The Daily Background

Newsweek’s Clift wonders if a divorce (or two) hurts a candidate, especially with evangelical voters. Giuliani has had a divorce and an annulment (now on his third wife), McCain has had a divorce (now on his second wife), and if Gingrich gets into the race, he’ll have had two divorces (and on his third wife).

Evangelical Republicans might not be as forgiving of Giuliani, who played out his ugly second divorce in the tabloids and reportedly has a strained relationship with his son, Andrew, and daughter, Caroline. The NEWSWEEK Poll showed that 26 percent of respondents would not vote for a candidate who was involved in a nasty public divorce, and 43 percent said they wouldn’t support a politician who’d had extramarital affairs. (Of course Giuliani, who supports abortion and gay rights, has other troubles with evangelicals.) Newt Gingrich, another Republican mulling a possible White House run, has tried to soften that resistance. Now on his third marriage, he admitted to cheating in the past and recently asked forgiveness for “moral failings.”

Of course, I’m going to put in a brief plug for my new Truthout piece (The Unlikely Republican Frontrunner: Giuliani), which explores Giuliani’s past and how different a candidate for the GOP he would be if he gets the nomination.

At this point in the race, I think it’s still quite wide open for the GOP nomination (and Democratic as well). Yes, Giuliani is leading the polls on the Republican side, but I think that this early on, that support is “soft” and probably only there because most Republicans know very little about Giuliani. According to a recent poll, only about half of self-identified Republicans knew that he was pro-choice, and I think there is a lot more that will chance when voters know more about him.

On the other hand, I don’t think Gingrich’s past hurts him that much (if he gets into the race, and I think there’s a fair chance he will). Everybody already knows that he cheated on his wife, and the GOP base likes him anyways, probably because he’s a “known.”

He’s been in nationwide office before (Speaker of the House- you can’t get any higher than that line of succession wise without going to the West Wing), and they already know the sorts of things he does when he has power (and they like it). On the other hand, Giuliani hasn’t had that, plus he does have problems with his son which may ultimately be worse than the fact that he’s had a divorce and an annulment (although his problems with Andrew are largely related to his second divorce with his mother, Donna Hanover, whom he allegedly cheated on twice).

His son says he doesn’t have an interest in campaigning with him, and doesn’t seem to enthused about his dad running. Giuliani has asked for privacy on this matter, which is pretty much like drawing a huge bulls eye around yourself for the press saying “HEY, THERE’S SOMETHING HERE YOU NEED TO LOOK INTO.”

Totally unrelated side note that just occurred to me: I hate to make comparisons to the SBVFT (Swift Boat Veterans for Truth “Truth”), but Giuliani has a firefighter problem which threatens to become larger. The difference of course is that the Swifties never had a legitimate bone to pick with John Kerry, whereas Giuliani actually did treat NYFD firefighters terribly.

Filed under: Presidential election, Z-TDB Blog