by Frank James
Try this on for triangulation. The liberal group MoveOn.org runs a controversial full-page New York Times ad critical of Gen. David Petraeus, pretty much saying he’s a traitor.
Rudy Giuliani then takes out his own full-page New York Times ad but instead of attacking MoveOn.org, he pummels Sen. Hillary Clinton for not denouncing the MoveOn.org ad, and for asking tough questions of the general at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing this week.
The Times’s advertising department may be the only winner in any of this.
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Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, wants to drive home the point that he’s the Republican who has the best chance to beat Clinton in a general-election message. He wants Republican and independent voters to envision him competing fiercely with her in the general election.
So he takes out the full page ad (here’s hoping he got the same price MoveOn did so as not to further outrage the political right.)
Meanwhile, Sen. John McCain also hopes Republican primary voters view him as the GOP candidate with the right stuff to defeat Democractic front-runner Clinton.
But he can’t splurge on a full-page New York Times ad, having blown so much of the money contributors gave him at an earlier point in campaign.
So he had to be satisfied with a press release Wednesday in which he questioned whether she’s “tough enough” to be president if she can’t even stand up to MoveOn.org.
Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, is taking a less Clinton-focused approach than Giuliani and McCain. On MSNBC this morning, he said:
But at least he got Clinton’s name in there. That’s more than can be said for Fred Thompson.
At a campaign appearance yesterday at which he mentioned the New York Times ad, Fred Thompson didn’t mention any of the Democratic candidates by name. Not Clinton, not Obama, no one. He merely said “And the majority of the Congress, the Democratically controlled majority, will not disavow it.”
Perhaps it was a sign that he doesn’t get what Giuliani and McCain do, that the race for so many who will vote in Republican primaries is largely about who can beat Clinton.
The Associated Press carried this response to the Giuliani ad from Clinton’s campaign.
Responding Friday to Giuliani’s criticism, Clinton campaign spokesman Phil Singer said, “It’s hardly surprising that Mayor Giuliani is running the first negative ad of the ’08 campaign, given his inability to justify his unqualified support for President Bush’s failed Iraq strategy.
“Senator Clinton respects Gen. Petraeus’ service to our country. She knows the best way to honor our soldiers is to end the war in Iraq and bring them home,” Singer said.