Rudy is back looking to cash in big time for his stunning defeat in the Republican primary by asking for a cool 100K in speaking fees and Mary K. Ham of Townhall makes like a Stepford Republican and follows Limbaugh’s lead by voting for Hillary.

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Only in GOP politics can a man run the worst campaign in the history of the US and count on republicans to shell out the big bucks to hear him utter one phrase over and over again.

UPDATE: I guess Rudy needs the money.

“We are deeper in the hole than I thought we would be,” wrote John Gross, the campaign’s treasurer, in an e-mail message to several senior campaign aides obtained by the Times. 

You’ve probably heard the buzz on Giuliani’s solitary fifty-million-dollar delegate. It turns out that for the amount Mister 9/11 spent on each one of the votes he received in the primaries, he could have bought two bottles of Chanel Number Five purse spray….

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Via MSNBC:

Rudy Giuliani, who sought to make the leap from New York mayor to the White House, dropped out of the Republican presidential campaign on Wednesday and endorsed front-runner John McCain for the nomination.

Giuliani made the announcement at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library a day after suffering a debilitating defeat in Tuesday’s Florida primary.

With McCain at his side, Giuliani said the nation needed “someone who can be trusted in times of crisis.” Read more…

After receiving Rudy’s endorsement, Senator McCain invokes…you guessed it, 9/11. $50,000,000 just doesn’t buy what it used to, does it Mr. Mayor? All that cash earned him exactly 1 delegate and he got smoked by Ron Paul in the process. He ran a horrible campaign and despite the best efforts of the media, he DID try to compete in the earlier primaries — but the more people heard him speak, the less they liked him. I’m sure he’ll land on his feet, he may just earn a few thousand less $$ for his “Hero of 9/11” lectures now. By the way, Rudy has attacked McCain as recently as Monday, and he probably should have removed all the McCain smears from his website before he endorsed him.

Here’s a brief clip of McCain’s victory speech in Florida where he talks about 9iu11ani in the past tense…

McCain: And I want to thank my dear friend, Rudy Giuliani—who invested his heart and soul in this primary and who conducted himself with all the qualities with the exceptional American leader he truly is. Thank You Rudy. Thank You Rudy—for all you’ve added to this race and for being an inspiration to me and millions of Americans.

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Yea John, he ran a wonderful campaign. So good in fact that it might be the worst campaign in the history of modern politics. By not participating in the process except on FOX—he handed you Florida and New Hampshire and the lead heading into the debate tomorrow night. Bravo! Update: And how ridiculous do all the networks and pundits look over their poll driven pimping of Rudy early on in the process?

Update: What do you know. NBC confirms that Rudy will endorse McCain at the Reagan library tomorrow.

[media=3] (h/t Heather)

Matt Ortega is asking you to hang on, Rudy.

…in the most (I can’t tell anymore) boring GOP debate so far. He’s in third place and does nothing to help himself. Another fine strategic play for his camp. MSNBC tried to say that the Republicans were using this debate to introduce themselves there. Ummm, I believe Floridians have computers, watch TV, buy newspapers and read our blogs. Did the candidates actually think that Fl. is so uncivilized that they knew nothing about any of them until this debate?

And they own the war. All the candidates except Ron Paul embraced Bush and his war. Most Americans still disapprove of the war and want us out of Iraq.

Update: Chris Cillizza pretty much agrees:

Two polls released in the last 24 hours showed the two men in a statistical dead heat with Giuliani and Huckabee battling for third place.

That Giuliani was unwilling to take any direct shots at his opponents seems to signal that either his campaign knows something the pollsters don’t or that he is content to make his policy points and let the chips fall where they may — even if that means a third-place finish, which would badly hamstring his chances at the nomination.

The New York Times ran a fantastic front page article yesterday entitled “In Matters Big and Small, Crossing Giuliani Had Price” that goes into great detail about Giuliani’s tenure as mayor and his frightening authoritarian streak. Would you believe St. Rudy of 9/11 had a man who complained about a questionable speed trap arrested on a 13 year old traffic-ticket warrant after he went to The Daily News with the story? That really shouldn’t surprise you at this point, but I did learn a lot about this frankly terrifying candidate I didn’t know.

Orangutan’s comment from the other day (in which he quotes a 1994 Giuliani speech on crime) pretty much says it all:

“Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.”

Paging Mr.Orwell. Mr.Orwell. In my humble opinion, Rudy Giuliani is by far the most extremist and dangerous of the Republican candidates that could succeed George W. Bush.

