TIME: A Rudy Awakening

Rudy Giuliani trots out a joke when people ask how someone like him--a thrice-married New Yorker who supports gun control, abortion rights and gay rights and who shared an apartment during his second divorce with a couple of gay guys and a Shih Tzu named Bonnie--could possibly win the Republican presidential nomination. "Of course there are disagreements," he'll say. "You never agree with any one candidate 100%. I don't agree with myself 100%."

It's not much of a joke, but then Giuliani's predicament is no laughing matter. The former New York City mayor is at or near the top of the national polls, thanks to a heroic image forged in the fires of 9/11 (he was TIME's Person of the Year for 2001). And with John McCain's call for a supersurge in Iraq putting the Arizona Senator out of step with public opinion, the ground may be shifting toward Giuliani, who supports the Bush surge yet also sends the vague signal that "we've got to get beyond Iraq." The problem is, most Republican voters have no idea where Giuliani stands on social issues--and the conventional wisdom holds that once they find out, his candidacy will die. "It's one of those oddities," says a senior Giuliani adviser. "We're ahead in the polls, but we 'can't win.' Hey, we don't mind being the underdog."

As Giuliani gets set to enter the race--he has filed a statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission (FEC)--the right is stepping up its attacks. Tony Perkins, president of the Christian-right Family Research Council, has called him "unacceptable" and "far outside the mainstream of conservative thought." The National Shooting Sports Foundation, the gun industry's trade association, predicted that Giuliani's gun-control record (he backed the Clinton-era assault-weapons ban and the Brady Bill, and in 2000 he filed a lawsuit to hold gunmakers responsible for criminal misuse of their products) will "surely handicap him ... particularly during the Southern primaries."

But Giuliani is starting to show how he plans to blunt those attacks--by disagreeing with himself, if only a little bit. He isn't abandoning his liberal social positions, the way his rival Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts Governor, has, but he is undercutting them by talking up conservative nuances and qualifiers that weren't always on display when he was mayor of New York City. He's not interested in waging a culture war; in fact, he's paving over the battle lines in the hope that his leadership in another war--the war on terrorism--will carry him to the nomination.

In an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News, for example, Giuliani said, "I hate ... abortion ... However, I believe in a woman's right to choose." He then went on to say he would nominate Supreme Court Justices "very similar to, if not exactly the same as," conservatives John Roberts and Samuel Alito--in other words, he would be the most antiabortion "pro-choice" President in history. As for Roe v. Wade, "That's up to the court to decide." It's a mirror image of George W. Bush's formulation in 2000, when the candidate tried to reassure moderates by signaling that he opposed Roe but wouldn't actually try to overturn it. This time the candidate supports the intent of Roe but would choose Justices likely to limit or overthrow it. Talk about disagreeing with yourself.

Hannity was the only interviewer Giuliani spoke with after he filed his FEC papers, and the Fox newsman returned the favor by asking soft, careful leading questions, guiding Giuliani to positions that would help cover his base.

HANNITY: Do you think it's acceptable if citizens have the right to carry a handgun?

GIULIANI: It's part of the Constitution. People have the right to bear arms. [His gun-control stance was needed in crime-ridden New York City, he says, but "in another place, more rural, more suburban ... you have a different set of rules."]

HANNITY: What do you think about the definition of marriage? Should it be between a man and a woman?

GIULIANI: Marriage should be between a man and a woman. [It's] exactly the position I've always had. [Despite rumors to the contrary--stirred up, perhaps, by memories of the mayor cross-dressing onstage at a New York City press dinner--he has long opposed gay marriage, even for his past roommates. He favors domestic-partner benefits and civil unions--which add up to something a lot like gay marriage in the eyes of many religious conservatives.]

So how conservative is Giuliani? "As mayor of New York, he cut taxes 23 times, limited government, fought for school choice, reformed welfare, cut crime and restored order. That's a record any conservative can be comfortable with," says his campaign manager, Mike DuHaime, a rising-star strategist who until recently was the Republican National Committee's political director. Giuliani advisers argue that the party's basic political calculus is changing. "This is the first wide-open G.O.P. primary season since before 9/11," one says, "and the war on terror is such an important issue with conservative and moderate voters alike, I'm not sure social issues are decisive now."

So maybe G.O.P. primary voters are prepared to see beyond the litmus tests. They may also eventually get to see the cranky, autocratic side of Giuliani--the side that New Yorkers grew weary of in the days before 9/11. That would be the Giuliani who ran his own talented police commissioner and three schools chancellors out of town and refused to meet with any number of African-American leaders, even after New York City cops fired 41 shots at an innocent, unarmed African immigrant named Amadou Diallo.

Giuliani supporters say that absent his hard edge, the mayor would never have been able to clean up Gotham. And although his temperament will surely become an issue if he wins the nomination, it may be an advantage in the primaries. After all, the angry undertones of his personality may appeal to primary voters who feel a kinship with Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh. In fact, Limbaugh seems to be warming to Rudy. "He's a smart cookie ... Here's the thing about Giuliani," he said on his radio show the other day. "Everybody's got problems with him ... But when you start polling him on judges, he's a strict constructionist ... That will count for quite a bit. He can fix the abortion thing ... So I think he's got potential--particularly, folks, since we're still going to be at war somewhere in 2008."

It all comes back to that 9/11 glow--something his rivals just don't have going for them. And Giuliani aides point out that neither McCain nor Romney is a slam dunk for social conservatives. They also argue that the reshuffling and front-loading of the primary calendar favor their man. Although they concede that Iowa and South Carolina will be tough terrain, they hope to do well in New Hampshire and break out of the pack on Feb. 5, 2008, when perhaps a dozen states (including New Jersey, which Giuliani owns) will hold primaries--a mad cross-country rush of ad buys and delegate counts that will favor the best-known, best-funded candidates. "By the first Tuesday in March, 30 states will have voted," says a Giuliani aide. "And we think the mayor will have emerged."

If Giuliani does manage to grab the nomination, he'll be in a position to redraw the general-election map, putting states like New York, New Jersey and California in play. Even if he doesn't win that territory, he'll force the Democrats to spend big to defend it--making it harder for them to compete in the battleground states they have to take. "If he's the nominee, it's very, very good for the G.O.P.," says DuHaime. If only those pesky primary voters have the sense to understand that.