Mayor Bloomberg Quits the G.O.P. – The Caucus – Politics – New York Times Blog
Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced tonight that he is quitting the Republican party and changing his affiliation to independent.
The announcement came after Mr. Bloomberg gave a speech denouncing partisan gridlock in Washington, stirring renewed speculation that he is preparing to run as an independent or third-party candidate in 2008.
“I have filed papers with the New York City Board of Elections to change my status as a voter and register as unaffiliated with any political party,” he said in a statement issued while he was in California delivering political speeches.
#30 & 31, Good points, I agree completely.
#32 – MikeN,
First and foremost, he’s not running. The possibility that he might is what we’re discussing. Until he decides to run, he should deliberately avoid making a statement of his rationale for running.
His rationale for changing parties though was to more accurately represent the way he has been doing his job and to make a strong statement against partisan politics.
He may just want to be able to support and give endorsements to candidates from both parties at various levels of government and leave them open to accepting them.
He does, however, have strong statements of his issues on his website. If you’re truly interested, there’s some surprisingly good reading there.
http://www.mikebloomberg.com/en/issues
Does he understand the values of all of America, or just “city” America?
#34 – TheGlobalWarmer,
Given that I only understand my values, how could I possibly answer that? Why don’t you read his statements on the issues and make up your own mind? Let me know how that goes.
#34 – TheGlobalWarmer,
Actually, let me rephrase that completely. Is there a set of values for all of America? I doubt one set would cover everyone. Sometimes it seems that many Americans have no values. For the rest, I imagine that if you sum them all, they negate each other leaving the null set. All any of us can do is vote for our own values. For me, the environment trumps all others. I do have others, they just take a distant back seat.
Now thats an old picture of Bloomie..Looks like his Bar Mithvah…
Typical Bloomberg stlye monkey wrench. The man has no party loyalty.
Hes not going to win as an independent. Hes going to swing votes away
from other candidates and hurt his future endosements…
He can give out endorsements to both parties anytime. You don’t have to switch to independent for that. Democrats love getting endorsements from Republicans. George Bush went after Democrat endorsements, and Giuliani endorsed Mario Cuomo.
#39 – MikeN,
I don’t recall either Bush actually getting any Dem endorsements. Giuliani found a loophole to endorse Cuomo. He said to vote for Cuomo on the Liberal ticket. Since both of them were on the Liberal ticket, a fact mostly forgotten at the moment, this was almost OK.
Once Cuomo lost to Pataki, Giuliani appeared to be slapped down hard. He has not strayed from the Republican Party Line since. Perhaps if not for this incident, he might be able to maintain some of his personal views today. Unfortunately though, he is now anti-abortion, anti-gun control, and anti-gay marriage, despite all of his prior liberal views as a New York Mayor on both the Republican and Liberal tickets.
Unfortunately, El Duce is now a hard line right wing republican. Oh well, he was always a tad too tyrannical for my tastes anyway. No great loss in my mind, just a minor disappointment to see him go to his current extremes after leading pride parades in New York and openly supporting abortion rights despite his religious beliefs on the subject. His was once a prime example of the separation of church and state. He felt abortion was wrong based on religion, but recognized that it was more wrong to legislate from his religion. Clearly that era of his life is over.
Giuliani isn’t anti-abortion. He gave a speech reaffirming his pro-choice views. I’m sure the Bush campaigns can list the Democrat endorsements. I know the younger one got plenty in Texas, and I think Ed Koch.
#41 – MikeN,
Oops. You appear correct for the moment. I guess I was one conflicting statement behind on Giuliani’s stance. I wonder if he’ll finally stand by the view he held for years as mayor of NYC, but temporarily dropped when he went national.
http://tinyurl.com/2zkhkf