The scandal is still fairly new, so it may be a little early to see how the Shag Fund scandal will affect Rudy Giuliani’s poll numbers, but Republicans are apparently aware of it. Campaigning in South Carolina yesterday, Giuliani was spared humiliating questions, but there was “grumbling” among voters.

None in the crowd asked him about the billing disclosures during the event, although some grumbled about it beforehand.

“I don’t think that’s proper,” said Paul Schaefer, 79, who is trying to decide between Giuliani and Arizona Sen. John McCain. In a close call, the security detail flap could make up his mind, he said.

Time will tell if Mr. Schaefer is representative of a larger GOP trend, but I’d just add that Giuliani’s standing in the future’s markets took a sharp and sudden drop on Wednesday afternoon. It’s probably not a coincidence.

It’s inevitable that presidential candidates will experience a certain ebb and flow as the process unfolds, but can we all agree that Rudy Giuliani has seen the worst week of any candidate in recent memory?

On Monday, Bloomberg News reported that Giuliani, despite railing against congressional earmarks on the campaign stump, and pledging to “get rid of” lawmakers’ pet projects if elected, actually “sought federal earmarks for 14 companies this year, 11 of which hired [Bracewell & Giuliani] after Giuliani joined in March 2005.” Republican consultant Eddie Mahe responded, “It’s a bit hypocritical.”

On Tuesday, Giuliani attended a campaign fundraiser hosted by a “man convicted in a notorious corruption case.” An embarrassed Giuliani “came and went from last night’s fundraiser without comment, ducking down in his car as ABC News cameras attempted to photograph him arriving.”

On Wednesday morning, a new batch of polls show Giuliani’s support fading in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Shag Fund scandal broke.

On Thursday, while the Shag Fund scandal gathers steam, we learn that Giuliani’s private security firm provided security consulting and advice in Qatar through contracts overseen by Sheik Abdullah Bin Khalid al-Thani, who is suspected of close ties to Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Osama bin Laden.

On Friday, the New York Times’ Michael Cooper reported that Giuliani cites a series of statistics in his stump speech, most of which “are incomplete, exaggerated or just plain wrong.”

On Saturday, the Washington Post’s conservative editorial board noted that Giuliani’s new TV ad is patently ridiculous, premised on tax policy assumptions that even the Bush White House rejects as foolish.

All the while, Giuliani and his aides try one defense after another for the Shag Fund scandal, none of which makes any sense.

Don’t worry, Rudy, there’s always next week.

Throughout his first six years in office, Bush had a habit of signing congressional legislation into law, but using “signing statements” to explain which parts of the law he didn’t feel like following.

Fortunately, the president curtailed the practice this year, sticking with the more traditional sign-or-veto approach embraced by his predecessors. That is, until recently. The Boston Globe’s Charlie Savage, whose award-winning coverage of the issue has been a journalistic highlight of the last seven years, has the story.

President Bush this month issued his first signing statement since the Democratic takeover of Congress, reserving the right to bypass 11 provisions in a military appropriations bill under his executive powers.

In the statement, which the White House filed in the Federal Register on Nov. 13 but which initially attracted little attention, Bush challenged several requirements to provide information to Congress.

For example, one law Bush targeted requires him to give oversight committees notice before transferring US military equipment to United Nations peacekeepers.

Bush also challenged a new law that limits his ability to transfer funds lawmakers approved for one purpose to start a different program, as well as a law requiring him to keep in place an existing command structure for the Navy’s Pacific fleet.

Bush thought enough of the bill to sign it into law, but not quite enough of it to obey all of the bill’s provisions. He’s picky that way.

The White House has struggled for quite a while when it comes to disbursing federal funds to municipalities for counter-terrorism. In 2006, for example, the Bush administration, slashed money for Washington, D.C., and New York City using a bizarre grant process that no one could explain. At the same time, the administration released a risk scorecard for NYC that concluded that the home of the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, and Brooklyn Bridge has “zero” national monuments or icons.

Yesterday, however, the Bush gang decided the entire grant process is no longer worth the investment, and it would now slash counter-terrorism funds even more.

The Bush administration intends to slash counterterrorism funding for police, firefighters and rescue departments across the country by more than half next year, according to budget documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The Homeland Security Department has given $23 billion to states and local communities to fight terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks, but the administration is not convinced that the money has been well spent and thinks the nation’s highest-risk cities have largely satisfied their security needs.

