March 14, 2007
BLOOMBERG: CAPITAL AND CAPITOLS
Mayor Bloomberg was in DC yesterday for major financial summit being held at Georgetown University. Some, like former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, said that he sounded like Bloomberg's ideal capitol may be more DC than Albany.
Straying afield of the boardroom talk that dominated yesterday's conference, Mr. Bloomberg prompted a former Treasury secretary, Robert Rubin, to remark that the mayor's forceful commentary "sounded like something a presidential candidate would do." The reference to Mr. Bloomberg's rumored White House hopes drew laughter from the red-faced mayor and a smattering of applause from the Georgetown University crowd.
The mayor later acknowledged that though he has denied his intention to run for president, he has done little to tamp down speculation that he may enter the race. A former adviser, Esther Fuchs, was quoted as saying last week that there was an "80%" chance Mr. Bloomberg would run as an independent if the two parties nominated "extreme" candidates.
Barring a massive seachange in the way parties nominate their candidates, I would up that figure to a 99.9% chance that Bloomberg would have to run as an independent. I'll give one reason apiece for why he wouldn't be nominated by Republicans or Democrats. The hardcore leftists that control the early stages of their party's nomination process––characterized by sites like DailyKos––loathe Bloomberg. They hate him for inviting the Republicans to hold their 2004 convention in New York City and they hate him even more for the way he effectively used the police to prevent the usual urban anarchy that accompanies large protest movements descending upon a city. Bloomberg has a major problem with the Republican Party that only widens when he gets into the general electorate. It is an intractactable problem that he will not be able to talk himself out of and is sufficient to torpedo any believable chance that he could win a nomination, let alone office. Mayor Bloomberg is fiercely anti-2nd Amendment. He cloaks this in a mantel of being against illegal guns, but I suspect his concept of what should be considered legal involves only the guns that reside in the holsters of law enforcement and bodyguards. Democratic legislators followed this anti-gun impulse like lemmings off a cliff in 1998 and learned a bitter but valuable lesson: Americans own guns and most Americans don't think there's anything wrong with their neighbors owning guns. About half of all households in the U.S. own guns and 80% of all U.S. States allow the concealed carry of weapons in public unless the person is found mentally unstable or his a criminal record.
If Bloomberg runs it will have to be as an Independent. As a dyed-in-the-wool liberal in almost all areas save for economic, his candidacy would brutalize the Democrats at the polls and hand the Republicans the Presidency in '08 in a way that would make Ralph Nader look like a total piker.
Tagged: bloomberg, democrats, guns, independent, nyc, president, republicans, rncPosted by Lexiphane at March 14, 2007 8:16 AM
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