NY Post: Financier allegedly bribed Israel's Olmert

A Long Island mogul is at the center of a sensational bribery scandal that could bring down embattled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, The Post has learned.

Millionaire financier Morris Talansky -- who runs an investment firm out of his tony home in Woodmere -- allegedly passed money to Olmert while the politician was mayor of Jerusalem in the '90s, sources said.

In a highly unusual move, Israeli authorities have barred the country's media from publishing Talansky's name - revealed now in The Post - saying it could hamper their investigation. Israeli media has referred only to the involvement of an "American businessman."

Talansky is apparently set to sing to Israeli authorities about his alleged role in the scheme, sources said.

"It looks serious, and it looks like they have a state witness" in Talansky, one source said.

Talansky - a philanthropist and political contributor to everyone from Rudy Giuliani to Bill Clinton - is in Jerusalem, where he has an apartment, preparing to head to a closed-door court hearing as early as today, sources said.

The 75-year-old was earlier questioned about the alleged scheme almost immediately after arriving in the country for Passover, and he implicated Olmert, sources have said.

It was unclear what the alleged payments to Olmert were for, but sources said they involved hefty amounts of cash.

Talansky repeatedly appears - sometimes under the nickname "The Laundry Man" - in the logs of financial dealings kept by Olmert's longtime aide, Shula Zakan, a source said.

Olmert was grilled by investigators Friday. He has vehemently denied any wrongdoing.

Let's see: A botched war against a terror outfit, an approval rating in the single digits, a reputation as spineless but arrogant. Olmert's outlasted every good reason for a resignation so far. I wander what happens next.

LA Mayor Giuliani

Patt Morrison did a little devil's arithmetic to come up with the next mayor of Los Angeles in case Hillary Clinton is elected president.

She's got a Cabinet to fill. And who's her California main man? Who was there for her way back, before Obamamania, bringing in Latino votes in sheaves?

Antonio Villaraigosa. Mr. Future Secretary of Education or Labor or HHS Villaraigosa. Instead of running for reelection in 2009, he's out of the Getty House and off to the Beltway. Adios, City of Angels and psychotic traffic; hola, City of Lobbyists and cheap taxi rides.

But what happens to us? L.A. will need a mayor, pronto.

I have just the man.

The mastermind mayor, the man who can whip a civic entity into shape faster than Richard Simmons on crack. He's tanned, he's rested and he's ready for some Hollywood prime time -- Rudy Giuliani!

What's that? Is he available? Not long ago, he was reeling in six figures for a single speech. Two weeks ago, he couldn't entice a hundred people out to hear him talk for free in Florida.

Of course he's available.

The reasons why she thinks he'd be great -- he'd increase parking-ticket revenue, he'd stop ex-New Yorkers from talking about how great things were in the city they left, he'd pick fights with Cardinal Mahony -- are more digs at transplangelenos than exultations of Giuliani. I do, however, know quite a few people who would be thrilled. I'm not one of them.

A New York Jew who does heart Huckabee

My earlier post about why Mike Huckabee will bomb in big cities has aroused quite a bit of commenting at the CT Liveblog, one of which directed me to an interesting post from the New York Times' City Room blog. It's about Alice Lemos, a Jew from Queens who is campaigning to be a Huckabee delegate.

“I’m pro-life and I’m socially conservative,” said Ms. Lemos, a 53-year-old legal secretary at a firm in Manhattan and a frequent contributor to a Web site called “Jews for Life.”

“The fact of the matter is that I don’t like establishment Republicans in New York — I don’t like the track record of Joe Bruno or George Pataki,” she said, referring to the State Senate majority leader and the former governor. “Also, I think Rudy Giuliani did nothing to really build up the party at the grass-roots level. I believe in grass-roots politics.”

Regarding Huckabee, she said:

“He reminds me a lot of Ronald Reagan,” Ms. Lemos said. “He is positive and upbeat and comes from a humble background. I hope that I can help others get to know him.”

I guess Siena College missed her in its random survey.

