A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words; The Conservativist Has the Goods

Christina Jeffrey front and center for Rudy!

Congratulations to The Conservativist! After all of Christina Jeffrey's insistence that she supported Duncan Hunter, (or was it Ron Paul? or was it Fred Thompson? or was it Mike Huckabee?) the Conservativist backed up their story with a photo that says it all.

There she is holding his sign, sporting his badge, and wearing the campaign colors of the pro-abortion, pro-partial birth abortion, pro-gay rights, anti-second amendment, big government, big tax and spending, cross dressing, twice divorced, drag queen who is estranged from his own children -- the most liberal Republican to ever seek the nomination of his party for the Presidency of the United States -- Rudy Giuliani.

Ken Ard Calls Rudy Giuliani a Conservative ... Really!

Here is Lt. Governor candidate Ken Ard claiming that Rudy Giuliani -- the pro-partial birth abortion, pro-tax funded abortion, pro-gay marriage, pro-gun control former Mayor of New York, whose budgets funded abortions while he made his city a sanctuary for illegal immigrants and sued the federal government to end the line item veto so New York could get an earmark -- was "the most fiscally conservative candidate the Republican Party had in 2008."

Is it any wonder that South Carolina's RINO legislators support Ard?

VANITY FAIR ON THE TWO GIULIANIS

The Hope of the Neocons, Rudy Giuliani, has seen his once promising campaign tanking in state after state as America has come to know a man whose social policies were thought too liberal for New York State, whose business affairs have the air of the Gambino family, and whose thoughts on freedom and civil liberties derive from Il Duce.

Now, in a just published expose, Vanity Fair has connected the dots to explain how America's Mayor has gone from a net worth of $7000 in the Spring of 2001, when he was shedding one of his former wives, to a fortune now worth "somewhere between $18 million and $70 million."

The Thirty Pieces of Silver Club

There has been reason to question the mental state of televangelist Pat Robertson for a long time.

There was an occasion when he suggested that it might be appropriate to blow up the State Department using a nuclear weapon:

I read your book. When you get through, you say (to yourself): 'If I could just get a nuclear device inside Foggy Bottom (the State Department's main building), I think that's the answer' and you say: 'We've got to blow that thing up.'

He has suggested that space aliens were actually demons in disguise, trying to lead people away from Jesus.

He has promoted an age-defying milkshake.

In 1991 he put most Christian denominations and Jews on notice as to what would be in store for them under a Robertson administration with these endearing words:

You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist. I can love the people who hold false opinions but I don't have to be nice to them.

In 2006 Robertson stated that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was divine retribution for the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, which Robertson opposed.

He invited viewers to:

Call me old fashioned but I think non-believers should be manacled, publicly flayed, and set afire by the Council of Elders with the assistance of the town smithy.

.Then there was the occasion when he invited 700 Club viewers to:

Guess how many quarters I can fit in my mouth. Go on, take a wild guess. 15! 15 quarters in my mouth. Now, a Jew would have just taken that money. A Catholic would have wasted it on candles or incense or an eighth child. But I shoved 'em all in there, cheek to cheek.

On Wednesday this "man of God" endorsed a pro-abortion, pro-partial birth abortion, pro-gay rights, anti-second amendment, big government, big tax and spending, cross dressing, twice divorced, drag queen who is estranged from his own children -- the most liberal Republican to ever seek the nomination of his party for the Presidency of the United States.

Given Robertson's penchant for calling on God to "smite" those who betray Him, it might not be a good idea to stand too close to Robertson in coming days.

Presidential...or Skin Crawling Creepy?

The following is from The New York Times:

Call Him an Oddball if You Must, but Do Call

By CLYDE HABERMAN

Assuming that they have even tuned in to this interminable presidential campaign, many Americans just caught a glimpse of a Rudolph W. Giuliani long known to New Yorkers.

Note that we said a Rudolph Giuliani. There are several versions of the former mayor.

Understandably, he prefers to project the ones that would get any politician dreaming about a spot on Mount Rushmore: Rudy the clear-thinking, Rudy the principled, Rudy the focused, Rudy the unswerving (never mind his recent swivels to the right on issues like immigration, gun control and abortion).

New Yorkers are well acquainted with at least one other version. That would be Rudy the loopy. The weirdness factor, as some have called it, is as much a part of the Giuliani package as 9/11, banished squeegee men and shuttered porn parlors.

Non-New Yorkers got a taste of it the other day when Mr. Giuliani interrupted his speech — a very important speech — to the National Rifle Association in Washington. His cellphone rang. It was his wife, Judith. Smack in the middle of his talk, he whipped out the phone.

