Raging ventriloquist puppet not pictured.Photo: Getty Images
It seems there’s more bad news for Eliot Spitzer, who’s steadfastly refusing to admit that righteous fury isn’t getting him the same dividends it used to. “No amount of hysterical rhetoric will prevent us from doing what is right,” Spitzer said last night at Fordham University, defending both his driver’s-licenses for-illegal-immigrants plan and a boost in state health insurance for children; sadly, his own penchant for hysterical rhetoric (like, let’s see, calling Bloomberg wrong five times in one sentence) appears to be tripping him up at every turn. Spitzer’s approval rating is down to an all-time low of 47 percent — that’s from 61 percent just eight months ago. Judging by the numbers only, one would think the state were in some sort of nightmarish free fall, but no — it all appears to be the fallout from the idiotic altercation with Joe Bruno. Seventy-eight percent of voters want the governor to testify under oath on the matter, and a majority wants the probe stepped up. But lo! In the midst of all this, a shady Bruno associate might’ve provided just the opening Spitzer needs to justify another over-the-top caricature of his enemies.
The governor, who called his detractors “fearmongers” and “demagogues” at Fordham, can now add “evil cultists” to the mix: Today’s Post coughs up a cryptic item about Roger Stone, the GOP operative accused of making threatening phone calls to Spitzer’s family. Stone was allegedly a liaison between Joe Bruno and NXIVM, a secretive, cultlike “executive training group.” Oooh! NXIVM’s Website is brimming with the usual positivist blather (“our primary desire is to help create a data-based, rational and ethical world”), but there’s real money behind this lunacy — and Stone, once hired by the group, made sure at least $20,000 of that money flowed into the coffers of the state Republican Senate Campaign Committee. Not to mention getting Bruno the “use of the private jet.” Always with the use of the private jet!
Top GOPers ‘Cult’ Favorites [NYP]
Spitzer Dons Prosecutor’s Aura Anew [NYS]
Spitz the Pits in Latest Poll [NYP]
