Proof That Giuliani Is The Front Runner

Rudy Giuliani has quickly, and without formally declaring his candidacy, become the front-runner for the Republican nomination for President in 2008. How do I know this is true? Because the New York Times has run its first hatchet job of the election cycle on him, and not on John McCain or Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich.

As Marc Schulman at Donklephant points out, the Times' analysis of the Giuliani Exploratory Committee's website provides only positive information about the candidate. Well, imagine that. The article points out that some New Yorkers had grown weary of Mayor Giuliani's "combativeness" and abrasive style, that the decline in crime which Giuliani takes credit for had begun prior to his taking office, and that the city had not become a utopia after eight years of his administration. Nor does the website discuss, as does the Times, Giuliani's personal life which does a few non-Ozzie and Harriet kinds of episodes. Now, these are certainly things one might say to criticize Giuliani. But they are most certainly not things that one would expect Giuliani to say about himself in a website designed to encourage people to support his candidacy for President.

For some reason, the Times is not taking Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton to task for failing to disclose possible negatives about Senator Clinton -- her campaign website does not mention a thing about Hillary's craven tolerance for her husband's very famous infidelities either before or during their White House years, or rumors of her verbal abuse of White House and Secret Service staff when she was First Lady (rumors which, for the record, I do not believe since they make no sense), or her involvement in shady real estate deals and other kinds of quasi-corruption when Bill Clinton was Governor of Arkansas, or the fact that America was not a paradise when her husband left office after having had all that critical policy and political support from his undeniably influential and powerful wife. The point is, you wouldn't expect Hillary to mention these things, and the New York Times doesn't see anything wrong with her failure to mention them on a website she created to promote her candidacy for President.

Why, then, is Giuliani's candidacy held to a different standard? Because this is the New York Times we're talking about here. It's the Paper Of Record, perhaps, and certainly a rich source of information about politics and national affairs. Smart people work there and I'm sure that they do try hard to get their facts right and exercise some care about filtering news out from non-news. But all the same, the product seems incurably left-wing and one-sided; they like Hillary better than Rudy, and in the judgement of these very smart, politically aware, and liberal people, Giuliani is the most prominent Republican candidate in the field and campaign season is officially underway.

They probably also feel that since both Clinton and Giuliani have links to New York, they are in a better position than most media outlets to opine on what's going on since they are, after all, the New York Times. So it's apparently time to start sharpening the axes.