NY Times A1 Story: Giuliani Aligns With 'Hard Right' After Race-Based Anti-Obama 'Outburst'

By Clay Waters | February 21, 2015 | 8:24 PM EST

The New York Times kept on its old Rudy the Racist beat, using the former New York City mayor's recent remarks suggesting President Obama doesn't love America to attack him for "aligning more squarely with the hard right" in a front-page story Saturday, "In Remarks on President, Giuliani to the Core" by Alexander Burns (pictured) and Maggie Haberman (who previously filed the Burns & Haberman campaign blog on Politico.)

The Times has long specialized in calling out Giuliani, whose mayoralty it strongly opposed, as racially "incendiary." In 2009 it let then-City Councilman (and current NYC mayor) Bill de Blasio say "Giuliani's comments verge on race-baiting." (The crime drop that resulted from Giuliani's tough-on-crime policies benefitted all races, of course.)

Burns and Haberman wrote on Saturday:

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York and one-time Republican presidential hopeful, stepped to the microphone at the “21” Club in Manhattan on Wednesday, for an event ostensibly spotlighting Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin. But by suggesting that President Obama did not love his country, Mr. Giuliani became the story.

His remarks, seemingly out of the blue, were not an isolated outburst.

No more than an hour or two before Mr. Giuliani appeared at Mr. Walker’s event, he vented his frustration at Mr. Obama at another fund-raising event in Manhattan. There, Mr. Giuliani took particular issue with the president’s recent comments likening Islamic extremist terrorism to the religious warfare of the medieval Crusades.

....

His remarks this week mostly drew derision and outrage, and seemed to further distance Mr. Giuliani from the heroic, above-the-fray image he carefully burnished after the Sept. 11 attacks, aligning him more squarely with the hard right of the Republican Party than at any other time in his career.

But if the ideological positioning is new, Mr. Giuliani’s combative demeanor is not. Long prone to flamboyant confrontation and rhetorical excess, he is less inclined toward self-restraint than ever, political associates said, and Mr. Giuliani agreed.

It is unclear whether Mr. Giuliani will face any adverse consequences for his comments: There is apparently no prospect that he will face the voters again, and his income stems from a set of businesses that aggressively market his personal brand in the United States and overseas.

....

To some in Republican politics, Mr. Giuliani’s public eruption looks like the product of slack political instincts, the shoot-from-the-lip behavior of a former champion who has lost self-awareness with each year removed from office. The former mayor’s political career has sloped precipitously downward since his ill-fated 2008 campaign; while he remains an occasional fund-raising attraction, his time as a national Republican leader is past.

Though the Times itself admits Giuliani's political career has probably run its course, it rubs in his "embarrassing" business activities and points out the less than shocking fact that his popularity has waned in liberal New York City.

....

Even in New York, his clout is diminished. A Marist College poll released during the 2013 mayoral election found a strong plurality of city voters were less likely to vote for a candidate endorsed by Mr. Giuliani. His former deputy mayor, Joseph J. Lhota, attracted less than a quarter of the vote as the Republican nominee in his loss to Bill de Blasio.

....

It has been years since he disclosed his assets, but Mr. Giuliani revealed as a presidential candidate that his personal wealth had ballooned from a modest sum when he left City Hall to more than $30 million in 2007.

(At times, his businesses have become politically embarrassing: As a presidential candidate, Mr. Giuliani was asked how he could reconcile his hawkish views on terrorism with his business work for the government of Qatar, where the Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Shaikh Mohammed took refuge in the 1990s.)

The Times ended with phony concern trolling from the White House.

Earlier in the day, the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, responded to Mr. Giuliani’s comments with a trace of pity.

“I can tell you that it’s sad to see when somebody who has attained a certain level of public stature and even admiration tarnishes that legacy so thoroughly,” Mr. Earnest said. “And the truth is I don’t take any joy or vindication or satisfaction from that. I think, really, the only thing that I feel is I feel sorry for Rudy Giuliani today.”

Jennifer Steinhauer hammered at her paper's own racially incendiary caricature of Giuliani in a Friday online story, "Giuliani’s Comments Part of a Complicated History on Race."

For those who first dialed into Rudolph W. Giuliani during his “America’s mayor” phase, right after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- when he wowed the world with his civic leadership, soaring oratory and unifying largess -- the former New York mayor’s racially charged comments about President Obama might seem puzzling.

But Mr. Giuliani’s road to and through City Hall was punctuated with racial controversy.

From his 1993 campaign challenging David N. Dinkins, the city’s first African-American mayor, during which Mr. Giuliani stood with rowdy protesting police officers -- some of whom carried signs suggesting that voters should “Dump the washroom attendant!” because Mr. Dinkins had proposed a commission to look into police misconduct -- to his writing off a black New Yorker killed by the police as “no altar boy” (though he actually was), Mr. Giuliani has had a complicated relationship with African-Americans.

At least Steinhauer admitted Guiliani was an equal-opportunity offender, though that rather neutralizes the thrust of her story.

Of course, Mr. Giuliani’s brusqueness was in no way limited to black New Yorkers. He targeted and disparaged, in no particular order, street vendors, ferret owners, artists who made paintings that offended him, Democrats at every level of government and pretty much anyone who made even minor policy critiques.

Reporter Alan Rappeport expanded the attack to Republicans in general with Friday's online round-up, "Giuliani Comments Echo Old Republican Attacks on Obama," which defensively accused the entire Republican Party of constantly "questioning [Obama's] patriotism." Rappeport then listed the reasons why Republicans were critical of Obama, including his relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, though it's a gross exaggeration to claim those criticisms somehow amounted to calling Obama unpatriotic.

Rudolph W. Giuliani has stirred a furor this week by claiming that President Obama does not love America, but his suggestion is not a new one.

Republican opponents of Mr. Obama have been questioning his patriotism since his first run for the White House.

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The issue of American “exceptionalism” has also been a popular proxy for questioning Mr. Obama’s patriotism, and in 2012 Mitt Romney wielded it against him.