Daddy, Papa and Me

I hadn't completely ruled out (not to vote for but to not necessarily vote against if that makes sense). I keep reading some things about him (authoritarian, ineffective, iron-fisted) that bothered me a bit, but nothing to pin down. Well, now we can add panderer and hypocrite to that.

As I mentioned earlier today, even though Civil Unions are not marriage either legally or culturally, the religious right is completely against them.

Well, even though Giuliani supported civil unions for a long time, he now, as of today, is against Civil Unions, because as he states:

civil unions are the equivalent of marriage and recognizes same sex unions from outside states. This goes too far and Mayor Giuliani does not support it.

Not only is he wrong in fact (they are not the equivalent of marriage and only NH CU explicitly recognizes same sex unions outside the state), it doesn't jibe with his earlier support for CU and DP because they allow states to decide what they will recognize or not.

So, he is pandering to the religious right base of the Republican party.

But it also makes him, a serial adulterer who publicly cheated on and humilated his wife, a hypocrite who wants to "protect" marriage as long as it's not his marriage.

Andrew Sullivan has an observation:

Giuliani believes his three marriages qualify him to deny gay couples equality under the law.

and links to another interesting observation, that of the three Democratic frontrunner, all three support Civil Unions (specifically NH's) and of the three Republican frontrunners all three are against even unequal Civil Unions (well now they are). As the quote says:

his is surprising because the Republican primary field is supposedly so socially liberal. And it may well be. But Messrs. Giuliani and McCain seem to have decided that that's not going to fly in the GOP primary.

It's not a crazy calculation. But when your images are A) straight talker and B) take-no-prisoners tough guy, it's hard to reconcile with such clear pandering.

So, on this issue at least, it looks like the Democrats are a clear choice (of course I agree with the three candidates on other issues like the war, health care, etc... so, guess now I have to decide which one.)