ditched the mantle of maverick for that of hack, and his once-floundering, possibly rejuvenated campaign has been aided along the way by $61,650 from Swift Boat donors and their associates. "There is such a thing as dirty money," said Senator Kerry in a statement, after The Nation informed him of McCain's FEC records. "I'm surprised that the John McCain I knew who was smeared in 2000 and thought so-called Swift Boating was wrong in 2004 would feel comfortable taking their money after seeing the way it was used to hurt the veterans I know he loves." (McCain's office did not return calls for comment.)

McCain's Swift Boat bounty is exceeded only by that of Mitt Romney, who has raked in $70,550. Romney's success with Swift Boat donors is significant because he has surpassed even McCain in his demonstrated willingness to do or say anything in pursuit of the presidency and because he has emerged as the GOP establishment's favored candidate. Last year, when McCain held that position, the Arizona senator received significant backing from Swift Boat donors. But many have subsequently switched their allegiance. Pickens, who donated to McCain in June 2006, is now an enthusiastic Giuliani donor and fundraiser (Giuliani ranks third in Swift Boat funding, with $47,950). Perry, who also recorded several donations to McCain's PAC in 2005 and 2006, is now a major donor and fundraiser for Romney. If the list of top Swift Boat donors is expanded to fifty, Romney's fundraising edge is even more pronounced. (Neither Romney nor Giuliani's campaign returned calls for comment.)

Also noticeable among the recipients of Swift Boat largesse is one who received only a single donation: Mike Huckabee. Despite meager fundraising and little national name recognition, the former Arkansas governor has experienced a bubble-like expansion of support and media attention, taking the lead in Iowa and approaching a steady lead in national polls. But the lack of Swift Boat contributions lends credence to the claim that Huckabee is viewed warily by the money men who call the shots in the modern GOP. Despite proposing a radically regressive tax change and taking Grover Norquist's antitax pledge, he's been attacked savagely by the Club for Growth and eviscerated by columnist George Will for "comprehensive apostasy against core Republican beliefs," among them "free trade, low taxes, the essential legitimacy of America's corporate entities and the market system allocating wealth and opportunity."

This all supports the notion that the people behind the Swift Boat operation are chiefly concerned with the continued upward redistribution of wealth that is, more or less, the contemporary GOP's raison d'être. In 2006 Perry ponied up $5 million to start the Economic Freedom Fund, a 527 group devoted to attacking Democratic incumbents, and landed a large donation from prominent Swift Boat donor Carl Lindner. All of which is to say that the Swift Boaters aren't some kind of side show, a coterie of vicious mudslingers operating at the edges of respectability. They are the show. They are modern conservatism's core funders and beneficiaries. With conservatives staring straight into the abyss, their activities in this election cycle could very well make the Swift Boat smears look tame by comparison.

Rudy Giuliani's Wife Seen As Liability In Run For President

Canada.com reports:

She has variously been called a "harpy," a tiara-wearing "princess bride" and "a particularly unpleasant combination of Catherine the Great and Britney Spears."

Republican presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani and his handlers always knew they would have a delicate task peddling the charms of his mistress-turned-wife given the scandalous and sensationalized origins of their relationship.

But the reception of a gossip-loving media and family-values-focused voters has been even nastier than expected during every step of this summer's carefully scripted "roll-out" of Judith Giuliani as the first lady the former New York City mayor and 9/11 hero would bring to the White House.

For starters, there was the revelation that Mrs. Giuliani had been married not once but twice before (just like Mr. Giuliani himself.)

Then there was the news that in her job selling medical equipment, she used to demonstrate a surgical stapler on dogs who were later put to death.
Now on the stands sits Vanity Fair's less-than-flattering profile based largely on anonymous sources, which describes her as a social status-seeking, materialistic, busybody who has forsaken going by the name Judi in now insisting on being called Judith, demands a separate airplane seat for her "baby Louis" Vuitton suitcase, forced her husband to retrieve a forgotten sack of health bars during a high-security visit to Mexico and has a hit list of her husband's staffers whom she apparently wants fired.

Mr. Giuliani's spokesman Michael McKeon has reportedly denounced the piece as "vile and venomous," but it seems to only have fuelled the media feeding frenzy, with follow-ups from The New York Times to The Times of London seizing on the neophyte political spouse's faux pas. On blogs and in newspaper columns, political commentators have begun to openly wonder whether Mrs. Giuliani is an asset or a liability to one of the front-running contenders for the U.S. presidency.