Jews: 'Voting as if our lives depend upon it'

Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein had barely slept in days.

A senior at Beverly Hills High School, he'd spent long hours rallying support for Barack Obama, and as the results from the Iowa caucuses poured in, as fellow Obama supporters packed the presidential candidate's California campaign office in Koreatown, Spitzer-Rubenstein turned jubilant, his enthusiasm mashing together with exhaustion into euphoria.

"Yeah!" he shouted, jumping up and down in a corner where he was hawking T-shirts, bumper stickers and buttons for the Illinois senator. "Obama! Obama! Obama!" he chanted with the crowd. "Fired up! Ready to go! Fired up! Ready to go! Let's go change the world!"

Then his cell phone rang. It was one of the many high school volunteers he oversees as the L.A. teen director.

"Hi, Amy," Spitzer-Rubenstein, 17, said. "So it looks like we did it. It's awesome. You helped make this happen. Yeah, every little bit matters."

One down, 49 to go, which means many more hours of lost sleep for Spitzer-Rubenstein. Far from alone in volunteering for the candidate he thinks holds the key to a better America, Jews are planted throughout most of the presidential front-runners' campaigns, from top advisory levels to grassroots street teams.

So much excitement hasn't surrounded a presidential primary season in 40 years, not since Bobby Kennedy was in the race. And for the first time in at least as long, California's primary will matter. Until now, only six states have cast their votes for party nominations, with Florida's vote Tuesday terminating the campaigns of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards. Maine's residents will vote Friday and then on Feb. 5, 22 states, including California, Illinois and New York, will go to the polls on what has been dubbed "Super-Duper Tuesday" and "Tsunami Tuesday." Meanwhile, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an Independent and a Jew, continues to play presidential footsie, presumably waiting to see how the field thins.

With the contest still up for grabs -- three Republicans and two Democrats still with a realistic chance of getting their party's nod -- Tuesday's race is expected to determine the ballot for the general election. And already quite a few Jews have been writing checks, working phones or simply spreading their candidate's gospel in an effort to court the deciding votes.

Julie Shapiro, a young lawyer for Universal and volunteer for Hillary Clinton, last week started an effort to get other female lawyers fired up about the New York senator. David Slomovic, a father of three, spent recent Thursday evenings opening his commercial real estate office for phone banking for Giuliani. And Dr. Joel Geiderman, co-chair of the emergency medicine department at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and vice chair of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Council, has spent his free time encouraging lifelong Democrats to switch sides.

"The two visions of America the parties offer could not be any more different," Geiderman said.

Jews in real estate and Hollywood were quick to get involved, too -- support had been strongest for Clinton and Obama, Giuliani and John McCain -- endorsing early, opening their homes for fundraisers and crisscrossing the country in support.

"We took our family holiday in Iowa this year," said Sony Pictures Chairman and CEO Michael Lynton, who hosted Obama at his home last summer and went with his wife and kids to the Jan. 3 caucuses.

Tonight, MGM chief Harry Sloan will host his second fundraiser for McCain, a Republican senator from Arizona. Obama will attend one at the Avalon. And Hillary Clinton will be at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel for a fundraiser organized by the likes of Peter Lowy, Haim Saban, Barbra Streisand and Daphna and Richard Ziman.

"All of us believe this is an absolutely critical election," said Michael Berenbaum, an adjunct professor of theology at American Jewish University. "The last four years of the Bush administration have been disastrous. If we don't get ourselves squared away, it could be the end of the American Century and the end of the way the American Jewish community has been American in this era.

"We are voting as if our lives and futures depend upon it. Not because we fear someone is going to come out and kill us, but because we fear that if we don't get this right, our children and their children will not enjoy the privileges this generation has enjoyed as Americans -- the economic opportunity, the prosperity, the education, all of those elements that have characterized our existence and our flourishing. After Florida in 2000, everybody knows that every vote absolutely counts."

That is the opening section of my story for this week's Jewish Journal, which is a bit stale in print but was updated online. I'll blog more about Jews and the '08 election later.

