Rudy The Impaler

A recent poll centered on the Republican candidates has Giuliani out front of Uncle McCain, whose recent public statements seem to consist of the first thoughts that pop into his head after waking from a nap a little cranky. He's followed by Grandpa Fred, Reagan without the intelligence. With Mitt's hair and suit running a distant third and fourth, respectively. Alongside those numbers, a poll of Americans' biggest concerns. Number one: terrorism. That means it's going to be all-fear-all-the-time as we head down the one-year home stretch, with the Giuliani campaign firing a "soft on defense" barrage at Hillary until they have her both flipping and flopping from "I supported the war," to "I didn't support the war," to "I'll end the war," to "I'll end the war...one of these days." And the Republican single-minded fixation on winning will leave no turn un-stoned as they adopt a scorched earth campaign policy, making sure each and every American has the living shit scared out of them on a daily basis. Hillary will need Jesus as a running mate, and even then it could get dicey as they hit him with also being soft on defense. And not a Christian.

President Giuliani? You can see beyond that plastered-on shit-eating grin and phony rigtheous indignation that he's just looking for 9/11 payback, and five seconds after taking the oath of office he'll be summoning the guy with the launch codes. That would put Armageddon sometime on or before 2017.

And still another poll has 27% of Republicans voting for a third-party candidate if Rudy is the nominee. So maybe they'll split the vote and put the election out of stealable range and the war closer to a close. Interesting, they could be casting a pro-life vote and not even know it. Still, every poll carries the "it's just a poll" caveat.

Al Gore may be the only unbeatable Democrat. The only closer. One hopes he's at least open to it. There's no point in working to save the environment if your opponents are hell-bent on blowing up the planet. If Gore won't run, the Dems will be forced to get as dirty as necessary to win and beat Giuliani like a bald-headed stepchild. Maybe they can dust off that old Goldwater commercial with the little girl and the nuke. Hell, it worked the first time.