Gil Troy, a professor of history at McGill University, said Mr. Giuliani's calculated attempts to showcase his wife have made her fair game. Politicians want privacy to be a one-way street in that they want to determine when and how they employ their family members to seduce the public, he said, but that just isn't realistic in today's celebrity-obsessed culture.

"Rudy Giuliani is playing an extremely dangerous game," said Prof. Troy, whose most recent book is Hillary Rodham Clinton: Polarizing First Lady. "The more he goes on Barbara Walters and talks about them as a couple and them as a team, the more scrutiny there will be and the more of an emphasis there will be from people like [Republican rival] Mitt Romney's camp in the most subtle of ways on the fact that he's trying lead a family-values party with a wife who represents a dramatic departure from family values."

The very genesis of the couple's relationship was bound to be problematic. Mr. Giuliani, then mayor of New York, and Judith Nathan, a divorcée, began seeing each other when he was still married to his second wife, actress Donna Hanover. He famously announced the end of his 17-year marriage in a surprise press conference that ultimately provoked a nasty row over who had the right to live in the mayoral Gracie Mansion.

The Giuliani camp has sought to over-write that first impression by playing up his new wife's supportive role during the candidate's bout with prostate cancer, her contribution as a health care advisor due to her training as a nurse and career in medical equipment sales and her struggles as a single mother raising an adopted daughter.

For the most part, however, those attempts have come across as awkward or backfired.
And it certainly hasn't helped that Mr. Giuliani's children harbour deep scorn for the woman they see as having stolen their father from their mother in spectacularly humiliating fashion.

Mr. Giuliani's 21-year-old son Andrew told The New York Times he won't be campaigning for his dad and is, in fact, estranged from him, and cited as his reason "a little problem that exists between me and his wife."

This week, Mr. Giuliani's daughter Caroline, who is reported to have taken her parents' divorce hard, was outed as a supporter of Democratic presidential rival Barack Obama.

In the electoral game, much rides on a candidate's choice of spouse, said Shannon Sampert, a professor of political science at the University of Winnipeg.
"We've always had a sense of what the good first lady or the good prime minister's wife should act like, and if they don't act like that we're very quick to judge them, " she said.

Fairly or unfairly, Prof. Sampert said, the public and the media see political spouses as a reflection of the candidates themselves, and, in the United States particularly, often bristle at women who do not fit the tradition of a smiling, cookie-baking silent partner - more Barbara Bush than Hillary Clinton or Teresa Heinz Kerry.

"If she's perceived as too uppity, the thinking is, 'If you can't control your spouse, if you can't control your family, how are you going to control the country?' " Prof. Sampert said. "If you want to be a good politician, you should think 20 years before you make the decision to run who you marry because that person will be scrutinized as much as you will.

"Be careful who you marry," she said laughing.

Wealth Is A Common Factor Among 2008 Candidates

The NYT reports:
Former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, who just six years ago told a divorce court he had only $7,000 in assets under his control, has amassed a net worth of more than $30 million, much of it from paid speeches.

Former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, who has spent the last three years crusading against poverty, also reported about $30 million in assets. His income included nearly half a million dollars for advising an elite investment fund and $40,000 for directing a poverty studies program at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Edwards reported their assets in personal financial disclosure forms released Wednesday by the Federal Election Commission. Federal election laws require all the presidential candidates to file the forms. Together, they offer a glimpse of the general affluence of all the primary candidates and the truly extreme wealth of a few.

Neither Mr. Giuliani, a Republican, nor Mr. Edwards, a Democrat, is the richest of the White House hopefuls. That title belongs to Mitt Romney, a founder of the private equity firm Bain Capital, who has said he expects to report as much as $350 million in assets, including a trust for his heirs. Mr. Romney and Senator John McCain of Arizona, both Republicans, and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, have all received extensions of the filing deadline for their forms.

Mr. Giuliani’s $30 million fortune is the most unexpected information to emerge from the disclosure forms so far. During his divorce from Donna Hanover in June 2001, a lawyer for Mr. Giuliani said he had only $7,000 in personal money “under his control.” His salary as mayor of New York at the time was about $195,000, and his local financial disclosure forms showed less than $800,000 in deferred compensation, pension, retirement and mutual funds. He had also signed a contract to write two books for an advance of $3 million.