Romney says Mormons not Christians?

From the Unlikely About Face Department:

"Mitt Romney has acknowledged that Mormonism is not a Christian faith."

That comment was made by a policy expert from Focus on the Family. But if you recall from his faith in America speech, Romney said:

I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind. My church’s beliefs about Christ may not all be the same as those of other faiths. Each religion has its own unique doctrines and history.

In other words: We're as Christian as Lutherans and Catholics. Romney's campaign has rebutted the Focus on the Family claim.

GetReligion has the backstory and a bit more explanation:

There’s quite a bit of buzz out there right now in evangelical circles about a series of informational videos that are up and running at CitizenLink.org — which is part of the wider kingdom linked to an activist by the name of James Dobson. The videos feature clips of recent webcasts with Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council.

Right now, everyone is asking — will Dobson endorse either (gasp) Mitt Romney or (gasp!) John McCain? It is in that context that the following blog item by Michael Scherer appears at Time, with the pushy headline: “A stealth Mitt Romney endorsement from the religious right’s powerbrokers?”

The clip on Rudy Giuliani is harsh (note that reference to dancing in drag). No surprise. The McCain video says voters have no way of knowing what the senator will do next. No surprise. Then the video on Mike Huckabee is surprisingly critical. No surprise?

After praising Huckabee’s social views, both Perkins and Tom Minnery, a policy expert at Focus on the Family, hammer the former Arkansas governor for his foreign policy views. Minnery suggests that Huckabee does not understand the cause for which American troops are dying in Iraq. Then Perkins suggests that Huckabee lacks the fiscal and national security credentials needed for a conservative presidential candidate. “The conservatives have been successful in electing candidates, and presidents in particular, when they have had a candidate that can address not only the social issues, [but] the fiscal issues and the defense issues,” says Perkins. “[Huckabee] has got to reach out to the fiscal conservatives and the security conservatives.” Ouch.

Now hang on, here comes the buried lede.

So what about Romney? He comes up roses. “He has staked out positions on all three of the areas that we have discussed,” says Perkins. “I think he continues to be solidly conservative.” Then Minnery defends Romney from criticism that he is too polished and smooth. “Mitt Romney has acknowledged that Mormonism is not a Christian faith,” Minnery adds. “But on the social issues we are so similar.”

So what's the reality here?

Lieberman riding McCain's coattails

Such hyperbole should not be a surprise; in November he compared John Hagee to Moses. And, yeah, Joe Lieberman is a fan of Republican leading man John McCain. But does he really think the Arizona senator is "part Maccabean?"

Lieberman is certainly a good judge, given his own history with unexpected success - including his decision to endorse McCain last December, before McCain’s campaign had fully rebounded from a near-collapse last summer.

Since then, Lieberman has been one of McCain’s most prominent promoters, lending help by soliciting donations from Connecticut contacts and actively stumping on the campaign trail. Now, after a stretch that has seen wins in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida, McCain seems to have bounded to the top of the Republican field and, in the process, catapulted one of America’s most famous Jewish politicians back onto the national stage.

According to observers, Lieberman’s support has been unusually helpful to McCain, giving him a boost with independent voters who contributed to his wins in South Carolina and New Hampshire. In Florida, Lieberman helped give the Arizona senator an edge by turning out Jews, as well as Cuban Americans, in the southern part of the state.

But the real surprise may be yet to come. According to a Lieberman aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity, if McCain wins the nomination, Lieberman is also likely to play a growing role in shoring up what at first blush would not seem to be one of his core constituencies: Christian evangelicals.

“He’s one of those unique campaign surrogates who can travel both in the Jewish community and the Christian community, as well,” the aide said. “I would suspect that as the campaign goes further, Senator Lieberman will probably be active on that front, as well.”

So active, in fact, that speculation has already begun that Lieberman, possibly uninterested in running for a fifth Senate term in 2012, might be rewarded for his support with another shot at the vice presidency, or a Cabinet post in a future McCain administration.