“Hello, dear,” he said in a syrupy voice. “I’m talking to the members of the N.R.A. right now. Would you like to say hello?” He listened, and laughed. “I love you, and I’ll give you a call as soon as I’m finished, O.K.?” he said. He listened a bit more. “O.K., have a safe trip. Bye-bye. Talk to you later, dear. I love you.”

Campaign aides said it was a spontaneous moment, with Mrs. Giuliani calling just before she boarded a plane.

Granted, lots of people call loved ones before a flight. But a presidential candidate doesn’t shut off his phone, and instead takes a call, in the middle of a major speech? The episode was so bizarrely cutesy-poo that more than a few people in the audience went, Eeeww! Nor was it an isolated incident; the same thing happened in Florida three months ago.

The cellphone routine was not Mr. Giuliani’s sole icky moment last week.

While rattling the cup in London, he told reporters that he was “probably one of the four or five best-known Americans in the world.” Oh? And who, someone asked, also makes that rarefied list? “Bill Clinton, Hillary,” he replied before aides hustled him away.

Offhand, we can think of any number of Americans who might be more famous worldwide. President Bush, anyone? How about Muhammad Ali, Madonna, Michael Jordan or Oprah Winfrey?

The real revelation was Mr. Giuliani’s sense of his own importance. It was on display again in his N.R.A. speech. Freshly returned from London, he told the audience, “It’s nice to be here in England.” Then, seeing an American flag, he said, “Ah, America.”

He meant it as a joke about the mental scrambling that the rigors of campaigning can cause. But the underlying assumption was that people were so focused on him that they knew his travel schedule by heart. Many in the audience didn’t get it.

They found it weird, just as some New Yorkers did when Mr. Giuliani used to begin speeches with raspy imitations of Marlon Brando as Don Corleone — as if everyone knew “The Godfather” as well as he did. Often enough, people wondered if he had a sore throat.

The weirdness factor has a long history.

It kicked in hard several times with the mayor’s cross-dressing skits, including one time when he squealed in delight as Donald Trump nuzzled his fake breasts. It turned up in 1999 when he joked to a black audience, of all groups, about the hard time he had getting a New York taxi to stop for him.

It emerged when he told reporters that he was leaving his wife — his second wife — before he bothered to tell her. It resurfaced a few months ago when wife No. 3 allowed that this was her third marriage and not her second, as she had let everyone believe for years.

Other incidents could be cited, up to and including the eeeww-inducing cellphone schmooze at the lectern.

On blogs and in print, some people characterized the phone call as more than weird. They called it a choreographed stunt.

But maybe it is not fair to challenge Mr. Giuliani’s motives. Perhaps we should follow the example that he set the other week when he rebuked Mrs. Clinton for the way she criticized Gen. David H. Petraeus over the Iraq war.

“I can’t imagine why we can’t get beyond maligning other people’s motives nowadays in politics,” said the man who, as mayor, dismissed those who dared disagree with him as intellectually dishonest, morally deficient or simply, to use one of his favorite words, jerky.

Pro-Life Advocates Can't Support Rudy Giuliani Over Abortion Despite Op-Ed

by Dave Andrusko

Sometimes (more often than I care to admit), something has to be seen to be believed. You actually must read/see something with your own two eyes to figure out how in the world anyone could possibly believe what was just said.

Enter "Anti-Roe and Pro-Rudy," a mind-bending op-ed that runs in today's New York Times. The author, Eric Johnston, says he is a "fervent pro-lifer," and since we don't know him, we take him at his word.

Johnston supports pro-abortion Rudy Giuliani: "I think Mr. Giuliani will be the most effective advocate for the pro-life cause precisely because he is unreligious and a supporter of abortion rights."

Well, that's the kind of statement that'll get your attention. Let's see how Johnston attempts to square the circle.

To understand his approach, it helps to recall the now familiar "Nixon goes to China'" historical reference. Johnston doesn't use the parallel and no doubt would reject it, but as you remember the idea was that only Nixon, a fervent anti-communist, could have gone to Communist China to begin the normalization of Sino-American relations.

Likewise, only Giuliani, who has a long track record of support for abortion, can "shake up the nearly 35-year-old debate over Roe v. Wade," according to Johnston.

Note that Johnston begins with an argument Giuliani supporters often make to soften the resistance of people who would otherwise not even consider the former Mayor of New York City. And that is that even though the Republican party is against abortion, Giuliani has been ahead in the GOP presidential polls for months.

Understand what Johnston is doing: combining an "is" --Giuliani is leading in the polls--with an "ought"--pro-lifers should get behind him because Giuliani can best shake up the "status quo" on the abortion debate.

