After repeatedly standing by his claim that President Obama doesn't "love America," former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani is now trying to walk back his comments, but the damage to his reputation is already done. Over at The Washington Post,
Eugene Robinson analyzes Guiliani's comments in the context of Obama Derangement Syndrome:
Giuliani can perhaps be dismissed; his future in presidential politics is as bleak as his past, which consists of one spectacularly unsuccessful run for the GOP nomination. But if he was speaking as the party’s id, surely Republicans who consider themselves in the mix for 2016 would play the role of superego and tamp down such baser instincts. Right?
Wrong. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker — a guest at the dinner where Giuliani had his eruption — refused to repudiate the offending remarks. [...] Giuliani’s burst of nonsense is important because it speaks to the Republican Party’s mind-set. If the party is going to contend for the White House, it first has to fully acknowledge and accept that it lost the last two presidential elections. The nation voted twice for Obama and his policies. Deal with it.
Mike Barnicle at The Daily Beast adds his take on Giuliani:
The clock on Rudy Giuliani’s end of days began ticking as soon as he walked out of City Hall. He ran for president once, his candidacy going up in flames nearly the moment he first opened his mouth. Now he’s opened it again and all that emerges is bitterness and a contempt that borders on hate. What a brutal end; a self-inflicted TKO.
Much more below the fold.
Make sure to click through to this cartoon on Giuliani's comments by Jim Morin.
Brendan Nyhan at The New York Times examines how President Obama has always been subject to these types of attacks:
A study conducted during the 2008 election reported that supporters of both Mr. Obama and John McCain tended to implicitly associate their preferred candidate more closely with America, but these tendencies were especially pronounced among Republicans, who were “far more likely to dissociate Obama from the nation … than Democrats did with McCain.” The pattern of associating Mr. Obama with America less than political counterparts like Mr. McCain and Hillary Clinton was found in another study to be stronger when Mr. Obama’s race was highlighted.
Given how closely bound up questions of American identity are with race, the debate that Mr. Giuliani revived, which is now drawing in Republican presidential contenders and pundits, threatens to make the 2016 campaign another racially fraught episode in the Obama presidency.
And of course:
Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin is being called cowardly in The Washington Post and other outlets for declining to say whether he agrees with Rudolph W. Giuliani’s assertion that President Obama does not love America.
But at the same time, Mr. Walker is looking to capitalize on the moment — by raising money off it.
Chuck Todd, Mike Murray and Carrie Dann think Walker's playing with fire:
Few issues fire up a good chunk of conservatives more than personal attacks against President Obama. At the same time, these attacks also turn off swing voters and minorities that the Republican Party is trying to court.
Steven Benen says this is a leadership test that Walker has failed:
Consider the context. Walker headlined an event in New York City last week, where Rudy Giuliani spouted some ignorant nonsense directed at the president. Walker, who had to know he’d be asked about remarks made at his own event, was given an opportunity to distance himself from Giuliani’s garbage, or at least say he disagreed with it, but the governor refused. It was, to a very real degree, a leadership test for Scott Walker, which he failed miserably. It would have been incredibly easy for him to say, “I disagree vehemently with the president, but I’m sure he loves his country,” but the governor took the cowardly way out.
And it was at this point that journalists, like many voters, started to wonder just how ridiculous the governor’s views really are. He won’t say whether he accepts modern biology. He won’t say whether Obama loves America. He won’t say whether the Christian president is a Christian. He has a record of repeatedly dodging simple, straightforward questions, which most political leaders are able to answer effortlessly.
It may be debatable whether these are good questions. It’s not debatable that Walker has provided cringe-worthy answers.
Paul Waldman:
Walker has been rather inelegantly dancing around questions about the president, and the Democrats calling attention to each clunky step may be hoping that this will be a liability should Walker become the GOP nominee. But they might not want to get their hopes up too high. Republican candidates seldom lose the presidency because they’re too ideologically or temperamentally right-wing.
Craig Gilbert at The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
While the controversy could conceivably help Walker with conservatives who dislike both Obama and the media, it also raised questions about the governor's ability to navigate a fairly routine media gantlet on the presidential stage.
And finally,
Dana Milbank offers his take:
I’ve never had a conversation with Walker about whether he’s a cannibal, a eunuch, a sleeper cell for the Islamic State, a sufferer of irritable bowel syndrome or a grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. By Walker’s logic, it would be fair for me to let stand the possibility that he just might be any of those — simply because I have no personal and direct refutation from him.
Walker justifies his agnosticism on grounds that he is avoiding gotcha questions. He caused a furor when he used the same logic last week to avoid saying whether Obama loves his country after Rudy Giuliani, at a dinner with Walker, volunteered his view that Obama does not. “To me, this is a classic example of why people hate Washington and, increasingly, they dislike the press,” he told my colleagues Balz and Costa, two of the best in the business.
This is insidious, and goes beyond last week’s questioning of Obama’s patriotism, because it allows Walker to wink and nod at the far-right fringe where people really believe that Obama is a Muslim from Kenya who hates America.