In an interview with the Forward, Lieberman said his decision to support McCain was based on their longstanding relationship and on their history of cooperation on a range of issues, including intervention in Bosnia, action on global warming, the creation of the 9/11 Commission and continued military involvement in Iraq.

“Look, we have been drawn together because we have similar worldviews,” Lieberman told the Forward, adding that they both have the “feeling America has a unique role in the world, of taking the Declaration of Independence seriously. It’s a universal declaration of human rights, and our foreign policy is always better when it’s based on democratic values.”

With Rudy Giuliani planning on dropping out of the race and endorsing McCain, I expect Lieberman's man will consolidate the Republican Jewish vote, which, until now had been strongest for Giuliani. I don't, however, anticipate Lieberman being rewarded with this.

Rudy's campaign kaput

Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign appears all but formally dead tonight after he finished third in Florida -- the state for which he had skipped campaigning in the early primaries and focused most his energy, the state that on Monday he said would pick the Republican nominee.

Perhaps he was living an illusion all along.

Rudolph W. Giuliani’s campaign for the Republican nomination for president took impressive wing last year, as the former mayor wove the pain experienced by his city on Sept. 11, 2001, and his leadership that followed into national celebrity. Like a best-selling author, he basked in praise for his narrative and issued ominous and often-repeated warnings about the terrorist strike next time.

Voters seemed to embrace a man so comfortable wielding power, and his poll numbers edged higher to where he held a broad lead over his opponents last summer. Just three months ago, Anthony V. Carbonetti, Mr. Giuliani’s affable senior policy adviser, surveyed that field and told The New York Observer: “I don’t believe this can be taken from us. Now that I have that locked up, I can go do battle elsewhere.”

In fact, Mr. Giuliani’s campaign was about to begin a free fall so precipitous as to be breathtaking. Mr. Giuliani finished third in the Florida primary on Tuesday night; only a few months earlier, he had talked about the state as his leaping-off point to winning the nomination.

As Mr. Giuliani ponders his political mortality, many advisers and political observers point to the hubris and strategic miscalculations that plagued his campaign.

(The presumed end of Giuliani for President unfortunately dates a cover story I wrote for this week's Jewish Journal. Our paper is sent to the printer on Tuesday afternoon, several hours before the Florida outcome was known, and won't hit the streets until Thursday. Still, I read back through my article, which takes a look at who Jews are excited about and how they are involved with the campaigns -- Rudy was a favorite of Republican Jews -- and it didn't seem stale. Just that it needs an explanation, which it was given in the form of an editor's note.)

Giuliani's fall from grace really is amazing. As readers of The God Blog know, I was never a fan of the former mayor, whom I met in New York two years ago. (He was giving one of those expensive 45-minute speeches on "leadership during crisis" at a bail-industry conference that I was writing about for some extra green.) But many Republicans loved Giuliani, and when he entered the race, it was clearly his to lose.

In the past month alone, Giuliani's support among California Republicans plummeted 14 percentage points from 25 percent.

I just hope he makes it another two days, though CBS News is reporting he won't.

Pat Robertson not popular with evangelicals

Pat Robertson gets mentioned here every now and then. And a recent poll by Beliefnet confirmed a sentiment I expressed in November when Rudy Giuliani garnered the endorsement of Pat Robertson: "Who cares?"

Only about 19.6 percent of evangelicals. That's the percentage that have a favorable impression of Robertson. That's the lowest popularity of the eight Christian leaders survey subjects were asked about. (Billy Graham led the list with 87.3 percent favorable reviews.)

Six degrees of separation: Obama and anti-Semitism

Barack Obama has courted Jews early and often in his rapid political ascendancy, even if he did falter a bit in May. But there have been some rumors circulating that Obama's not the philo-Semite he seems to be, culminating in a Richard Cohen column in today's Washington Post.

Barack Obama is a member of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. Its minister, and Obama's spiritual adviser, is the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. In 1982, the church launched Trumpet Newsmagazine; Wright's daughters serve as publisher and executive editor. Every year, the magazine makes awards in various categories. Last year, it gave the Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award to a man it said "truly epitomized greatness." That man is Louis Farrakhan.

