The Daily Flipper: Nobody's Perfect Edition
Read what the Republicans Wish You Wouldn’t …
Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani on Sunday defended his law firm's role in representing Citgo Petroleum Corp., which is ultimately controlled by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, saying it was helping to protect American jobs. … Giuliani said in an interview: “What they’re doing is lawful and honorable and helping to protect jobs for more than 100,000 Americans.”
CITGO has approximately 4,000 employees in the United States and, through a network of more than 13,000 independently owned retail locations, CITGO indirectly employs roughly another 100,000 people who work hard every day to help their neighbors get where they want to go.
People chuckled when presidential candidate Mitt Romney, a Mormon raised in Michigan and elected in Massachusetts, bungled the names of Cuban-American politicians during a recent speech in Miami.But when he mistakenly associated Fidel Castro's trademark speech-ending slogan -- Patria o muerte, venceremos! -- with a free Cuba, listeners didn't laugh. They winced.
Castro has closed his speeches with the phrase -- in English, ''Fatherland or death, we shall overcome'' -- for decades.
''Clearly, that's something he was ill-advised on or didn't do his homework on,'' said Hialeah City Council President Esteban Bovo. ``When you get cute with slogans, you get yourself into a trap.''
Republican presidential contender John McCain on Friday used the term "tar baby," considered by some a racial epithet, and later said he regretted it.Answering questions at a town hall meeting, the Arizona senator was discussing federal involvement in custody cases when he said, "For me to stand here and ... say I'm going to declare divorces invalid because of someone who feels they weren't treated fairly in court, we are getting into a tar baby of enormous proportions."
After the event, McCain told reporters: "I don't think I should have used that word and I was wrong to do so."
Two recent surveys found that people are less likely to vote for a presidential candidate who is older than 72 than they would a candidate who has been divorced twice and a candidate who is Mormon. Giuliani is on his third marriage; Romney is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.In Michigan, Jerry Roe, a Republican who is a former state GOP executive director, backed McCain in 2000 but supports Romney this time. "McCain's too old," said Roe, whose son is a deputy campaign manager for Romney.
"He looks tired. He looks like he's dragging," added Chip Felkel, a GOP strategist in South Carolina who says he is not aligned with a candidate.
McCain received plenty of laughter for his jokes on campaigning, but the biggest reaction he received was when he mistakenly stated the importance of keeping the First in Nation primary -- in Massachusetts.
For someone building his presidential campaign around national security credentials, John McCain (R-Ariz.) sure has missed a bunch of votes regarding the Iraq war. During the past six weeks, the Senate has cast seven votes dealing with how President Bush should proceed in the now four-year-old war. And McCain has missed five of them, bypassing what he calls "meaningless" procedural votes in favor of campaign stops in his pursuit of the Republican presidential nomination.
During yesterday’s Iowa bus tour on the “Double Talk Express,” Senator McCain “dubbed Minnesota Governor, Tim Pawlenty ‘the future leadership of the Republican Party in America,’” fueling speculation “about a possible vice presidential candidacy” with McCain. How fitting that McCain’s potential running mate was also against ethanol subsidies as recently as 2003. Most Iowans probably already know that McCain has changed his position on ethanol, but do Iowa voters know that in 2003 Pawlenty proposed the elimination of $26.8 million in payments to 13 ethanol plants in his home state?
A dossier under the title, "Rudy Giuliani Life Long Liberal," edited by New York conservative activist George Marlin, has just been circulated to a small circle of New York journalists. And, now, NYSunPolitics.com publishes it online in its entirety (click to download the Word document) - appearing for the first time anywhere. ...According to the dossier's introduction, "From undergraduate days writing for his college newspaper, throughout his extensive legal career, and especially in his very visible political service-up to an [sic] including his actions after 9/11-Giuliani has held and promoted leftist views."
Mr. DeLay, who is trying through his book and a Web site to become an influential conservative voice outside Congress, does admit to a dark side. “We are all flawed,” he writes in the book. “And my flaw is that I can sometimes be aggressive, even mean.”
Visitors to Romney's page can click and play Elvis Presley's "A Little Less Conversation." McCain tells MySpace users his favorite TV show is "24" and his favorite movie is "Viva Zapata."
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