The department wanted to provide $3.2 billion to help states and cities protect against terrorist attacks in 2009, but the White House said it would ask Congress for less than half — $1.4 billion, according to a Nov. 26 document.

The plan calls outright elimination of programs for port security, transit security, and local emergency management operations in the next budget year. This is President Bush’s last budget, and the new administration would have to live with the funding decisions between Jan. 20 and Sept. 30, 2009.

I’m trying to imagine the Republican response if a Democratic presidential candidate proposed a budget policy similar to Bush’s plan. I have a strong hunch we’d hear words like “traitor” and “treason” thrown around quite a bit.

How bad is it? Even Joe Lieberman thinks Bush is off-track.

In a joint statement, Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman, I-Conn., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, chairman and ranking Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, said they “urge the administration to reconsider this wrong-headed strategy.”

Stay tuned.

If a Democrat asks a question at a debate for Republican presidential candidates, far-right activists reflexively (and incoherently) define this as a “planted” question.

But to really appreciate what a “plant” looks like, you’ll have to turn to the Bush administration.

For example, once the Bush gang’s initial rationale for the war in Iraq was exposed as a fraud, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice launched a public-relations campaign to shield herself from the fiasco (Rice frequently went on national television to tout the notion that we can’t wait to be sure Iraq is a threat, because we “don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud”).

According to the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler, Rice’s strategy included ordering an aide to “plant a question” about her possible presidential ambitions.

She had a very deliberative public relations strategy when she became Secretary of State to help erase the images of how ineffective she had been as National Security Adviser. And I describe how one of her aides even planted a question with a friendly journalist to ask whether she would be interested in running for president — to give her the aura of someone who might have presidential aspirations, make her seem more powerful than she was.

And that all helped negate American memories over her very direct role in the invasion of Iraq.

Now that’s a planted question.

The new Des Moines Register poll has Mike Huckabee in the lead in Iowa by a 5 point margin.

Huckabee 29%
Romney 24%
Giuliani 13%
Thompson 9%
McCain 7%
Paul 7%
Tancredo 6%

On the Dem side, Obama’s in front but by a slightly smaller margin …

Obama 28%
Clinton 25%
Edwards 23%
Richardson 9%
Biden 6%

Remember too that there’s a significant wildcard factor in the caucus system. It’s not a straight one person one vote. People meet at their caucus locations and candidates with less than I believe 15% of caucus-goers at that caucus have to either switch to another candidate or into an uncommitted group. The key point is that who peoples’ second choice may be can have a powerful effect on the outcome — one not necessarily revealed just by looking at a conventional poll.

In this case, the top two Republicans and the top three Dems each appear well over 15% support. But remember, that’s statewide. In individual caucuses you’re going to have a lot variation. Especially on the Democratic side, the second choice could be key.

A number of you have written in why the Judi car on the city dime isn’t landing Rudy in the same kind of trouble that ended state comptroller Alan Hevesi’s career. We addressed this a couple days ago. The law in question appears to apply only to state officeholders. More details here.

Over at TNR’s The Stump blog I see my pal Michael Crowley has dug up this June 2006 issue of “Hampton Style” magazine with Rudy and Judi on the cover. The article is on Judi “First Lady of the Hamptons“.

Perhaps someone can help me though. All I can find is this lame low-res image of the cover. Now, I know TPM has a few readers in the Hamptons set. And someone must have an original of this issue. Like I said, I think it’s June 2006. If you’ve got it, could you drop me a line? A scan would be great. But if you have it, just shoot me an email.

We’ll do lunch. My people will talk to your people …

Rudy’s fighting back with a new ad to spin Shag Fund as a new campaign asset against his non-cronified opponents …

Former Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich (R) notes his concern about how the Shag Fund scandal might affect Rudy Giuliani’s presidential ambitions.

Ehrlich questioned the timing of the story, which hit just weeks before the first contests in Iowa and New Hampshire. But if it’s true Giuliani’s then-mistress was ferried around by the NYPD on the taxpayers’ tab, “It’s clearly inappropriate, clearly wrong, and would certainly hurt the campaign,” Ehrlich said on Maryland radio station WBAL-AM.

“If the substance of the story is true, he’s got a lot of explaining to do,” Ehrlich said of Giuliani. “It would certainly haunt him.”

Ehrlich, of course, is a regional chairman of Giuliani’s presidential campaign.