Maybe for Wright and some others, Farrakhan "epitomized greatness." For most Americans, though, Farrakhan epitomizes racism, particularly in the form of anti-Semitism. Over the years, he has compiled an awesome record of offensive statements, even denigrating the Holocaust by falsely attributing it to Jewish cooperation with Hitler -- "They helped him get the Third Reich on the road." His history is a rancid stew of lies.

M.J. Rosenberg sees something more insidious at play here: Dirty politics.

the whispers about Obama go like this. "You know, Obama's minister is a big Farrakhan supporter." "He's also Muslim, or half Muslim." "He studied in a madrassa." "And he's very anti-Israel."

No one knows if any campaign is behind these charges. According to the informative analysis and poll by Shmuel Rosner in Ha'aretz, the right-wing of the Jewish community does not like Obama and strongly favors Giuliani and Clinton because of their hardline stances on Israel.

But I don't think any campaign is behind this round of swiftboating because it bears all the markings of the Jewish far right, the camp that cheered Rabin's assassination. Nevertheless, the smears will have an effect, regardless of its origins. It will be felt on Super Tuesday when hundreds of thousands of Jews vote in New York, California, and elsewhere.

It's pretty ugly and today columnist Richard Cohen is taking it mainstream. Check out his column in the Washington Post. He shares the story of Obama's Farrakhan-admiring minister and sounds the alarms to Jews everywhere. He demands Obama repudiate the pastor. What idiocy! ...

Cohen should be ashamed. But, rest assured, none of the people involved in the race-baiting of Barack Obama are capable of it.

Considering the number of Jews involved in Obama's campaign, from the most official level to the grassroots, it's hard to believe he's really a closet Jew hater.

Rudy on Rudy: 'Somebody who can do the impossible'

Though he is not especially funny, Rudy Giuliani likes to begin with a joke. “Did you know that I’m running for President of the United States?”

That's how Elizabeth Kolbert begins a profile of the former New York mayor's presidential campaign, which, she writes is more of the same.

“This is where we really need a leader,” he told her. “We need somebody who can do the impossible. Now, I say that because I did this a lot in New York.”

Depending on whether you count his abortive race for the U.S. Senate in 2000, this is either Giuliani’s fourth or his fifth political campaign. In the earlier races, his goal was to persuade New Yorkers to vote for a Republican; this time around, it’s to persuade Republicans to vote for a New Yorker. Gone are the “Godfather” imitations, the snapping at the press, and the praise for immigration (“the single most important reason for American greatness”). The candidate who stopped by the Letizios’, and before that had coffee at Suzie’s Diner, in Hudson, and before that went on a holiday stroll in Nashua, where he waited in line to buy a Christmas ornament of a moose, is a less ethnic, less impatient, and more conservative candidate than voters in Brooklyn and the Bronx ever knew. This Giuliani invokes Ronald Reagan, smiles—or tries to—at children, and pledges to “secure our borders and identify every non-citizen in the nation.”

And yet the logic of his new campaign is—mutatis mutandis—the same as that of the old. Once again, Giuliani is in the awkward situation of wanting to represent a group of people whose views he does not actually represent. Once again, appeals based on “values” or personal history are closed to him. (Fourteen years ago—before he had appeared in drag, or ditched his second wife on TV, or met his third wife at a cigar bar—a “vulnerability study” commissioned by his staff noted that Giuliani’s “personal life raises questions about a ‘weirdness factor.’ ”) And so, once again, Giuliani is left to campaign on the basis of a single, strongly held idea: a great-leader theory of history, in which the great leader happens to be himself.

Robertson predicts recession, stock crash

Morning humor from the DMN religion blog:

In what's become an annual tradition (or, if you prefer, joke) televangelist Pat Robertson revealed his predictions for 2008 -- or, more accurately, he let the rest of us in on what he says God has told him will happen.

Here's the story from the Associated Press.

