I Guess We Gotta Talk About Rudy

OK, as others have pointed out, the conventional wisdom has officially declared that Rudolph W. Guiliani will seek the Republican nomination as the candidate for the Presidency of the United States of America in 2008. I won't pound the keyboard too much about this because it is, well, simply not that exciting, but I will say that the conventional wisdom about Rudi is wrong and it could very well turn out to be the most destructive form elitist self-denial and/or blissful ignorance since, well, 2004. The conventional wisdom reads like this: "Rudi is a divorced, pro-choice, northeasterner, thus is entirely unacceptable to red state America and thus cannot win the Republican nomination nevermind the Presidency." To those who chuckle that this could possibly be believed, I say "No seriously, I hear this all the time and some very smart people I know actually believe it." Well, to this piece of conventional wisdom, I say "Pshaw" or perhaps even "Poppycock."

As some readers may have gleaned, the ever-ravishing Mrs. Baseball hails from arguably the reddest of red states and I have and do spend a fair amount of time there, and I can safely say that elitist northeastern opinion has coccooned itself inside its charactiture vision of red America as Jesusland, a land inhabited by robotic dopes who wake up each morning, go to bed each night and spend all time in between thinking about nothing other than abortion and plotting how they can deny it to others. Well, newsflash, that's not really what it is like. So if people want to continue to latch onto this ridiculous piece of conventional stupidity that's fine, but a good political strategy it is not. The Democratic Party establishment would be wise to take seriously a politican who has a decent shot at winning in both Oklahoma and New York (and PA, and CT, and NJ). Likewise the Republican Party establishment would be wise to take seriously a politician who is, well, not of the Republican establishment. Therefore, I am convinced that you will not keep hearing this conventional wisdom much longer, there are too many smart people who are paid to win elections who will detect the falsity of this notion early and reject it.