We talked about the poll numbers on Monday.

To recapitulate: (1) according to Gallup, among those Republican voters who are aware of the broader field of GOP presidential candidates, former Senator Fred Thompson leads Giuliani, 33% to 25%. (2) According to the Rasmussen Report, among the pool of people who will choose the GOP presidential nominee--likely Republican primary voters--Thompson garners 27% and Giuliani 19%.

All this could change again and again, but there is no inevitability to a Giuliani win. His numbers have been dropping.

Johnston leavens this with what might be called the bogeyman argument. Any candidate who sounds too serious about reversing Roe will spook the voters, especially if they are "deeply religious."

Giuliani is just the man, according to Johnston, to overcome this. Giuliani is (in Johnston's overly generous assessment) personally "ambivalent" about abortion but says he will appoint "strict constructionist judges (judges who will not use the courts "to achieve political ends")--and "ducks questions about his personal faith."

And because he is a "constitutionalist who supports abortion rights," Johnston writes, Giuliani "can create an anti-Roe majority by explaining that the end of Roe means letting the people decide, state by state, about abortion."

But precisely why is Giuliani "more persuasive" about this federalism argument than the other GOP presidential candidates? "[B]ecause he will not be perceived as trying to advance his own religious preferences," Johnston argues. "By taking the side of pro-lifers for democratic, but not devout, motives, a President Giuliani could shake up the nearly 35-year-old debate over Roe v. Wade."

It is both insulting and flat-out wrong to suggest that the candidates running for the GOP presidential nomination who oppose abortion are raising (or will eventually raise) the hackles of mainstream America. Whatever their personal faith, they convey their opposition to abortion in language accessible to people of all faiths or no faith.

They have made it clear in a variety of forums that the reversal of Roe is their ultimate objective; that this much-to-be-desired turn of events is not around the corner; that in the interim they are working to hedge in the "right" to abortion; and that when Roe is in ruins, the debate over abortion will return primarily to the legislative bodies.

The "strict constructionist" label is intended to convince skeptics that all the expressly and exuberantly pro-abortion statements Giuliani has made in the past are to count for nothing. That list goes on and on.

To cite just one, speaking at the NARAL's "Champions of Choice" luncheon in Manhattan in 2001, Giuliani said, "As a Republican who supports a woman's right to choose, it is particularly an honor to be here." He added, "The government shouldn't dictate that choice by making it a crime or making it illegal."

But, equally important, every time Giuliani talks about appointing "strict constructionists," inquiring minds think back to his judicial appointments while Mayor. A few months ago, the newspaper, Politico, for example, did a review of "the 75 judges Giuliani appointed to three of New York state's lower courts."

The newspaper first quoted what he told South Carolina Republicans in February: "I would want judges who are strict constructionists because I am," adding, "Those are the kinds of justices I would appoint -- Scalia, Alito and Roberts."

But Politico's analysis found that "[M]ost of Giuliani's judicial appointments during his eight years as mayor of New York were hardly in the model of Chief Justice John Roberts or Samuel Alito -- much less aggressive conservatives in the mold of Antonin Scalia."

For our purposes, no less a source than Kelli Conlin, the head of NARAL Pro-Choice New York, said of Giuliani's appointments, "They were decent, moderate people."

(Johnston also argues that "Mr. Giuliani pledges his support for the Hyde Amendment," which may be true this minute, but hasn't been the case in the past and may well not be in the future.)

We've heard a ton of arguments why pro-lifers should make their peace with Giuliani. Most of them center around the likelihood of his winning the nomination. As we have seen, that rationalization is wearing thin.

Eric Johnston's complementary argument--that Giuliani would actually advance the cause quicker and more effectively--is both bizarre and unpersuasive.

I'm sure you won't be fooled, even for a second.

Giuliani with Governor Whitman: Two liberal, pro-abortion, "Rockefeller Republicans".

Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics.

Published by: http://www.lifenews.com/nat3331.html

Rudy's Don't Ask/Don't Tell Policy on Religion

By Don Feder

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, leading in the polls for the Republican presidential nomination, has his own don’t ask/don’t tell policy – Don’t ask him what kind of Catholic he is. If you do, he won’t tell you.

Giuliani is in a bind. He can’t talk about his religion – and he can’t not talk about it.

Voters want a candidate who’s religious. It doesn’t much matter what that religion is (excepting, of course, something really weird, like Wicca or Islam).

For most voters, it doesn’t matter if it’s their religion. In 2004, Catholics were slightly more likely to vote for Methodist Bush than for the first major-party Catholic (I use the term loosely) nominee since John F. Kennedy, who – in the midst of the campaign – suddenly recalled that he’d once been an altar boy.

