Just noticed an interesting report on a Giuliani campaign stop in Montgomery, Alabama, on Tuesday:
Giuliani off the mark on grocery costs
The AP's Phillip Rawls leads like this:
Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani hasn't done a lot of grocery shopping lately — at least based on his answers about the cost of milk and bread.
And Rawls wastes no time conjuring up ghosts of the 1992 presidential campaign, in which President George H.W. Bush's lack of familiarity with a common supermarket scanner helped frame the contrast between himself and Bill Clinton. But the story also goes on to suggest a secondary subtext to Guiliani's campaign event in Montgomery -- racial sensitivity (or lack thereof).
Below the fold: Giuliani talks about Imus and the Confederate flag.
This AP article has narrative written all over it. For better or worse, but certainly interesting. Rudy Giuliani can't relate to ordinary people. He doesn't know the cost of bread and milk.
His difficulty with grocery items recalled another Republican's supermarket run-in. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush expressed amazement at a high-tech supermarket scanner, prompting critics to argue that he was out of touch with average Americans. The White House cried foul, pointing out that during a grocers' convention Bush had been impressed by a special scanner that could read torn labels.
Giuliani attended $1,000-per-person campaign fundraisers in Mobile and Montgomery before addressing a joint session of the Alabama Legislature that drew an overflow crowd.
Note the finally crafted juxtaposing of the supermarket problems of Giuliani and the former president, "out of touch with average Americans," to Mayor Rudy's fat-cat, $1000-per-person fundraiser. Very effective narrative building. Now read these paragraphs:
The former mayor said he talked to radio host Don Imus, who has been suspended for two weeks for derogatory remarks about the Rutgers women's basketball team. Giuliani said he considers Imus' apology sincere.
"I would appear on his program again, sure. I take him at his word," Giuliani said.
Asked about the flying of the Confederate flag in some Southern states, Giuliani said, "That's a good thing to be left on a state-by-state basis."
Rudy Giuliani and racial sensitivity. That's not a topic I've really heard about before in the context of this presidential campaign. But it was certainly an issue during his tenure as mayor.
Race and class and out-of-touch Republicans. Perhaps it is 1992 again.
**UPDATE**
The New York Times leads with the Confederate flag issue:
"One of the great beauties of the kind of government we have, which is a national/federal government, is that we can make — on a broad range of issues — we can make different decisions in different parts of the country," Mr. Giuliani said. "We have different sensitivities, and at different times we are going to come to different decisions, and I think that is best left up to the states."