It's very difficult to talk about Rudy Giuliani's political future without referring to horror movies.
He's baaack!
Or, more appropriately, the Friday the 13th films. Jason is drowned, stabbed, shot, electrocuted, poisoned with toxic chemicals, blown up, set on fire, impaled on an anchor, hung from a barn and even dragged into hell by demons. Nothing works. Jason keeps returning -- and returning in the same doomed-to-lose form he was in the previous flick.
Enough of the movie metaphors. The Rudy Giuliani franchise is back in the news.
The cast of Republican presidential candidates -- now there's a horror -- has led one desperate party member, Long Island Congressman Peter King, to suggest that Giuliani needs to enter the race.
Wow. It's enough to make you want to take another look at Donald Trump.
Consider the record. America's former mayor was thought to be politically dead when he spent $59 million to win one delegate in the 2008 GOP presidential race.
But he sprung to life less than a year later amid reports that he was seriously considering a run for New York governor. But once again, political Rudy was laid to rest when Giuliani decided not to run.
Then came the word that Rudy was seriously considering a run for Hillary Clinton's New York Senate seat. "I can see him wanting to run for president again, and doing the Senate race would position him well for that... the Senate would be a great opportunity to keep him in the public eye," King told Politico.
But old 9/11 again killed his political career by choosing not to run. Many political observers now concluded that candidate Giuliani really was dead.
Not so.
The first stirrings in the Giuliani crypt came with word that Rudy wasn't ruling out a run for the 2012 presidential race. He was wondering how he could make himself most useful to the Republican Party. Could any of the GOP hopefuls beat Obama?
Pondering these and other weighty questions, Rudy moved from the graveyard to the intensive care unit.
From there, political Rudy was shocked back to life by none other than Congressman Peter King! The Long Island legislator and Rudy pal declared that Giuliani was "very close to running" and would "focus on New Hampshire almost entirely."
This seemed strange indeed since Giuliani's decision to focus on one state -- Florida -- proved disastrous in 2008. (King blames bad advisers for Giuliani's poor showing.)
Stranger still is King's insistence that Giuliani -- who has done virtually nothing other than try to earn money for the last three years -- might be the best person to represent the Republican Party in a battle with Barack Obama.
It calls into question some of the Long Island Republican's other recent judgment calls. Like the congressional hearing on radicalization in the American Muslim community. Or the Paul Ryan destroy Medicare plan.
In New Hampshire, meanwhile, a recent poll showed six percent of Republican voters choosing Giuliani as their preferred candidate.
And over in the cemetery, a hand pops out of the grave ...