Bloomberg Poised for Third-party Campaign

[chefmike]

Bloomberg poised for third-party campaign

THE WASHINGTON TIMES
May 15, 2007


New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is prepared to spend an unprecedented $1 billion of his own $5.5 billion personal fortune for a third-party presidential campaign, personal friends of the mayor tell The Washington Times.
"He has set aside $1 billion to go for it," confided a long-time business adviser to the Republican mayor. "The thinking about where it will come from and do we have it is over, and the answer is yes, we can do it."
Another personal friend and fellow Republican said in recent days that Mr. Bloomberg, who is a social liberal and fiscal conservative, has "lowered the bar" and upped the ante for a final decision on making a run.
The mayor has told close associates he will make a third-party run if he thinks he can influence the national debate and has said he will spend up to $1 billion. Earlier, he told friends he would make a run only if he thought he could win a plurality in a three-way race and would spend $500 million -- or less than 10 percent of his personal fortune.
A $1 billion campaign budget would wipe out many of the common obstacles faced by third-party candidates seeking the White House.
"Bloomberg is H. Ross Perot on steroids," said former Federal Election Commission Chairman Michael Toner. "He could turn the political landscape of this election upside down, spend as much money as he wanted and proceed directly to the general election. He would have resources to hire an army of petition-gatherers in those states where thousands of petitions are required to qualify a third-party presidential candidate to be on the ballot."
Senior Republican officials -- including those supporting declared Republican presidential nomination contenders -- and several top Democrats told The Times they take the possibility of a Bloomberg candidacy as a serious threat in November 2008.
The Bloomberg team is studying the strategies of Mr. Perot, the Texas billionaire whose 1992 presidential campaign helped President Clinton to win the White House with 43 percent of the popular vote.
"Mike has been meeting with Ross Perot's most senior people about how they did an independent run in 1992," the Bloomberg business adviser said on condition of anonymity so as to avoid appearing to speak for Mr. Bloomberg.
Talk of Mr. Bloomberg as a third-party candidate comes as Republican voters are deeply divided over their top-three declared candidates -- Arizona Sen. John McCain, former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney -- and are casting longing glances at former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
"Some of the people on McCain's [presidential campaign] staff have been calling me to see if Mike is running because they are ready to leave the McCain campaign, which is a biplane on fire and spiraling down," the Bloomberg adviser said.
Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, another independent-minded Republican, dined recently with Mr. Bloomberg and suggested on CBS' "Face the Nation" over the weekend that he and Mr. Bloomberg might make an independent run for the presidency.

[White_Male_Canada]

Fantastic ! Pull the "moderates" away from both parties and leave a clear field for Conservative Republicans and Socialist democrats. Although I consider Bloomberg and Hagel as Liberal, capital ' L '.

Hagel-Bloomberg In '08? You Never Know

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/13/ftn/main2795705.shtml

[TJ347]

This just proves the dire straits the Republicans are in this time around, and will play right into the Democrats plans. Is there no viable Republican candidate out there? Bloomberg and Hagel? Hardly. They've got as much chance of winning as Obama does.

[chefmike]

U.S. Is ‘Really in Trouble,’ Says Bloomberg, Sounding Like a Candidate
Paul Sakuma/Associated Press

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, criticizing the nation’s “go-it-alone mentality” in the last few years, spoke Monday at Google’s headquarters.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., June 18 — Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, sounding every inch the presidential candidate he insists he is not, brought his message of pragmatic, nonpartisan leadership to California on Monday, telling a crowd of Google employees that the nation was “really in trouble.”

In unusually stark terms, Mr. Bloomberg expressed his frustration with the state of the nation, touching on campaign-style issues like the war in Iraq, immigration, education, health care and crime before a crowd of more than 1,000 employees at the Google campus here.

“Whoever out of those 20 becomes president I think has to do something about a country that I think is really in trouble,” Mr. Bloomberg said, referring to the current crop of candidates. “There’s the war, there is our relationships around the world.”

“Our reputation has been hurt very badly in the last few years,” he continued, criticizing what he called a “go-it-alone mentality” in an increasingly interconnected world.

The trip west comes as speculation about Mr. Bloomberg’s presidential ambitions has intensified, with his increasing travels around the country to speak about national issues, and with aides promoting the idea behind the scenes.

Mr. Bloomberg made his comments as a guest speaker at Google, technically as part of their series of authors, ostensibly because of his autobiography, “Bloomberg by Bloomberg,” which was published in 1997. But the notion of his making a third-party run at the White House was never far from the surface.

Indeed, in introducing Mr. Bloomberg, Alan Davidson, Google’s senior policy counsel, said, to laughter, that the hourlong discussion was not part of the candidates’ series, which has already brought former Senator John Edwards, Gov. Bill Richardson and Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain to the campus.

Asked about the subject, Mr. Bloomberg said that he was not a candidate for president and intended to finish out his term, which lasts through 2009, and then become a full-time philanthropist. Nonetheless, he declined to say definitively that he would not run, calling a question from a reporter asking him if he would rule out a candidacy too “Shermanesque” to answer.

In his remarks, he sounded much like a candidate for national office. He returned to a pet theme, criticizing the federal government for its immigration policies and what he sees as insufficient attention to rising costs of Social Security and health care.

Mr. Bloomberg also took a swipe at the presidential candidates of both parties, saying they were not offering serious ideas about improving public education or lowering street crime.

Arguing that people have a much greater chance of being killed by street crime than by a terror attack, he said: “Yet every press conference, they all beat their chests and say, ‘I can protect this country better from terrorism.’ Well, what about protecting them out in the streets every day?”

