Spin Cycle

From Dan Janison:

In what he hinted was a preview to his remarks to the Republican National Convention tonight, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani appeared before New York delegates and blasted Democrats Barack Obama and Joseph Biden as being unprepared, wrong, or both on crucial issues.

Giuliani also assailed media coverage of Sarah Palin, the GOP vice-presidential candidate, citing a "vicious attack" against her based on family matters. He did not share specifics, but the lines resounded in the room of a few hundred mid-afternoon guests and drew applause and cheers – the same type of broad based media complaint that also went over well at the Democratic parley last week.

Hailing the Iraq invasion, Giuliani said: "I can’t figure out for the life of me how the Democrats think that it was a mistake. Are they saying they’d like Saddam Hussein to be back in charge of Iraq, that things would be better…?"

The former mayor recycled some of the lines from his own unsuccessful primary campaign and applied them to John McCain, saying that as president the Arizona Senator would "keep us on offense against Islamic terrorism."

He slammed Obama as a product of the "Chicago machine," explaining why he twice erred and said the senator had been a member of the Illinois legislature before he was in the U.S. Senate and never ran anything, not even a small city.

"He was a community organizer. What do they do? I haven’t figured that out," Giuliani said.

He criticized Obama for merely voting "present" numerous times in the Illinois Senate.

"He’s supposed to make a decision. If you’re president of the United States, you don’t get to walk into the Oval Office and, you know, Russia is attacking Georgia, and you vote present…."Gee guys I’m here…Now tell me what to do…."

"You get the impression that maybe that’s how it’s going to work in an Obama adminsitration?"

Giuliani, chuckling, said vice-presidential candidate Joseph Biden "has a great deal of experience talking and talking and talking…" but has been consistently wrong on policy. Biden’t past suggestion of partitioning Iraq into three states would not work and would promote years of more war in the region. The former mayor drew a parallel to the 1940’s partition of India and Pakistan.

Alluding to the Obama camp’s criticism of the Gov. Palin selection, he said "Sorry, Sen. Obama, if the state’s not big enough for you," and suggested Obama regarded her as a small-towner "clinging to religion and guns," a reference to Obama’s statement in the primary about the widespread fears of some voters.

"I mean, this is, I don’t care if he doesn’t want to get elected," Giuliani said. "He’s got to get elected. We need John McCain more than he needs us. We really do."

He said: "I‘ve got to change the speech for tonight so you don’t have to sit through it again."