Who Will They ‘Help’ Next? Ron Paul Could Sure Use a Boost
Now that Rudy Giuliani has exited the presidential election fray, the roving squeegee bums who had pursued the former New City mayor from the Iowa caucuses to the Florida primary are looking for a new candidate to support.
The word “support” is used with caution, since it was never clear whether the seemingly homeless bums in their battered old van were sincerely trying to support Giuliani or were a clever anti-Giuliani force that sought to tap into voters’ subconscious angst about immigrants, the poor and the general weirdness of all things New York City, including the pugnacious former mayor.
The squeegee bums would pile out of their rattletrap blue van near a Giuliani for President campaign stop in Des Moines or Ft. Lauderdale, halt traffic, quickly wash windshields and then try to hustle startled drivers for some change for their services before quickly vanishing in the van, which sported Giuliani for President bumper stickers.
The day after Giuliani announced his withdrawal from the Republican presidential candidate nomination race and threw his support behind John McCain, Satirium caught up with the squeegee bums as they cooked breakfast over a camp fire beneath a highway bridge in Miami Beach.
“We have feelers out to both McCain and Romney at the moment and they’re mulling us over,” said Moon Dog, who stepped forward and introduced himself at a stranger’s approach.
Moon Dog looked vaguely familiar. He jogged his visitor’s memory. Yes, he was the former lobbyist who lived in a packing crate in Karl Rove’s garage in Washington before Rove departed the White House last year and returned to Texas.
“You do what you have to do to put food on the table and a roof over your head,” he said, nodding at the campfire and the van parked nearby. “It’s actually interesting work, a more grassroots form of lobbying,” he said.
Moon Dog said that the group was considering two offers for new work as political operatives.
One involved them appearing each morning at locations where day laborers gather, hoping to connect with building contractors. They would hold up McCain for President posters. Moon Dog just smiled and shook his head when he was asked who would be paying the group for that work.
Another offer would send members of the group door to door in certain neighborhoods where they would pretend to be Mormon missionaries seeking prospective converts.
Again, he presented the enigmatic smile when asked who would underwrite that gambit.
And which way was the group leaning as it discussed the offers?
“The pay is a lot better if we go door to door as Mormon missionaries, but we would have to shave and take a bath and put on nice clothes,” he said. “A lot of the guys don’t want to do that.”
Likewise, many members were lukewarm to hanging around pretending to be day laborers.
“What we all really prefer is standing at a street light and washing windshields and hustling for spare change,” he said. “It’s a lifestyle thing. We love that lifestyle.”