According to Robertson, God has economic disaster in store for us: A deep recession, $150-a-barrel oil, a tumbling dollar. All of this will lead to a major stock market crash in 2009 or '10.

It's worth noting that Robertson's past predictions have often been wrong.

As for the 2008 presidential race, in which Robertson endorsed Rudy Giuliani, the televangelist was silent on who will win.

Do GOP candidates believe every word of the Bible?

Joseph Dearing, 24, of Dallas says you can tell everything you need to know about a person by what he or she thinks of the Bible.

He got a chance to get some answers during Wednesday's GOP CNN/YouTube debate when his question, No. 20, was asked: Do you believe every word of this book? Specifically, this book that I am holding in my hand, do you believe this book?

Dearing wasn't happy with the responses he got from any of the candidates, not Giuliani or Romney or even his homeboy Ron Paul. He felt they all answered, in this video, around the question.

Nice try Rudy, but you're no Jewliani

Loyal readers know I'm no fan of Rudy Giuliani. Sure he has been masterful at bridging the divide between liberal New Yorkers and social conservatives, both of whom agree the Republican front-runner is scarier them President Bush. And though Catholic, Giuliani has been trying to play up his Jewishness. But I'm not the only one not buying this schlock.

According to Ken Kurson, a top Giuliani aide, if Bill Clinton was considered America's "first Black president," then Giuliani would be the first Jewish one.

While Giuliani did make an appearance on Seinfeld, and although one could argue that for years his comb-over served as a decent makeshift yarmulke, he screwed up a key component of being Jewish: We want to marry our mothers not our cousins.

Pat Robertson endorses Giuliani -- who cares?

The New York Times, and their veteran reporter of the social conservatives beat, David D. Kirkpatrick, make a big mistake in today's story about televangelist Pat Robertson endorsing the Republican presidential candidate who has made most evangelicals so comfortable.

Rudolph W. Giuliani scored a coup today by winning the support of Pat Robertson, who, as one of the nation’s best-known televangelists, could help Mr. Giuliani reassure Republicans who are wary of his support for abortion rights and gay rights.

See, right there, they assume that Robertson, the same guy who said on air that the United States should seize the opportunity to assassinate Hugo Chavez, has any cultural currency. In the opinion of a twentysomething evangelical who reluctantly remains a Republican, Robertson's relevancy is deader than Jerry Falwell's.

Giuliani's former police commish to be indicted

As if it wasn't bad enough that Rudy Giuliani's personal priest was accused of pedophilia, now the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination can expect his former business partner and close adviser, Bernard B. Kerik, to be indicted for tax fraud, corruption and conspiracy.

The grand jury, sitting in Westchester, has been hearing evidence about Mr. Kerik for more than a year as part of a broad federal investigation into a variety of allegations, including his acceptance of $165,000 in renovations from a contractor who was seeking a city license.

If an indictment is voted up, as prosecutors are expected to request, it would remain sealed until Friday, when Mr. Kerik would be arraigned in United States District Court in White Plains.

Mr. Kerik served under former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, and questions about the former police commissioner and correction commissioner have been troublesome for Mr. Giuliani’s presidential campaign. There have been concerns about lapses in the vetting of his background when Mr. Kerik was named police commissioner.

And don't forget when Giuliani got President Bush to nominate Kerik for head of Homeland Security. Michael Wolff at Vanity Fair thinks Giuliani's relationship with Kerik says a lot about his attitude toward accountability.

And Bernie Kerik. There is no circumstance under which a politician with any sense of vulnerability or accountability or merely the need to maintain a sense of appearances hires Bernie Kerik (no less as the police commissioner). Kerik is from Paterson, New Jersey, where I'm from. He came to live in a house in the suburb just down the road from where my parents lived. I knew or had heard the same stories everyone else—my parents and my parents' friends—had heard. Which it seems impossible Rudy would not have heard, too. And if, somehow, he hadn't heard them, we know now from Rudy's own grand-jury testimony that he was, in fact, officially told—though, he says, it didn't quite register. In other words, one of the most experienced prosecutors of organized-crime figures has spelled out for him what is widely rumored—that his corrections chief and prospective police commissioner might be Mobbed up—and he doesn't get it. Yup. And then goes on to become business partners with the guy. And then becomes his sponsor for high federal office.