Former NYC mayor Ed Koch wrote a book some years back titled “Giuliani: Nasty Man” that chronicles all the extremism to come out of City Hall during the 1990’s. Truly scary stuff.

At this point, I can’t help but think Rudy Giuliani is staying in the race simply as some kind of nuisance. I’m trying to decide which of these two are more ridiculous, and I’m at a loss.

Choice A.

Rudy Giuliani’s campaign released a new ad in Florida Friday that uses footage and photographs of 9/11 and the ruins of the World Trade Center to emphasize his leadership as New York City mayor. […]

“[W]hen the world wavered, and history hesitated, he never did,” he continues, over images and footage of people running from the site of the Trade Center attacks, and the former New York mayor embracing rescue workers. “Rudy Giuliani. Leadership. When it matters most.”

Let me get this straight. Giuliani’s performance on 9/11 was superior to that of the entire world? He held a few press conferences, and wandered the city after putting his emergency response center in the wrong building. That’s “leadership”?

Choice B.

Giuliani mailing in Florida: “My belief in God and reliance on His guidance is at the core of who I am.”

Seriously? Giuliani, who has shown practically no interest in matters of faith in his adult life, is a thrice-married serial adulterer who rejects (or, at least used to reject) most of his church’s teachings on major social issues. But that’s fine, because this direct-mail piece insists that his faith is “the core” of his being.

Please.

There is so much goodness in this short 2-minute clip that it’s tough to know where to start. First we see the 9/11 Express (a.k.a Giuliani’s campaign bus) taking a lap at Daytona, much to the delight of both Tweety and ESPN Radio’s Stephen A. Smith. When the conversation moves to the Republican presidential field, Smith makes it pretty clear that he won’t be donating to the Giuliani campaign anytime soon, while Pat Buchanan concedes Rudy’s foreign policy would essentially be Norman Podhoretz’s policy, but adds that he fears an increasingly “bellicose” McCain may be like “Bush on steroids” and continue a neo-conservative foreign policy.

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Buchanan: [Guiliani’s foreign policy] would be a neo-conservative foreign policy. But I’m afraid McCain’s will be as well, Chris. He’s very bellicose, hes got that in-your-face attitude Bush does. I think we could very well be at war with Iran. That’s one of the reasons why I’ve always been very skeptical of McCain — I think he’s Bush on steroids.

Smith: Giuliani is a dictator as far as I’m concerned.

  One can learn all kinds of interesting things watching “Meet the Press.” For example, yesterday, Tom Brokaw claimed that Rudy Giuliani’s television ads airing in Florida “don’t mention terrorism.”

“I’ve just gotten back from Florida. Rudy Giuliani’s ads on the air don’t mention terrorism. He’s the man who reduced the corporate taxes in the city of New York, created new jobs, reduced crime, and also took a lot of people off the welfare rolls.”

Listening to the context, Brokaw apparently didn’t do any real research at all. He traveled to Florida, watched a little television, saw some Giuliani advertising that didn’t reference terrorism, and felt he was then in a position to tell a national audience that “Giuliani’s ads on the air don’t mention terrorism.”

Except, that’s not even close to true. Indeed, just last week, Giuliani began airing ads in Florida that used footage and photographs of 9/11, and, in a truly nauseating display, told viewers, “[W]hen the world wavered, and history hesitated, [Giuliani] never did.”

And that ad, of course, comes just two weeks after Giuliani’s Tancredo-esque ad, which also ran in Florida, and which sought to exploit the Bhutto assassination in Pakistan. It featured a voice-over saying, “An enemy without borders. Hate without boundaries. A people perverted. A religion betrayed. A nuclear power in chaos. Madmen bent on creating it. Leaders assassinated. Democracy attacked. And Osama bin Laden still making threats. In a world where the next crisis is a moment away… America needs a leader who’s ready.”

Giuliani’s “ads on the air don’t mention terrorism”? Are we talking about the same Giuliani?

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I’m not sure if Republican presidential candidate was speaking from Las Vegas–you know the make-up artists there are used to working on showgirls–but it’s pretty bad when Joe Scarborough likens your make-up job to David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust. I don’t know though, Ziggy Stardust is so avant garde for Rudy. Given his proclivities for dress up, I thought he resembled another ‘made’ man. I’m just sayin’…

As recently as the summer, Rudy Giuliani was leading the field in Michigan’s Republican primary. As recently as early December, a Rasmussen poll showed him within two points of first place.