Americans are comforted by the thought that they are electing a man to lead the nation who believes in God and the 10 Commandments, attends religious services (not as a campaign photo-op), and at least publicly adheres to the tenets of his faith.

Rudy is none of the above. That’s why, if asked about his Catholicism, he’ll respond with the equivalent of “no comment.”

The mayor needs to maintain the fiction that he’s a Catholic. At the same time, he needs to keep the discussion as far away as possible from his actual relationship with the Catholic Church. This is getting harder and harder.

On the Iowa campaign trail, Hizzoner was asked whether he considered himself “a traditional, practicing Roman Catholic,” and to discuss the role his faith played in helping him make decisions on issues like abortion.

Rudy responded, “My religious affiliation, my religious practices and the degree to which I am a good or not so good Catholic, I prefer to leave to priests.”

The mayor cautioned that there should not be a “religious test for public office.” Silly me, I thought that when Article VI of the Constitution says “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States,” that meant an individual couldn’t be disqualified based on his religion, not that we’re not allowed to inquire about Rudy’s relationship to the faith he professes.

When asked to reconcile his pro-choice advocacy with his alleged Catholicism, Rudy has replied: “Issues like that are for me and my confessor.” (And who would that be, Father Guido Sarducci?) Also, ”I’m a Catholic, and that’s the way I resolve those issues, personally and privately” – otherwise known as Rudy’s Catholic code of silence. Instead of consulting Church teachings, as a Catholic would do, Rudy believes questions of theology can be resolved personally and privately.

Still, Rudy claims he’s devout, in his own private/don’t-ask-me-to-explain way. “Religion is very important to me. It’s a very important part of my life.” The foregoing is to be taken at face value, without a request for elaboration.

Unfortunately for Giuliani, the Catholic Church has rules.

In a June 26 Village Voice article (“No Wafer for Rudy”), Wayne Barrett notes the mayor “can’t have a confessor. He can’t receive the sacraments of penance, the Eucharist, or marriage.” That’s because Giuliani divorced Donna Hanover, his wife of 18 years, without obtaining an annulment (for which he would not have qualified), and married his third wife, Judith Nathan, outside the Church.

His first marriage of 14 years to his second cousin, Regina Peruggi, was annulled. While he was still married to wife #2, the mother of his two children, he carried on openly with Nathan, who he paid $10,000-a-month as his “speech writer” and marched with in New York’s annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade, a walk mayors traditionally take with their wives, not their mistresses.

On Rudy’s campaign website, wives #1 and #2 are non-persons, like fallen members of the old Soviet Politburo airbrushed out of photographs. The site notes that he married Judith S. Nathan in May of 2003. There is no mention of any other marriages or of his children.

But this is typical of Rudy’s tendency to re-write history. Today, the mayor says “I hate abortion…. I would encourage someone not to take that option.” He’s also opposed to late-term abortions and Medicaid funding of abortion.

Still, unlike Mitt Romney, Giuliani isn’t doing a 180-degree pirouette here, probably because he’s seen the drubbing the former governor has taken for flip-flopping. Thus, while tacking right on the issue, the mayor still favors a woman’s right to choose, with qualifications.

The decision on whether or not to kill her unborn child “ultimately, a woman should make that (choice) with her conscience and ultimately with her doctor,” Giuliani explains. If this was the 1850s, Rudy would say that on the question of slavery, “Ultimately a plantation owner should make that decision in consultation with his conscience, and ultimately with his overseer.”

When he was mayor of what’s often called the abortion capital of America, it was hard to find a politician – of either party – more pro-choice than Giuliani.

· When asked why the far-left New York State Liberal Party endorsed Rudy’s 1989 mayoral campaign, the party chairman replied: “He agreed with the Liberal Party’s views of affirmative action, gay rights, gun control, school prayer and tuition tax credits. As mayor, Rudy Giuliani would uphold the Constitutional and legal rights to abortion.”

· Based on his answers to a candidate questionnaire, and/or his performance in office, Rudy received a 100% rating from the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) in his 1993, 1997 and 2000 campaigns.

· Gloria Feldt, the former president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), recalls an appearance the mayor made before the group’s New York chapter, where: “He spoke very eloquently about family planning (abortion). It’s hard to be that eloquent if you’re saying something you don’t believe.”

· He re-appointed PPFA President Pam Maraldo to the City’s Board of Health, which oversees 11 municipal hospitals where an average of 6,500 abortions a year were performed during Rudy’s tenure as mayor.

· Over the years, the Giuliani administration awarded a total of $2 million to Planned Parenthood’s New York branch.

