He Just Doesn't Get It....

...and therefore will lose the GOP nomination:

On Friday, Giuliani restated his personal opposition to abortion but support of a woman's right to choose.

"It's a difficult issue," he said.

He sought to defuse the potent subject that could harm his chances of winning over primary voters who tend to be more conservative, saying Republicans risk losing the White House if they allow themselves to be divided.

"If we don't find a way of unifying around broad principles ... we're going to lose this election," Giuliani said.

Well, he gets that much of it, to be sure: abortion is not the biggest issue in this campaign and any candidate the GOP elects based on a stance on this issue is sure to be heavily hampered, because abortion is so low in the hierarchy of concerns of the average voter, after the invasion in Iraq and the shaky economy, that it's not even pulling double digits in polls.

But here's the bit he doesn't get:

And he called for more respect between people who have good-faith disagreements about issues.

"Those principles come from God, and that's why we're so lucky," he said.

Rudy, according to these people whose support you so desperately seek, abortion = murder. Period.

There is no middle ground, no God-given right for a "baby" to be "killed," and God (the father) is very clear on this point: an eye for an eye. If you murder, God will see to it that you are murdered, and He will use whatever instrument of destruction He can. It is these passages of the Old Testament that the Religious Right take comfort in whenever an abortion clinic is bombed.

My suspicion as to why Rudy hasn't full-throatedly abandoned a woman's right to choose, the way Mitt Romney did, probably stems from an ugly skeleton in his closet. I have no other evidence of this, of course, but my guess is, somewhere deep in his past is a trip to a doctor with a woman to quietly "take care of a condition."

Rudy, you see, doesn't exactly have the best track record for fidelity, and I'd wager at least once, his peccadillo has backfired on him. If he were to fully abandon a woman's right to choose, even to pay lip service to overturning Roe v Wade, there's a woman with a doctor's bill poised to strike.

I say this, because Rudy's never been one to mince words or straddle a fence, even if he felt it might cost him a few votes. He's always relied on his "strength" (which apres W could be read to mean single-minded determination to fuck things up) to carry along people who might disagree with his positions on a minority of issues, trusting that his pigheadedness and "limousine redneck" stances on other issues will win the day.

One more thing: Rudy's trotted out a cutesy little turn of phrase to explain away his flip flop on abortion:

"I disagree with myself sometimes, and I change my mind sometimes," Giuliani said to laughter as he addressed a largely anti-abortion audience at Houston Baptist University.

Sound familiar?

Kerry: I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.

Somewhere, there's a DNC ad writer furiously playing with Rudy's quote.