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Jewish World Review May 11, 2000 / 6 Iyar, 5760

Chris Matthews

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Giuliani's travels


http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- Mayor Rudolph Giuliani now faces dangers on two fronts.

In the true world of life, he confronts at 55 a doctor's report of prostate cancer. In the parallel world of politics, it's evident that his center-right coalition, once broader and more powerful than Ronald Reagan's, is exploding asunder.

The New York City mayor's first concern is medical. Like other men his age, he must decide what to do about his early-stage cancer. Only then can he decide on if and how he can pull together the political elements to defeat Hillary Rodham Clinton in the U.S. Senate race.

"I think it would be irresponsible for me to make a decision before I spend time figuring out the correct treatment and what it's going to mean," he said in a TV interview here last week. "I've never been faced with a choice like this before."

That's for sure.

For if Giuliani chooses to carry on with his campaign, which he seems to be doing, he must consolidate all those political elements that would be likely to back his tough-on-crime, take-back-the-streets, "You talkin' to me!" politics in a face-off with Hillary Clinton's "It takes a village" liberalism.

In the process of uniting the anybody-but-"her" factions, Giuliani looks like that famous hero of Jonathan Swift's. He is Gulliver traveling the Empire State, besieged by all the dwarfs of the New York right and center. This can be problematic in a state where political power is divided among not two parties but several: Republican, Democratic, Conservative, Right-to-Life, Liberal and Independence.

The chief of the conservative party, Michael Long, wants to deny Giuliani his party's nomination, which has proved in the past to be essential to a Republican win statewide.

Long gives two reasons: first, that the mayor is down the line pro-choice on abortion rights; second, that he expects to receive the nomination of the much smaller Liberal party.

Giuliani's hopes of grabbing the nomination of the Independence party, the New York affiliate of the Perot-created Reform party, also appear doomed. He says that he would have to think "long and hard" about appearing on a ticket led by the oddball, right-left duo of Patrick J. Buchanan and Lenora Fulani.

While Giuliani hopes to win the Liberal-party endorsement, thanks to friendship and patronage, he hasn't a prayer of the Right to Life endorsement.

This leaves this 21st century Gulliver having to take on the celebrated Hillary from the left with one hand while he uses the other to fend off the midgets from the right and center.

Even a feisty guy, gutsy enough to detect and confront cancer early, might find all this just a bit too much.



JWR contributor Chris Matthews is the author of Hardball. and hosts a CNBC show of the same name. Send your comments to him by clicking here.

Up

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