Giuliani to help overcome McCain's money malaise?
Alright, we know that John McCain is broke. And even if he's got momentum, some conservative pundits are already speculating that it's not going to turn into money. To boot, a lot of Rudy Giuliani's supporters don't appear ready to open up their checkbooks again, says the Wall Street Journal, even with McCain picking up the 9/11-sters endorsement:
Yesterday, however, several big Giuliani fund-raisers said they weren't willing to back Mr. McCain just yet. "This isn't a McCain day for us," says Bryan Pickens (no relation to T. Boone), national chairman of a coalition of Giuliani fund-raisers who are under 45 years old. He says he and many other members of the coalition are leaning toward Mr. Romney, who, he says, "has more in common on the economic-policy side" with Mr. Giuliani.
So, let's say that McCain is able to build the coalition of voters he needs to whipsaw Mitt Romney on Tuesday, but not the coalition of donors to pay his bills from there on out? What's a Republican frontrunner to do?
Turn to Freedom's Watch, I guess. It's an enormous irony that the champion of McCain-Feingold who wants to get money out of politics is going to need to rely on a hyperpartisan but allegedly non-political interest group giant to pay for a presidential race he can't afford.
Sheldon Adelson, a giant among conservative Jews and Freedom's Watch's biggest financial backer, cast his support behind Rudy Giuliani early on. But as the Jewish Telegraphic Agency notes in that article, McCain comes across as the #2 guy among many conservative Jewish voters, and getting them on board McCain's train won't be hard.
In fact, having Giuliani out of the race makes it even easier for Freedom's Watch and McCain to act in some sort of concert.
Rudy can speak out for Freedom's Watch, castigating Democrats for being weak on security and bad for the economy. But everyone will know that it's McCain he'll really be speaking for.
Yep, watch out. It's gonna get ugly.