The latest disclosure form suggests that his biggest source of income was speeches, capitalizing on his celebrity after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. For the period covered by the form — roughly the calendar year 2006 — Mr. Giuliani reported making 124 speeches for as much as $200,000 each and earning a total of about $11.4 million.

Self-help and motivational rallies were his top audiences. He made about 26 speeches at events staged by Get Motivated Seminars, the company of the impresario Zig Ziglar, and 8 more at major events put on by the executive education group HSM.

Mr. Giuliani put a value of $5 million to $25 million on his stake in his consulting firm, Giuliani & Company, which he said paid him about $4.1 million last year. He said he received about $1.2 million in income from his law firm, Bracewell & Giuliani. Mr. Giuliani, who opened a New York office for what had been a Texas firm, said the $1.2 million he received reflected a guaranteed payment of $1 million a year from the firm, plus 7.5 percent of the New York office’s revenue.

Mr. Giuliani’s book has apparently sold well enough to earn royalties covering his $3 million advance; he reported $146,092 in book royalties in 2006. In addition, Mr. Giuliani reported $496 in theatrical royalties. A spokesman for his campaign said Mr. Giuliani earned that money for playing himself in the films “Anger Management” and “The Out-of-Towners,” as well as for guest appearances on the television programs “Law & Order” and “Saturday Night Live.”

Mr. Edwards, who earned his millions as a trial lawyer before running for the Senate in 1998, reported assets worth $14.3 million to $44.7 million in 2004. Since leaving office that year, he has devoted most of his energy to promoting efforts to help the poor, but he has recently faced questions about signing on part time in 2005 as an adviser to the hedge fund manager Fortress Investment Group.

Like many hedge funds — loosely regulated investment companies open only to the rich — some Fortress funds are incorporated in the Cayman Islands to avoid taxes. Fortress has invested in a firm that lent high-interest rate mortgages to low-income homeowners. A recent wave of foreclosures on such so-called subprime mortgages has elicited accusations from Mr. Edwards and others that some firms had engaged in predatory lending. Mr. Edwards has said he was not involved in any specific Fortress investments in that business.

Mr. Edwards’s financial disclosure form shows that he received $479,512 from Fortress in 2006; the forms did not cover 2005. In addition, the forms show that Mr. Edwards sold several million dollars in other assets to personally invest in Fortress funds. His disclosure form put the value of his holdings in Fortress funds at $11.2 million to $24.7 million.

Mr. Edwards has said he joined Fortress both to make money and to learn about finance.

Mr. Edwards’s campaign said he gave $350,000 to charities in 2006, including $333,334 in book royalties.

Eric Schultz, a spokesman for Mr. Edwards, said: “The bottom line is, if you look at where John Edwards comes from and his record, it’s clear what makes him tick: helping those who haven’t been as blessed as he has been. John Edwards is running for president to give every American the opportunities that he’s had.”

Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, another Democratic candidate, also disclosed an investment of more than $50,000 in the Fortress Investment Group. Mr. Dodd reported total assets of more than $1.5 million and a cottage in County Galway, Ireland, that he valued at $100,000 to $250,000.

Not all the candidates were so flush. Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican of California, reported assets worth hundreds of thousands of dollars but also said he owed more than $30,000 in car loans and more than $75,000 in credit card debt. His was the only disclosure form to be filled out in handwriting.

Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, a Democrat, reported owning more than $100,000 in stock and options worth at least $250,000 in a major oil refiner on whose board he once sat.

Former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, a Republican, reported assets valued at less than $700,000, including his retirement benefits as a former Southern Baptist minister. He earned about $150,000 in royalties from his book about his weight loss.

Representative Ron Paul of Texas, a libertarian-minded Republican who often warns that excessive government threatens the economy, has put his pessimism into his portfolio. If the dollar collapses, Mr. Paul will be ready: his favorite investments are real estate, silver and gold.

Giuliani On The Primary Trail: "Only Republicans Can Prevent Terror Attacks"

Rudy Giuliani said if a Democrat is elected president in 2008, America will be at risk for another terrorist attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001.

Politico.com reports:
But if a Republican is elected, he said, especially if it is him, terrorist attacks can be anticipated and stopped.

“If any Republican is elected president —- and I think obviously I would be the best at this —- we will remain on offense and will anticipate what [the terrorists] will do and try to stop them before they do it,” Giuliani said.

