Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Imus Loves on Craig Crawford Who Loves On Mike Huckabee. Still No Word On Who's Running Security At Giuliani Camp


Congressional Quarterly's Craig Crawford was on Imus this morning and talked (briefly) about former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.

Crawford said about Huckabee, "He's one to watch. There's room in this race for a conservative and he puts a friendly face on his conservative views. He might do very well in small, early primary states as voter fatigue sets in with the three GOP front-runners."

Amen.

GreenMountainPolitics1 has been hot on Huckabee for 3 months. And, when we met the former Governor in New Hampshire last week, it developed into a full blown love affair.

We aren't the only ones.

The former Southern Fat Boy picked up a key endorsement and got this headline out of South Carolina yesterday.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

And we know what bad is - the security at Team Giuliani.

Yesterday afternoon still more oppo research surfaced on Hiz Honor, this time in the form of a "vulnerability study" commissioned by Giuliani's staff prior to Rudy's successful run for Mayor in 1993.

According to The Smoking Gun, among the tidbits in Chris Lyon's report (Lyons has a reputation among GOP operatives of being one of the best oppo research guys around by the way):

The campaign study was obtained by The Village Voice's Wayne Barrett in the course of preparing "Rudy!," an investigative biography of Giuliani. In its preface, the study notes that it is "tough and hard-hitting. It pulls no punches."

Perhaps that is why Giuliani, as Barrett reported, ordered copies of the vulnerability study destroyed shortly after it was circulated to top campaign aides.

He surely could not have been pleased to read that his "personal life raises questions about a 'weirdness factor.'" That weirdness, aides reported, stemmed from Giuliani's 14-year marriage to his second cousin, a union that he got annulled by claiming to have never received proper dispensation from the Catholic Church for the unorthodox nuptials.

"When asked about his personal life, Giuliani gives a wide array of conflicting answers," the campaign report stated. "All of this brings the soundness of his judgment into question--and the veracity of his answers."

The internal study also addresses prospective charges that Giuliani dodged the Vietnam draft and was a "man without convictions" because of his transformation from George McGovern voter to a Reagan-era Justice Department appointee. "In many ways Rudy Giuliani is a political contradiction...He doesn't really fit with the Republicans. Too liberal.
The Lyons' study is embarrassing. And it begs the question (again), 'Who the Fu*k is minding the store over there?'

Which is more than enough to make his National Communications Director choke on her doughnut.