· One of Rudy’s human-resources commissioners notes her ex-boss continued Ed Koch’s policy of allowing the city to pay for abortions, whether or not they met Medicaid’s “medically necessary” requirement, and even if the woman’s earnings were more than 85% above the limit for Medicaid eligibility. She describes Mayor Giuliani as “gung-ho abortion.”

· The fact that, on social issues, they are identical twins separated by party, may explain Rudy’s endorsement of Democratic Governor Mario Cuomo, the icon of New York liberals, when the latter ran for re-election. (“Our future, our destiny is not a matter of chance. It’s a matter of choice. My choice is Mario Cuomo.”) It’s hard to say which choice is more tragic – abortion or endorsing Cuomo.

· According to a former aide, it took Mayor Giuliani exactly 15 minutes to decide that he supported partial-birth abortions (“I’m fine with that!”), as he headed into a meeting with NARAL leaders. Now he opposes the procedure -- described by the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan (who represented New York in the U.S. Senate from 1983 to 2001) as “fourth-fifths infanticide” – another conversion of convenience. He also supports parental notification, which he formerly opposed. Flip. Flop.

In a wink-and-nod to pro-lifers, Rudy says he would appoint “strict constructionists” to the federal bench, including the Supreme Court.

As mayor, he appointed or re-appointed 127 municipal judges – none could reasonably be mistaken for Antonin Scalia.

One had been executive director of the homosexual Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. Another ruled that city funds could be used for sex-change operations for indigents. And a third allowed a lesbian to adopt her partner’s child. The judge, Paula Hepner, later married another woman in a Canadian ceremony.

In fairness to Da Mayor, abortion isn’t the only issue where Rudy is trying to re-invent himself. There’s nothing about gay rights on his website – such reticence from a man who marched in every gay-pride parade as mayor, and welcomed the Gay Olympics to New York City.

He does, however, firmly assert his belief (arrived at in consultation with his conscience, his confessor and his pollster) that marriage should be between a man and a woman – or, perhaps, several women.

As America’s mayor, he pushed a domestic-partnership bill (described as “as far-reaching as San Francisco’s”) through the city council and supported similar legislation before the New York State legislature. The Archdiocese of New York blasted the former as “contrary to moral natural law.” Wonder what Rudy’s confessor thought about that one.

During the 2004 campaign, at least a dozen Catholic bishops announced that John Kerry could not receive communion in their dioceses, because of the Democratic nominee’s position on abortion. On those rare occasions when he attends Catholic services, Rudy tries to avoid embarrassment. According to a June 25 New York Times story, “Communion may be a moot point for Mr. Giuliani, who was seen leaving Mass at a church in Washington before the Eucharist.”

Still, for those Catholic prelates who’ve spoken out, the question of whether Rudy is a “good or not so good Catholic,” has been settled.

Newark Archbishop John Myers says the mayor is “being illogical” with his I’m-personally-opposed-but-can’t-impose-my-morality stand on abortion. “To violate human life is always and everywhere wrong,” the Archbishop declares.

Providence, R.I. Bishop Thomas J. Tobin is even more outspoken: “Rudy’s public proclamations on abortion are pathetic and confusing. Even worse, they’re hypocritical.” Tobin asks “if any politician could get away with the same pathetic (personally opposed but) cop-out” on any other moral question – say racism, sexual abuse, incest, prostitution or polygamy?

In May, speaking of Mexican legislators who voted to legalize abortion, Pope Benedict XVI said they had, in effect, excommunicated themselves.

The worst hypocrisy would be for Rudy Giuliani to receive the nomination of the party that’s been proudly and officially pro-life since 1980, the party that has won the presidency in five of seven elections since 1976 with the fervent support of the pro-life movement. According to the National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru, George W. Bush’s pro-life position netted him 2.4 million votes in ’04.

Rudy Giuliani doesn’t even do a passable impersonation of a Catholic. His Church understands it. Practicing Catholics understand it.

Republican primary voters must be made to understand it.

The Friends of Rudy Giuliani

First he was endorsed by indicted former South Carolina State Treasurer Thomas Ravenel. Then the former State Superintendent of Education, for the state with the lowest SAT scores, climbed on the Giuliani bandwagon. Now Rudy has the help of a new video produced by Gays for Giuliani. The video references the former Mayor's support for domestic partnership legislation, civil unions, and other elements of the gay rights agenda.

When videos are produced by other Giuliani allies and causes -- People for Partial Birth Abortion, Gun Control Advocates of America, the National Abortion Rights Action League, Adulterers Anonymous, the Divorce Lawyers of America, or Heather's Two Mommies -- you can count on finding them here.