We have a friend in Florida with whom it is always Giuliani this, and Giuliani that. He loves this man and would probably go gay for him if Rudy ever asked.  On this we most definitely agree to disagree.

Personally, we have never in our lives liked this man. He became a weird national hero after 9/11, when we never felt he deserved to be:  the Giuliani administration repeatedly refused to buy the police and fire departments the radio equipment they wanted that would have cut down on the miscommunication between the two branches…and miscommunication and faulty radios led to more deaths than they should have on that awful day.  Giuliani also located the NYC emergency response center in the Trade Center, which was beyond foolish after the complex was already attacked once in 1993.  Giuliani has always surrounded himself with the most blatant and shameless crooks — more so than even the current president.  And then there’s what he did to his wife Donna Hanover: telling the mother of his children he’s divorcing her in a press conference.  And that was after using city resources to squire his mistress Judith around — a woman who worked as a surgical sales rep ripping puppies’ stomachs open so she could demonstrate new advances in sutures.

Our friend in Florida doesn’t care about any of this, and is a Giuliani fan and always will be.  So, we respect that.  We’ve just never felt, nationally, that voters would be so forgiving of him. We also think the GOP base would sit a national election out, in greater numbers than they did with McCain, if Giuliani was ever on a ticket.  No man who’s ever appeared willingly in drag will get the conservatives to support him in an election.  Hear that, Charlie Crist?

But, Giuliani could have taken Kirsten Gillibrand out in 2010.  We have no doubt he would have won that race.  Because of Gillibrand’s support for the Healthcare Rationing bill, we no longer care what happens to her…and though we would never campaign to  help Giuliani, we do want to see every Democrat voting for the Rationing Bill to be booted from the Senate with great prejudice by voters.

So, why isn’t Giuliani running?

Why is he letting Rick Lazlo take the governor’s race (where Lazlo will most surely lose)?

In our gut, it feels like Giuliani’s cancer is back…and he doesn’t have a lot of time left and knows it.  He was here in Chicago recently for an event and looked like death walking.  We hope that’s not the case, but for an ambitious man to give up the chance to add “Senator” to his resume with relatively little effort, SOMETHING big must be happening behind the scenes.

There are a lot of people who aren’t getting into races in 2010 that would seem to have easy walks of it.  Maybe they don’t want to be in office having to deal with the next wave of economic disasters on the horizon.  It will NOT be an easy time to govern in the next few years, that’s for sure.

But Giuliani’s decision with the Senate seat is the real head-scratcher, because he could have easily taken the Senate seat for two years, then not run for re-election in 2012 when the seat’s up for grabs again.  He would have received a Congressional pension from that, and would have won the title “Senator Giuliani” for the rest of his life.

Why pass that up?

We wonder.