The former New York City mayor, currently leading in all national polls for the Republican nomination for president, said Tuesday night that America would ultimately defeat terrorism no matter which party gains the White House.

“But the question is how long will it take and how many casualties will we have?” Giuliani said. “If we are on defense [with a Democratic president], we will have more losses and it will go on longer.”

“I listen a little to the Democrats and if one of them gets elected, we are going on defense,” Giuliani continued. “We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation and we will be back to our pre-Sept. 11 attitude of defense.”

He added: “The Democrats do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us.”

After his speech to the Rockingham County Lincoln Day Dinner, I asked him about his statements and Giuliani said flatly: “America will be safer with a Republican president.”

Giuliani, whose past positions on abortion, gun control and gay rights have made him anathema to some in his party, believes his tough stance on national defense and his post-Sept. 11 reputation as a fighter of terrorism will be his trump card with doubting Republicans.

“This war ends when they stop coming here to kill us!” Giuliani said in his speech. “Never, ever again will this country ever be on defense waiting for [terrorists] to attack us if I have anything to say about it. And make no mistake, the Democrats want to put us back on defense!”

Giuliani said terrorists “hate us and not because of anything bad we have done; it has nothing to do with Israel and Palestine. They hate us for the freedoms we have and the freedoms we want to share with the world.”

Giuliani continued: “The freedoms we have are in conflict with the perverted, maniacal interpretation of their religion.” He said Americans would fight for “freedom for women, the freedom of elections, freedom of religion and the freedom of our economy.”

Addressing the terrorists directly, Giuliani said: “We are not giving that up, and you are not going to take it from us!”

Giuliani also said that America had been naive about terrorism in the past and had missed obvious signals.

“They were at war with us before we realized it, going back to ’90s with all the Americans killed by the PLO and Hezbollah and Hamas,” he said. “They came here and killed us in 1993 [with the first attack on New York’s World Trade Center, in which six people died], and we didn’t get it. We didn’t get it that this was a war. Then Sept. 11, 2001, happened, and we got it.”

Giuliani Shifts Stance On Abortion Method

The GOP candidate’s support for a high court ruling contrasts his position in 1997.

The LATimes reports:

The Supreme Court decision Wednesday upholding a ban on a controversial abortion procedure heightens the issue's visibility in the 2008 presidential race and spotlights a shift in position by Republican candidate Rudolph W. Giuliani.

The former New York mayor and other top Republicans vying for the White House welcomed the ruling while leading Democratic contenders said they deplored it.

Giuliani, the only major Republican candidate who supports abortion rights, has tried for months to mollify conservative critics.

On Wednesday, he praised the court for upholding the ban on the midterm procedure. "The Supreme Court reached the correct conclusion in upholding the congressional ban on partial-birth abortion," Giuliani said in a statement released by his campaign. "I agree with it."

His praise for the ruling contrasts his position while seeking reelection as mayor in 1997. On an abortion rights group's questionnaire, Giuliani circled "yes" next to the question of whether he would oppose "legislation that would make criminals of doctors who perform intact D&X abortions" — the technical term for what critics call "partial-birth" abortions.

Kelli Conlin, president of the abortion rights group, now known as NARAL Pro-Choice New York, accused Giuliani of "flip-flopping." "I am absolutely astounded that Mayor Giuliani would do a 180-degree pivot on his former position," she said.

Asked to explain his change in views, Giuliani spokeswoman Maria Comella said the 2003 ban upheld Wednesday included "an appropriate exception for threats to the life of the mother."

In addition to supporting abortion rights, Giuliani supports public funding of abortion. But he often says he hates abortion and would advise women not to have one. He has also vowed to appoint "strict constructionists" to the federal bench, a term antiabortion groups often use to refer to judges who would overturn Roe vs. Wade.

But on Saturday, Giuliani irked abortion opponents by telling a group of Iowa Republicans that the party "has to get beyond issues like that."

"That wasn't received very well by the pro-life movement," said Jim Backlin, vice president for legislative affairs at the Christian Coalition of America.

For Republicans, abortion is a key issue in the 2008 race for the White House. Sen. John McCain of Arizona has highlighted his support for outlawing abortion in an effort to mend his own frayed relations with conservatives. Mitt Romney, who supported abortion rights when he ran for Massachusetts governor in 2002, now describes himself as "pro-life," fueling accusations that he vacillates on core issues for political gain.