Rudy and the Gang of 50

The New Moscow Times did a very thorough editorial on Rudy's Presidential aspirations yesterday. Here are some pertinent excerpts.

Mr. Giuliani has little to say about 2008, and a great deal to say about Sept. 11, 2001. He rarely brings up the World Trade Center attack directly; he does not have to. No matter where he goes — South Carolina, Florida, Michigan and Illinois, just in the past several weeks — other people do it for him. That will surely be the case on Thursday, when he makes his much-anticipated first public appearance in two years in New Hampshire, which holds the first presidential primary in the nation, where he will speak at a fund-raiser for Republican state legislative candidates.

He says he does not yet know if he will be a presidential candidate. He has no campaign apparatus and his positions on divisive social issues — from abortion to gay rights to gun control — put him at odds with most in his party.

Never mind that Mr. Giuliani has come in for some sharp criticism back in New York — about workers sickened by toxic dust at ground zero, about his disgraced former police commissioner, Bernard B. Kerik, and even about his handling of the trade center attack.

There is little indication that his noble image from 9/11 has been tarnished in the heartland. For many...his national security message seems to work, blotting out the central question facing his candidacy: whether a supporter of legal abortion, gay civil unions, immigrants’ rights and gun control; a thrice-married, Catholic New Yorker whose split with his second wife took place publicly and none too neatly, can win Republican presidential primaries and caucuses.

We at the Cooler are here to try and wade through that complicated question. Today we are going to use for the first time a Cooler term. The Gang of 50. The Gang of 50 are the campaign consultants, strategists, pollsters, pundits, and journalists who make up the conventional caucus wisdom here in Iowa. (Don't sue us Mark, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery). When you want to know what the Gang thinks about the Caucus, come to the Cooler and we'll let you know.

So what's the conventional wisdom in the gang? We hear that Rudy is running, likely will enter late after the straw poll, and he likely will wait until a few of the major contenders stumble a little bit (Pataki in particular)... If Rudy does get in, how will Iowans react? How will he put an organization together in time?

The Gang doesn't have an answer to those questions yet. But it goes without saying that the rest of the field is more comfortable with the Mayor on the paid speaking circuit, not the caucus circuit.