Yesterday, the former mayor finished a distant sixth, with a pathetic 2.8% of the vote. Consider this: Giuliani not only had well under half of Ron Paul’s support, he finished with a similar vote total to Dennis Kucinich — who was running in an uncontested primary and making no effort to actually win votes. Ouch.

It naturally came as no surprise, then, when I saw this CNN headline: “Romney win may give a boost to Giuliani’s White House bid.” Yes, it appears bad news is good news for Rudy.

Mitt Romney’s win in his native state of Michigan appears to be good news for Rudy Giuliani’s bid for the GOP presidential nomination. […]

Giuliani’s campaign put out a statement Tuesday night congratulating the former Massachusetts governor on his win, adding that “he race remains fluid and competitive, [and] our strategy remains on track.”

Let’s see, Giuliani went from first to sixth in Iowa, first to fourth in New Hampshire, and first to sixth in Michigan. He’s tanking in South Carolina, he’s slipping in Florida, he’s losing to McCain in New York, and he’s blown a 26-point lead in New Jersey, where he’s now polling in single digits. All the while, his campaign has so little money that his senior aides aren’t even going to get paid in January.

Yes, of course, right “on track.”

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Tuesday’s Worst Persons In The World segment on Countdown featured GOP presidential candidates. First up with the bronze is John McCain, who touted the recent de-Baathification law as proof that the surge is working and we’re winning in Iraq. (Anyone else tired of that canard?) Unfortunately for McCain, the reality is that the new law isn’t so great, especially for the ex-Baathists it supposedly helps.

The silver goes to Mitt Romney for his silly staged “concerned for the little people” photo op in Marshall with the mother of one of his staffers. By the way, as an eagle-eyed commenter over at Balloon Juice noted, Elizabeth Sachs has been in the news before. Ooooh, it’s a sign!

And finally, the gold goes to Rudy “Señor Nuevo Once” Giuliani, whose harsh English-0nly rhetoric has been tempered or rendered ridiculous (your choice) by his pandering to the Hispanic vote in his all-in bid for relevance in Florida, including a visit with Katherine Harris to a bilingual Hispanic mega-church in Miami. ¿Dónde está la double standard, Rudy?

How far has Rudy Giuliani’s slipped? Put it this way: the former mayor has, all of a sudden, discovered religion.

Rudy Giuliani began his Sunday in an unusual place for him - at church - and with an unusual fellow congregant, the controversial former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris.

The former mayor, whose second divorce has left him on the outs with his own Catholic Church, started a three-day bus tour through Florida Sunday with a visit to the bilingual El Rey Jesus, a Hispanic evangelical Christian church here. […]

“This is a beautiful church, and I can feel the spirit of God in this room,” Giuliani told the 7,000 or so worshipers.

Is anyone really gullible enough to believe such shameless pandering?

Also note that Giuliani has a standard stump speech he uses every day on the campaign trail. It includes a firm position against illegal immigration, and includes Giuliani’s unwavering belief that those who want to become U.S. citizens must learn “to speak, read and write English.”

Oddly enough, while speaking at this Miami church, Giuliani omitted all of this from his remarks. I’m sure it was just an oversight — and had nothing to do with the large Latino population in South Florida, most of which votes Republican.

Krugman writes in his NYT blog:

Rudy Giuliani warned us about what would happen if a Democrat wins:

You have got to see the trap. Otherwise we are in for a disaster. We are in for Canadian health care, French health care, British health care.

And that would be a terrible thing

Short version: The US health care system is already a disaster being made worse under a Republican President. “By 2002–03, the U.S. fell to last place” in deaths that “are potentially preventable with timely and effective health care” in a study of 19 industrialized nations. Of course all of the countries that bested the US have some form of universal health care.

Bottom line: Rudy wants voters to grant him and his wife “CheneyCare“ by saying it would be a disaster if you and your family had it too.

Via CNN:

CNN has learned that top staff members of Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign were asked to work without pay for the month of January, and perhaps longer, so that campaign resources could be focused on the Florida Republican presidential primary.

Two sources in the campaign, speaking on condition of anonymity, insisted the campaign was not in dire financial straits. A third campaign source, however, said “things are starting to get tight” and that “it was more telling than asking” the senior staff to forgo paychecks beginning the first of the year.

Another source disagreed, saying it was a “voluntary” move by senior staff members “so all of our resources could be targeted toward Florida…Our campaign is not living hand to mouth right now…” Read on…

Concentrating all resources to Florida? You mean, to buy all those ads in Spanish? I wonder if Sean Hannity will come to the rescue and host another Freedom Concert to help his BFF.

Update: Rudy’s national finance chair has jumped ship. That’s never good…