Let's not even get into the nature of Rudy's tolerance for whatever Kerik was into, and just focus on Rudy's sense of impunity—he's got no sense of caution. (A likely implosion point for the Rudy campaign is Kerik's anticipated trial for tax fraud and providing false information to federal authorities when he was vetted for the job of homeland-security chief, which Rudy sponsored him for.) It's about getting away with it. It's waving the red flag. It's his assumption that everybody is a pantywaist, except him.

An outsider's view on our unpopular president

George W. Bush was ranked 21st on the Daily Telegraph's list of influential conservatives, way behind leading men Rudy Giuliani, Gen. David Patraeus, Matt Drudge and most every Republican candidate for the 2008 presidency. Here's why:

In just over three months, Republicans will choose a presidential nominee who will become the de facto leader of the party and, by extension, of US conservatism. In a bid to attract centrist voters, he — whether it be Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, John McCain or Fred Thompson — will rush to distance himself from Bush.

By this time next year, many American conservatives may be asking: "George W. who?"

I can't say I'd be sorry to have Bush lost in our nation's history, even if we are dealing with his messes for the next few years. But Kevin Drum says we shouldn't let former Bushies off the hook.

They all loved him when he was riding high, and they'd love him still if he weren't polling in Richard Nixon territory.

Leading the liberals was Bill Clinton, Al Gore, strategist Mark Penn and Hillary Clinton.

Rudy talks the the talk with Jewish hawks

He's not the apple of evangelical Christians' eyes, but Rudy Giuliani is clearly the Republican Jewish Coalition's guy, what with his terrorist-fighting image and his employment of Norman Podhoretz and Daniel Pipes. Giuliani spoke to the RJC in Washington this morning. Here's some excerpts, via JoinRudy2008:

A lot of you are the first Republicans in your families, right? Am I right?

A lot of you get grief for being Republicans, right? As a three-time candidate and eight-year mayor of New York City, I know what you’re talking about. Wow.

I remember this happened so many times, I get all the incidents confused. But one that was particularly poignant was this man who was very, very old and frail came up to me and he grabbed my hand and he said, You’re the first Republican I ever voted for. I said, How old are you? He said, I’m 92 years old.

I said, In over like 80 years of voting or whatever, you couldn’t find another Republican to vote for? He said, I thought it was sinful.

Wow, has Giuliani been taking speaking lessons from President Bush? From here, he didn't take long to mention Sept. 11, and then he started hitting the right notes for many Jews, Republican and Democrat.

We’re the ones that really want peace in the Middle East, real peace, what it really means. Peace has to be based on realism, not romance. It’s shocking that 60 years after the Holocaust, the Jewish people are still required to negotiate for the right to exist.

This should be beyond negotiation. Someday I hope that Jews and Arabs can sit down together to negotiate borders, water, trade. It’s going to happen, but it’s going to happen more quickly if we remain strong and we remain really, really clear.

You cannot negotiate with someone who is threatening to destroy you and your family.

(skip)

What are you going to negotiate with them about? How many of your kids they’re going to kill or when they’re going to do it?

You’ve got to negotiate with people that at least make a step toward giving a reasonable possibility of getting a sensible result.

In the case of the Palestinians, here’s what it is, two big ones. First of all, the Palestinians have to say and acknowledge and mean it that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state.

Number one, because Israel’s already negotiated its existence. That negotiation happened a long time ago and that’s over and they’ve just got to kind of move on.

Second, second, they have to be willing to say, We forsake terrorism and we’re going to help to reduce and eliminate terrorism and they need to show their good faith by that condition remaining that way for some period of time. It’s as simple as that — or as hard as that.

LA Times learns 'Evangelicals Split on GOP'

The LA Times this morning finally wrote about what I -- and other media outlets -- have been saying for months: "evangelicals split on GOP field." Welcome to the party.

