It's semi-pseudo-almost-nearly kind-of official: Rudy's running for president. Basically. In essence. He could change his mind. But he probably won't. Almost certainly.
Which makes sense. Rudy Giuliani is leading the Republican field by five points (with 31 percent to John McCain's 26 percent, according to the Real Clear Politics poll average).
By the conventional wisdom, this isn't even possible: The GOP is the party of the social conservatives, while Rudy Giuliani is - or so we're told - "socially liberal."
The most ridiculous count of Rudy-can't-be-winning indictment charges that in a skit performed before the New York press corps, Rudy dressed up like Julie Andrews in "Victor/Victoria." I've been asked on more than one occasion if I think a rural voter in the South would ever cast a vote for a man in a gown.
The answer is yes - without question: Such voters actually can tell the difference between a drag queen and a politician who puts on a dress as a gag.
What about the fact that after Rudy separated from his second wife, Donna Hanover, he bunked with a gay couple? This is a more meaningful and suggestive fact about Rudy - but not disqualifying. Opposing gay marriage and gay adoption doesn't require you to shun homosexual or reject their friendship.
As a matter of policy, Giuliani is a supporter of "civil unions" - the notion that a gay couple's relationship can be recognized as a matter of law. This happens also to be the position of Vice President Dick Cheney - and if he were running for president, he'd be considered a strong contender for the votes of social conservatives.
Most daunting for Rudy is that fact that he's on record as being pro-choice, and even said back in 1989 that he'd theoretically give his daughter money for an abortion if she needed it (though he also said that he'd try to talk her out of it, by promising that "I would help her with taking care of the baby").
Yet even Giuliani's views on abortion don't automatically mean he can't win.
For starters, the Republican Party is the party of strength at home and abroad, and for many, Rudy Giuliani personifies that - not only because of his conduct on and after 9/11 but because of his historic accomplishments as the motive force behind the crime drop that turned New York City around.
Republicans not only like Rudy, they want to like him. Conservative Republicans want to like him. Socially conservative Republicans want to like him.
In this respect, he represents a momentous change from prior candidates hailing from outside the party's socially conservative wing.
Past "liberal" GOP candidates and would-be candidates have sought the nomination by taking strong stands counter to the views of the party's conservative base - like Elizabeth Dole opposing handguns in 2000. Those candidates, that is, were engaging in battle against the social conservatives. They were fighting a culture war within the GOP, trying to rally the party's more socially liberal elements - women and suburbanites in particular - to defeat the hard-line element.
Even John McCain, with a sterling Senate voting record on such matters, ran for president in 2000 by criticizing social conservatives when it came to abortion for what he called "the polarization that has existed and continues on this issue."
Rudy, by contrast, is trying to convince social conservatives that he's their friend. They disagree on certain matters, he'll say, but on the key issue of our time - the struggle of the West against Islamic extremism - they'll never have a better or more staunch ally and leader.
And while his personal views on some issues may differ from theirs, he'll appoint judges in the manner of Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito - which is, in the end, most of what a president can do to support the ideas in which social conservatives deeply believe.
It may not work. But he's knocking on an open door. Giuliani's support is solid and quite deep, and his numbers are very strong.
The key point is this: Republicans want to nominate him if they can - if he can demonstrate to them that he's not too liberal for them.
And that's a very powerful position to start from.
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