Mr. Bloomberg began his day in San Francisco. urging members of the Commonwealth Club, a public affairs group, to exert pressure on Congress to drop an amendment from its spending bill this year that limits the way the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives releases information about the source of illegal guns.

He ended the day in Los Angeles, where he assailed what he called the “swamp of dysfunction” in Washington. His remarks came in a speech opening a two-day conference for which Mr. Bloomberg is a co-host with the mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa.

[White_Male_Canada]

This just proves the dire straits the Republicans are in this time around, and will play right into the Democrats plans. Is there no viable Republican candidate out there? Bloomberg and Hagel? Hardly. They've got as much chance of winning as Obama does.

The Republican candidates are far superior than any on the democrat side. Giuliani, Romney or Thompson could possibly all trounce Hillary. And we know Hillary has it sown up.

Howard Kurtz got it right:

And Hillary's high negatives, which were 50 percent in a recent Gallup poll.

But I don't think any of that gets at the reservations that some Democrats have about the New York senator. The baggage has been endlessly publicized. Her gender attracts lots of women. Negatives can come down if the electorate warms up to a candidate over the course of a campaign. There is something else, hinted at in that "1984" video, that some people find off-putting.

The hesitation, I think, is along the lines of this LAT piece:

"Frederick Cole wants the Democratic Party to take back the White House in 2008. 'Look what a mess we're in,' said Cole, a nurse in Louisville, Ky. 'It's time for some fresh, new-thinker ideas.'

"Yet if his party nominates Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York for president, the 52-year-old Democrat plans to vote for her Republican opponent.

" 'It's a personal thing,' Cole said. 'I don't like her. I think she's condescending and arrogant, even worse than Al Gore, who has no personality.'It is a paradox of the 2008 presidential race. By a wide margin, several polls show, voters want a Democrat to win -- yet when offered head-to-head contests of leading announced candidates, many switch allegiance to the Republican."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/06/19/BL2007061900465_pf.html

Left-wing Nation pegs it too:

Many of the very same feminists who were her most ardent supporters as First Lady are now fiercely opposed to her historic bid to become the first female President of the United States. The woman once described by Susan Faludi as a symbol of "the joy of female independence" now evokes ambivalence, disdain and, sometimes, outright vitriol. The right wing's favorite "femi-nazi" now has to contend with Jane Fonda comparing her to "a ventriloquist for the patriarchy with a skirt and a vagina."

Let's be clear: Hillary has a "feminist problem," and more so with those who lean left.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070702/chaudhry

[qeuqheeg222]

please we need more political parties...please change this oligarchy of bushclintonbushclinton....20yrs of the same two families?plus we all know bush.sr. was running a lot in the second reagan term...and wmc from yer perch up there in saskatoon do you really think(even as much as the repugs hate clinton)guiliani can win over those christian coalition bitches?thompson is the only one who has a chance

[White_Male_Canada]

please we need more political parties...please change this oligarchy of bushclintonbushclinton....20yrs of the same two families?plus we all know bush.sr. was running a lot in the second reagan term...and wmc from yer perch up there in saskatoon do you really think(even as much as the repugs hate clinton)guiliani can win over those christian coalition bitches?thompson is the only one who has a chance

Some may stay home, others may hold their noses and vote for the evil of two lessers but,

Guiliani would destroy Hillary in the debates. Hands down best orator out there having been in the crucible of the NYC press, who aren`t exactly a bunch of pansies.

There should be a third "moderate" party that would force the dems to the blatant socialist left and the repubs to the constitutional right.

Then at least you`d have clear choices. Right now you`re getting gang-banged by both parties bent on "immigration reform".

[trish]

If you recall NYC was in the process of booting rudy out of office when they were so rudely interrupted by Al Qaeda. There's no way right wing red neck america is gonna vote for a jewish, new york, cross-dressing, divorced (what 3 times, 'lost count), philanderer who ran out on his first wife while she was in the hospital undergoing treatments for cancer. a president! MADE IN NEW YORK CITY!!!!!!! right wing america won't even eat hot sauce from NYC.

[White_Male_Canada]

If you recall NYC was in the process of booting rudy out of office when they were so rudely interrupted by Al Qaeda. There's no way right wing red neck america is gonna vote for a jewish, new york, cross-dressing, divorced (what 3 times, 'lost count), philanderer who ran out on his first wife while she was in the hospital undergoing treatments for cancer. a president! MADE IN NEW YORK CITY!!!!!!! right wing america won't even eat hot sauce from NYC.

"Just call me Ruby Rudy dah-ling"

[chefmike]

There is one thing you can count on as far as the 2008 presidential election goes. No repug has a chance in hell of winning it. Period.

[White_Male_Canada]

Run Bloomturd run 8)

Bloomberg no longer a Republican

By SARA KUGLER, Associated Press Writer
22 minutes ago



New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg left the Republican Party on Tuesday and switched to unaffiliated, a move certain to be seen as a prelude to an independent presidential bid that would upend the 2008 race.

The billionaire former CEO, who was a lifelong Democrat before he switched to the Republican Party in 2001 for his first mayoral run, said the change in his voter registration does not mean he is running for president.

"Although my plans for the future haven't changed, I believe this brings my affiliation into alignment with how I have led and will continue to lead our city," Bloomberg said.

[qeuqheeg222]

guiliani is goin down in the polls to a guy not even in the race-thompson-already the southrin factions of the repugs are startin to show their power in the party..no nascar watchin guy from mississippi is gonna vote for anybody form the northeast or the such,mermin,pro gun control,candidate..mcain is slippin considerably...yet and still the repugs keep wantin to frame the debate about TERROR and IMMIGRATION...remember the good ol days when big daddy reagan could just mention the twin evils of crack and aids and divide and devour amerika..ah the the glory years of the repugs....