Rudy Gives Up

After a few days of being completely unable to defend his contradictory positions, Rudy Giuliani has said "To hell with it" and will run as a pro-choice Republican.

After months of conflicting signals on abortion, Rudolph W. Giuliani is planning to offer a forthright affirmation of his support for abortion rights in public forums, television appearances and interviews in the coming days, despite the potential for bad consequences among some conservative voters already wary of his views, aides said yesterday.

At the same time, Mr. Giuliani’s campaign — seeking to accomplish the unusual task of persuading Republicans to nominate an abortion rights supporter — is eyeing a path to the nomination that would try to de-emphasize the early states in which abortion opponents wield a great deal of influence. Instead they would focus on the so-called mega-primary of Feb. 5, in which voters in states like California, New York and New Jersey are likely to be more receptive to Mr. Giuliani’s social views than voters in Iowa and South Carolina.

Tactically, he probably has a better chance just being honest than trying to reconcile being "personally pro-life" and funding Planned Parenthood. Of course, this completely changes the nature of the Republican race. His STATED STRATEGY is to wait until New York and California on Feb. 5 to make his move. Nobody's going to be able to do that (plus, California's Republicans are as wingnutty as they come, so that's just a dumb strategy). And while Rudy will probably get plaudits from the punditocracy for this "bold, courageous move," he's not exactly Mr. Straight Talk.

Sports fans grew accustomed to seeing Giuliani, in Yankee jacket and cap, within camera view of the team's dugout at every one of the 40 postseason home games the Yankees played while he was mayor. His devotion reached such heights that at the 1995 Inner Circle press dinner, he played himself handing the city over to George Steinbrenner in a lampoon version of the Broadway musical Damn Yankees, succumbing to a scantily clad Lola who importuned him on behalf of the Boss to the tune of "Whatever Lola Wants (Lola Gets)." Mike Bloomberg understood years later that the song was no joke; he nixed Rudy's stadium deal in his first weeks in office.

It is only now, however, as Giuliani campaigns for president, that we are beginning to learn that this relationship went even deeper. Giuliani has been seen on the campaign trail wearing a World Series ring, a valuable prize we never knew he had. Indeed, the Yankees have told the Voice that he has four rings, one for every world championship the Yankees won while he was mayor. Voice calls to other cities whose teams won the Series in the past decade have determined that Giuliani is the only mayor with a ring, much less four. If it sounds innocent, wait for the price tag. These are certainly no Canal Street cubic zirconia knockoffs.

He has 4 $200,000 rings on his fingers, and he tried to fund new stadiums for the guys who gave them to him. This is a guy who's a reformer fighting corruption in government?

Not only that, the latest is that his campaign is so hell-bent on pushing estate tax elimination that they're scouring Iowa for nonexistent family farmers to be used as props, and then cutting them loose when they don't make enough money.

A lot of people think Giuliani's pretty much done; he's in the lead now, but his vulnerabilities will be too much to overcome. I'm still going with the GOP nominee being "none of the above." And he'd (because a "none of the above" Republican would be a white male) have a better chance in November '08 than anyone else in the field.