Would Rudy Manage the Federal Budget as Badly as His Campaign Finances?

Posted by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review at 7:38 AM on January 14, 2008.

Since the outset of the presidential campaign, Rudy Giuliani's strategy has famously been to hold fire during the GOP preliminaries, wait for a winner to emerge out of in Iowa and New Hampshire and then turn all of his guns on his opponent in the big states, starting with Florida on January 26.

But now, just two weeks away from the voting in Florida, and a little over thee weeks until the "Super Tuesday" primaries on Feb. 5 -- including votes in California, where his brand of liberal-Republicanism might work, and New York, his home state -- he is out of money:

Some senior aides on Republican Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign won't be paid this month so that the money they would have gotten can be spent instead on TV ads and other campaign expenses in Florida, CNN is reporting.

The news network adds that its sources in the campaign say Giuliani's effort is "not in dire financial straits," but that the former New York City mayor's team wants to put all it can into the Sunshine State and that some staffers volunteered to go without pay. The state's GOP primary is set for Jan. 29, and Giuliani has based much of his campaign on winning Florida and then placing first in as many of the 22 Super Tuesday contests as he can on Feb. 5.

And late on Friday came news that Giuliani's campaign national finance chair is no longer working for the campaign:

Giuliani's national finance chair, Roy Bailey, no longer has that position with the campaign. Bailey was not only Giuliani's finance chair, he was one of the founding partners of Giuliani's consulting firm.

Giuliani earned $16 million in speaking fees alone in 2006. He'll be fine, so don't worry -- only the little people on his staff will suffer.

Let's see. The operation is so egregiously mismanaged that they blow out the budget, so, naturally, the people at the top take care of themselves while the people at the bottom get screwed.

Sound familiar?

So much for the "change" election. This sounds like more of the Bush GOP same-old same-old.

Tagged as: giuliani

Jon Ponder is regular blogger for the Pensito Review