Barely three months before the voting for a new president begins, the religious right has yet to unite behind a Republican candidate, heightening concerns among evangelical leaders that social liberal Rudolph W. Giuliani will capture the party's nomination.

The splintering of religious conservatives, if it endures, could ease the way for New York's former mayor to emerge as the party's first nominee to explicitly support abortion rights since the Supreme Court legalized the procedure in 1973.

But the lack of a consensus choice for president is only one of the troubles facing conservative evangelicals, a powerful force within the GOP for more than a generation.

"It's low tide right now for our movement," said Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Assn.

Opportunities for the religious right to press its agenda suffered a blow when Republicans lost control of both chambers of Congress in last year's midterm election.

Making matters worse are sex scandals besetting Republicans who have championed family values, most recently Sens. Larry E. Craig of Idaho and David Vitter of Louisiana. Their troubles -- after the sex scandal last fall involving then-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) that contributed to the GOP's midterm losses -- have diminished enthusiasm for the party among many social conservatives.

The article does a good job synthesizing other reporting -- like that from the NY Times Sunday -- and explains the implications for the once mighty conservative Christian political machine. But the article, written by a veteran politics reporter, makes that dangerous mistake of repeatedly referring to the Christian right as the "religious right." Here's why that's a problem.

Evangelicals to split from Republican Party?

I've shared that evangelical Christians, widely credited with establishing the Bush presidency (I'm so embarrassed), are not happy with either Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani. This is leading, according to the NY Times blog The Caucus, to a potential revolt led by Focus on the Family's James Dobson and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council to support a third-party candidate, though who is not clear.

A revolt of Christian conservative leaders could be a significant setback to the Giuliani campaign because white evangelical Protestants make up a major portion of Republican primary voters. But the threat is risky for the credibility of the Christian conservative movement as well. Some of its usual grass-roots supporters could still choose to support even a pro-choice Republican like Mr. Giuliani, either because they dislike the Democratic nominee even more or because they are worried about war, terrorism and other issues.

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For months, Christian conservatives have been escalating their warnings about the risk that nominating Mr. Giuliani could splinter the party. Dr. Dobson wrote a column declaring that he would waste his vote before casting it for either Mr. Giuliani or a Democrat who supports abortion rights like Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Richard Land, the top public policy official of the Southern Baptist Convention, has said that nominating a Republican candidate who supports abortion rights would make white evangelical votes “a jump ball” between the Republicans and Democrats, with other issues taking the fore.

I don't imagine this coalition of evangelical leaders will be throwing their weight behind Michael Bloomberg.

Another neocon working for Giuliani

Look who Ken Silverstein found on Rudy Giuliani's presidential candidate roster: Daniel Pipes.

Pipes has been attacked by Muslim organizations as a fear-mongering Islamophobic fascist. But this comment from Pipes in a story I wrote about young American Muslims sympathetic to suicide bombings, in which the president of Long Beach's MSA told me he thinks Islam justifies the attacks on civilians, seemed pretty measured:

What you have is a low-wage jihad taking place, but people are not paying attention to it. These sentiments are seething, and at any time might erupt.

I noted last month that Giuliani, who has proven incredibly unpopular with evangelical Christians, had enlisted neoconservative Commentary editor-at-large Norman Podhoretz. Here's what Silverstein, the excellent Harper's Washington editor behind that lobbying story from July, had to say about Pipes:

I think it’s fair to say that Pipes is even further out ideologically than Norman Podhoretz, another Giuliani adviser. Readers unfamiliar with Pipes can check out his profile at Wikipedia. For a representative sampling of his work, consider a 2006 article he wrote in the Jerusalem Post (not available online):

Iraq’s plight is neither a coalition responsibility nor a particular danger to the West. Fixing Iraq is neither the coalition’s responsibility, nor its burden. When Sunni terrorists target Shi’ites and vice versa, non-Muslims are less likely to be hurt. Civil war in Iraq, in short, would be a humanitarian tragedy, but not a strategic one.