Silly Irrational Voter

Jim Johnson left a comment in Wayne Garcia's blog post. Johnson's rationale for voting for Giuliani is mind-numbing in it's stupidity. Johnson admitted he found Giuliani uninspiring. He voted for Giuliani because of his crash and burn Florida strategy. The Florida prmary relevance matters more than Giuliani's ability to govern properly.

A win by Giuliani, as I noted on my blog, would show future candidates that it is possible to skip Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina and still do well.

Giuliani would still be behind in delegates and broke going into Super Tuesday. Johnson's obsessed with Florida. The other states, that are not Iowa and New Hampshire, have just as much right to bitch about not being first. Jim the guy that backed moving up the primary against the DNC and RNC wishes. Once again Florida elections became a national punchline. This is about what Jim Johnson wants. He gave no consideration to moving up the primary before paper ballot machines were ready.

Let's discuss Giuliani the candidate. Shaggate and Bernard Kerik showed corruption is how Giuliani governs. A pro-choice philanderer will drive away the Christian Right base. Giuliani believes in the Laffer Curve.

In response to questions, the candidates said they would not support raising the gasoline tax to finance spending on the nation’s roads and bridges in response to the collapse of the bridge in Minneapolis last week. Mr. Giuliani got into a terse exchange with his questioner, David Yepsen, the political columnist for The Des Moines Register, when Mr. Yepsen tried to ask him the question.

“David, there’s an assumption in your question that is not necessarily correct, sort of the Democratic, liberal assumption, ‘I need money; I raise taxes,’ ” Mr. Giuliani said.

“Then what are you going to cut, sir?” Mr. Yepsen responded. Mr. Giuliani said that as mayor of New York, he had increased revenues to pay for bridge and road repair by cutting taxes, thereby jolting the economy, and that he would do the same thing as president. The city’s treasury in that period was flush largely with revenues produced by the stock-market boom of the late 1990s.

Giuliani's ghost written Foreign Affairs's piece declares the United States lost Vietnam because we didn't stay in long enough. A corrupt South Vietnamese government and 12 years of military involvement was not enough was not enough for Giuliani. America's Mayor once said, "I disagreed with it," when asked about Vietnam. It's amazing how time with neoconservatives can change one's perspective.

America must remember one of the lessons of the Vietnam War. Then, as now, we fought a war with the wrong strategy for several years. And then, as now, we corrected course and began to show real progress. Many historians today believe that by about 1972 we and our South Vietnamese partners had succeeded in defeating the Vietcong insurgency and in setting South Vietnam on a path to political self-sufficiency. But America then withdrew its support, allowing the communist North to conquer the South. The consequences were dire, and not only in Vietnam: numerous deaths in places such as the killing fields of Cambodia, a newly energized and expansionist Soviet Union, and a weaker America. The consequences of abandoning Iraq would be worse.

Giuliani wants to destroy Medicare and create an entirely market driven program. Many people would be turned down for coverage. Medical expenses would increase from emergency room walk-ins. Giuliani told CPAC society sharing responsibility for each other is a bad thing. The people screwed out of health care might say different.

"It's a no-risk society," Giuliani went on. "If we continue with this idea of collective responsibility, we'll become a society that deteriorates. And it's a battle that has to be fought now."

He offers health care as an example. "Democrats want universal health care, collective responsibility--honestly, it's their version of socialized medicine." Even the recent health care reform in Massachusetts, designed by the Republican governor Mitt Romney, was tainted with collectivity, because it required every citizen to get health insurance.

"I don't like mandates," Giuliani says. "I don't like mandating health care. I don't like it because it erodes what makes health care work in this country--the free market, the profit motive. A mandate takes choice away from people. We've got to let people make choices. We've got to let them take the risk--do they want to be covered? Do they want health insurance? Because ultimately, if they don't, well, then, they may not be taken care of. I suppose that's difficult." He lets the idea sink in, though it seems to bother his audience not at all. "The minute you start mandating, you always end up with more expensive government programs."

The panderer-in-chief is a prostate cancer survivor. Giuliani told voters, "I had prostate cancer five, six years ago. (Editor's note: He's not sure?) My chance of surviving cancer -- and thank God I was cured of it -- in the United States: 82 percent. My chances of surviving prostate cancer in England: only 44 percent under socialized medicine." The problem is the numbers came from Dr. David Gratzer, of the conservative think tank Manhattan Institute. Gratzer used an old study from the Commonwealth Fund. THE CWF told The New York Times, "Five-year survival rates cannot be calculated from incidence and mortality rates, as any good epidemiologist knows."

None of these factors matter to Jim Johnson. It's all about Jim wanting the Florida primary moved up.

Irrational voter, indeed.

Update: Johnson evokes a Florida strategy Giuliani never had. America's Mayor outspent all Republicans in New Hampshire. Giuliani spent a great deal of time and money in Iowa and South Carolina.

Florida was the firewall. Giuliani was an undisciplined candidate. He would pull stakes, in a state, at the first sign of trouble. The former GOP frontrunner couldn't fundraise and not say embarrassing statements on the stump. The man that vowed not to run from terrorists ran a campaign of retreat.

Giuliani had the intention of winning the early states. His only problem voters found him less appealing than Ron Paul.