I noticed in Kate’s post this morning that some voters are confused about where President Obama stands in our little Senate election, on account of Scott Brown’s ads showing himself shaking hands with the President. Of course, President Obama has endorsed Elizabeth Warren, not Scott Brown, in this race.
It would have been nice if Obama had cut an ad for her like he just did for Chris Murphy. Maybe his not doing so has something to do with New Hampshire, where Scott Brown’s wicked popular for some reason. But if people needed any further confirmation that Scott Brown is a standard-issue Republican, not an “independent” as he’d like Massachusetts voters to believe, it comes from this:
Yesterday, with three days to go before the election, Scott Brown campaigned in the North End with Rudy Giuliani. The same Rudy Giuliani who defended Mitt Romney’s 47% remark while campaigning for Tea Party joker Josh Mandel in Ohio. The same Rudy Giuliani who ran to the “spin room” to praise Mitt Romney after the debates (and lied to Chris Hayes and the home audience about his government contracts in the process). The same Rudy Giuliani who said less than three weeks ago that Romney “should be exploiting” Benghazi for political gain.
And, yes, the same Rudy Giuliani who, the day before campaigning in Boston for Scott Brown, said that President Obama’s “incompetence” got Americans killed in Libya and that President Obama “should resign” for not getting unemployment even lower than the high sevens despite constant GOP obstruction. The same guy who worked hard to re-elect George W. Bush and, like Scott Brown, loves him some Scalia.
Not to mention the same Rudy Giuliani who divided New York City along racial lines for eight years. I remember. I lived there for most of his time and it was awful. Some highlights:
- In March 2000 Patrick Dorismond was working as a security guard outside a Manhattan bar. Undercover police approached and asked him where they could buy pot. He indignantly replied he wasn’t a drug dealer. A scuffle ensued and the police shot and killed the unarmed Dorismond. Guiliani’s reaction: Dorismond was “no altar boy.”
- In February 1999 23-year-old unarmed street vendor Amadou Diallo, a man with no criminal record, returned home to the Bronx. An elite police squad looking for a rapist, a black man, in his neighborhood, approached him. Diallo, used to showing his papers to the police in his native Guinea, reached for his wallet. The NYPD fired 41 shots at him, hitting him 19 times and killing him. Guiliani consistently defended the police. When Bruce Springsteen wrote a song about this tragedy, Giuliani criticized Springsteen.
- In August 1997 police arrested Haitian immigrant Abner Louima in an altercation at a nightclub in Brooklyn and took him to the station. There they tortured him, sodomizing him with a nightstick or toilet plunger and causing major physical damage.
- Pure contempt from Giuliani for local black officials and 90% of black New Yorkers believing Giuliani’s NYPD “often engaged in brutality against blacks.”
- Just two weeks after the attacks, Giuliani tried to use 9/11 as an excuse to stay in office despite term limits. By the way, the confusion after the attacks and rallying to Giuliani is a big reason NYC has Bloomberg as mayor life, instead of electing Mark Green in 2001.
Scott Brown should be judged by the company he keeps. When you’re knocking on doors, make it clear that President Obama supports Elizabeth Warren, and Scott Brown’s out there campaigning with a George W. Bush crony who said, just this Friday, that President Obama should resign.
