It’s sure looking like “America’s Mayor” at the moment, as Ed posted yesterday.  First abortion (and by implication, judicial appointments), now the line item veto.  At worst that would put Rudy a pirhoutte ahead of the Mittster.

It’s a more serious matter for Giuliani, though.  Romney was an abortion moderate and became fully pro-life and can tell you how, why, where, when.  Rudy fudged on abortion, then went back off the reservation on it.  But that was supposed to be offset by his right-wing orthodoxy on national security, counter-terrorism, taxes, and free market domestic policies.  Then came the reminder of Rudy’s flirtation with the defeatist Iraq Study Group, and now going Kerryesque on the line item veto.

LIV is an important tool that would empower the next president to hold down spending by making it much more difficult for a hostile profligate Congress to blackmail him/her by piling multiple appropriations bills into one gargantuan “continuing resolution.”

Now Rudy comes out and says he’s all for it, but we know that that is a relatively recent conversion.  Is he sincere?

Well, maybe.  But as a constitutional amendment?  I understand the ostensible reasoning - making it much harder (but not impossible) for oligarchist federal judges to negate line item veto power, as happened a decade ago (and cheered on by then-Mayor Giuliani).  But constitutional amendments are even more difficult to enact and ratify than they are to bypass or abrogate.  It’s like promising your spouse to mow the lawn when you live in an apartment building - it sounds good, but chances are better than decent that you’ll never have to make good on your offer.

So now added to Rudy’s social liberalism baggage are fresh doubts about his fiscal conserative bona fides.  A week from Saturday at the next GOP primary confab, he won’t have Ron Paul feeding him big, fat, waist-high meatballs over the heart of the plate, either.  And the week after that Fred Thompson does a cannonball into the pool.

I’m not even touching on the other odds and ends that befell Team Rudy this week, either.

In basketball terms, it might be a good time to call a time-out and talk things over, before one bad week morphs into a serious slide.

Maybe the halftime entertainment can kick in a little early.