Political Football

This post was put up on 11/30 and today 12/03 I have an update.

Mike Huckabee’s campaign is being aided by an independent group run by a former top aide at the NRSC and funded in part by a group of retired Procter & Gamble executives in Ohio.

“Trust Huckabee,” whose website went live last week, was responsible for flooding Iowa with automated calls last night praising the former Arkansas governor and criticizing his GOP opponents.

Read more by taking the link below.

Link here

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wow, I got “push polled” by a group that is REALLY AFRAID of a Rudy Presidency.

Most push polls are longer in duration; it was stated as a 60 second poll, which it pretty much was.

It started out asking if I was going to the Iowa Caucus (did not ask D or R) and continued to ask me to specify which candidate I was supporting by saying a name then asking me to say YES or NO. This was also a ROBO poll (no human intervention), no keying by me, so a ton of calls can be made in a short amount of time).

After I said yes for Rudy it went through two rather nastily worded issues that were apparently supposed to change my mind on Rudy’s candidacy. One of the questions used “homosexual” rather than the more commonly used term “gay” to pose the question – I can only assume that was to make me cringe? Didn’t work.

Rudy’s stance on gay rights is no different that most of the first tier of Republican candidates. He does NOT support Gay marriage, as some have indicated, he does support civil unions as many candidates do. I guess the real crime is that he has some gay friends and that makes some people uncomfortable.

The second question was a nastily phrased question about Rudy’s integrity based on legal trouble Bernard Kerick (police chief during part of Rudy’s time as Mayor) is in. Rudy acknowledges Kerick is facing legal trouble on some tax issues and more but also says:

“Bernie Kerik worked for me while I was mayor of New York City. There were mistakes made with Bernie Kerik. But what’s the ultimate result for the people of New York City?

The ultimate result for the people of New York City was a 74 percent reduction in shootings, a 60 percent reduction in crime, a correction program that went from being one of the worst in the country to one that was on ’60 Minutes’ as one of the best in the country, 90 percent reduction of violence in the jails.”

Take the full measure of the person for which you’re casting a vote.

Push Polling is a very ugly part of politics – I have urged my Rudy friends to answer differently from me in the call if they get it and see if they bash that candidate. If we can get enough calls documented, the culprit will be exposed.

Posting all the negatives about a man who has served in the Public sector for most of his life, will not change the results he’s achieved or could acheive as President. This is a sign of desparation.

Let’s put one more negative out there and put more context to it…

About the paying the Mayor’s security detail from 10 years ago you’ve been seeing in the news?

Posted by the Politico last night in response to Giuliani’s appearance on Katie Couric, New York City Comptoller William Thompson was quoted as saying that his auditors were “stonewalled” when they tried to look into the matter of Giuliani’s security expenses.

However, not until the 13th paragraph does the story note that Thompson is a Democrat. Left out of the story completely is the fact that Thompson has designs on running for mayor in 2009, and has been raising money for over a year. Does that automatically invalidate everything he says? No. But it’s certainly a relevant detail to consider and falls under the category of full disclosure.

Rudy continues to say there was nothing irregular done on his part.

The police department paid for all of these expenses. But since the police department would sometimes be slow in payment. City Hall would pay it first, then the police department would reimburse every single penny of it. And now we’ve been able to confirm that. So this was really, I know what this was. This story is five years old. It came out two hours before a debate. It’s a typical political hit job with only half the story told … not that second part told … that every single penny was reimbursed … that all of this was public. All of this was discoverable. It was not done in a way that nobody could see it.

Politics is indeed an ugly business. -pf

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