ACTION: Googlebomb Rudy Giuliani

by: Chris Bowers

Fri Jul 13, 2007 at 15:55:44 PM EDT

Cross Posted on Dailykos

As I discussed earlier today, the latest buzz in the campaign for the Republican nomination is that "maverick" John McCain's campaign is sinking faster than Tom Cruise's heterosexuality in Top Gun following the accident that killed Mother Goose (I need an editor). He is facing a major staff exodus, has less cash on hand than Ron Paul, and his poll numbers are crashing across the board. As far as I am concerned, this is fantastic news. Only a few months ago, McCain still regularly led Clinton, and Obama in virtually all polls, but now trails them both in virtually all polls. Despite McCain being the most popular figure among the media establishment for an entire decade, progressives efforts like "The Real McCain" helped reveal the truth about a fraudulent, flip-flopping, faux-moderate, conservative-pandering, ultra-hawk. Now, both conservatives and the Republican Party have one less popular spokesperson to help give cover to any phony "bi-partisan," "principled," or "tough" image.

However, just because John McCain has been rendered more or less non-threatening to progressives, that does not mean we have rid ourselves of supposedly "bi-partisan," "tough," and "moderate" Republicans with a chance to become President. This is because John McCain's collapse is Rudy Giuliani's gain. Once again, as I discussed earlier today, the clear second choice of McCain supporters is Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani is the second choice of four-time as many McCain supporters as is any other Republican candidate. Given what could very well be a massive drain on John McCain's support in the coming weeks, Rudy Giuliani is the obvious beneficiary. Further, he also currently holds the highest favorable rating of any announced 2008 candidate, and according to current polling is, by far, the strongest Republican in potential matchups with Clinton, Edwards or Obama. A McCain collapse could very well lead to a surge in support for Rudy Giuliani.

Now, there is no guarantee that Rudy Giuliani will rise in the polls as a result of McCain's recent crumbling, just as right now there is no clear indication that Giuliani, or any else, is the current Republican frontrunner. However, Giuliani does still represent a potential threat to become President, while McCain does not. Further, he remains a reasonably popular figure, and as such poses an image problem for Democrats and progressives. For decades, Republicans have worked to try and make sure that there are no popular figures to represent Democrats or progressives, while cultivating many of their own. Simply as a point of activist principle, I say we fight fire with fire, and work to make sure that there are no nationally popular figures to represent either conservatives or Republicans. Every success we have on that front digs the hole for Republicans and conservatives a few feet deeper.

So, as promised this morning, I have produced a quick action that you can take right now to help reveal the truth about Rudy Giuliani, and thus lower his image in the collective mind of the electorate. Let's Googlebomb Rudy Giuliani. As a Republican who is viewed as a hero of 9/11, as a moderate who is different from Bush, and as a tough guy who will fight hard for America, I think the nation would be interested in reading any of the following three articles on the man:

  • Rudy Giuliani was kicked off the Iraq Study Group because he never showed up for meetings.
  • Rudy Giuliani was the only candidate not invited to speak to the Firefighters presidential Forum.
  • Rudy Giuliani is worse than Bush.

These three articles are the best ones I found that attack Giuliani's status as a tough guy who will fight for America (too busy making money to care about Iraq), as a hero of 9/11 (since firefighters hate him above all), and as a moderate (in some ways, he is actually worse than Bush). These articles all come from non-partisan news sources, and all paint Giuliani in a negative light. Considering that, by far, the most common political action people take online is to look for information on candidates, if these articles were to appear high on internet searches for Rudy Giuliani, they would reach a lot of people. In 2006, for example, the Googlebomb the Elections campaign allowed 700,000 voters in 52 key congressional campaigns find out more negative information about the candidate in those districts. On a national level, if enough people participate, we can help tell the truth about Rudy Giuliani to a lot more than 700,000 people. Perhaps best of all, the vast majority of people who encounter those articles won't even know we played a role in directing them to the articles.

So, here is how you can help make this happen:


  1. In your signature line on this, or any other community blog, including an embedded Rudy Giuliani hyperlink utilizing one of the three articles listed above. Use whichever article you think is most effective.
  2. Whenever you type the words Rudy Giuliani online, include an embedded hyperlink to one of the three articles listed above. Again, it does not matter which article. Choose whichever you like the most.
  3. If you have a blog yourself, place all three articles as embedded Rudy Giuliani hyperlinks into the template of your blog. I'll be doing this myself over at Open Left. You can find instructions on how to do this here.

This is a quick and simple action that, if enough people participate, will have a measurable impact on his national image. If we can push all three of these articles into the top ten or fifteen results for Rudy Giuliani on Google, we can reach literally millions of Americans before the end of the year. All it takes is a few seconds to change your signature line, add a few lines of html to the template of your blog, or add a hyperlink whenever you talk about Rudy Giuliani online. Mainly, this is an effective action that you can take once and then forget about it. If we can push 45 targeted articles into the top six results for Google searches on 45 different Republican candidates in just two weeks, surely we can push three articles on Rudy Giuliani into the top fifteen for Google searches on him in a month or so.

Take a quick, effective action now. Help spread the truth about Rudy Giuliani. A little later on, once we have handled him, we can move on to the somewhat less threatening Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney. Also, in the comments, feel free to keep suggesting ideas for even better articles on Giuliani that I might have missed.

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