And This Surprises Anyone How?

TPM got hold of video of Rudy Giuliani in 1992, doing some prep work for his upcoming mayoral campaign, gleefully fanning the inner bigotries of a group of hundreds of white New York City cops at a police union rally in a move that even a Giuliani aide admitted was meant to exploit their racist dislike of then-mayor David Dinkins (who was referred to by some of those cops as “the washroom attendant”).

As a piece in today’s NYT explains:

“If you’re acculturated to like cops, you don’t necessarily see 10,000 white guys who don’t vote in the city, don’t write political checks and love you for the wrong reason,” an aide said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he is working with the Giuliani presidential campaign.

Mr. Dinkins has not forgotten that sea of angry cops. “Rudy was out there inciting white cops to riot,” Mr. Dinkins said in a recent interview.

A year after Giuliani spoke to the gathering of white police officers, he asked aides for a “vulnerability study” to identify possible problems for his planned mayoral campaign. After some work, the aides put together a document that, among other things, mentioned Giuliani’s “shrieking performance” at the police union rally and his failure to denounce those who levied racist attacks on Dinkins.

As expected, the right-wing bloggers are crying “foul” about bringing up what they see as old news. But how can they explain why Rudy’s presidential campaign is the only one that not only has no African-Americans, but also no Hispanics, no Asians, and no Native Americans?