As president he’d become the Rudynator?

Mayor Giuliani is telling California voters wondering what kind of president he would make that they need to look no further than their popular Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“I governed very much like your governor does,” Mr. Giuliani said as he described his tenure as mayor of New York from 1994 to 2001. “I got results and I want people to look at that and say that’s the way I would govern as president of the United States. I would get results,” he said.

In a deft bit of political footwork, Mr. Giuliani managed to declare himself simpatico with the governor without actually specifying any of the issues where the two men hold similar views. Some of those stances, such as support for abortion rights and gay rights, antagonize large swaths of the Republican base in the Golden State and across the country.

If I were to be charitable, I would speculate that when Rudy said he’d governor like Ah-nuld, he meant the Ah-nuld of 2003-2005, when he was the center-right populist “governator” who was taking on every bastion of the entrenched Gollyfornia Left like Conan, John Matrix, Mark Kaminsky aka Joseph P. Brenner aka Triple Identity, Dutch, Ben Richards, Douglas Quaid/Hauser, Jack Slater, Harry Tasker, and all three Terminators rolled into one.  Not the Ah-nuld of 2006 to the present, who bears a much more striking similarity to Dr. Alex Hesse.

One can’t tell which Ah-nuld Rudy was referring to because he left out any and all specifics.  I don’t call that “a deft bit of political footwork,” however, but rather an indulgence in evasive, stomach-turning pandering.

Or, as I am beginning to become convinced (alright, I already am convinced, but work with me here….), a freudian slip, in which case every time he tells conservative audiences, such as at these gang “debates,” how conservative he is across the board, with the weeee exception of pretty much every moral/social/family issue, he’s prevaricating as shamelessly as back when he was trying to fudge on abortion and gay rights as well.

After the experience of the second Bush term, I’m at least, er, “moderately” astonished that the GOP nominating electorate can be according serious consideration to a man who amounts to another Dubya only without the twang, a full head of hair, and with a loosened sphincter.  It can’t be because of the war, as all the ‘Pubbies outside of Ron “Wrong Party” Paul can’t manfully puff their chests out far enough, and I’m pretty sure all of them are more or less pro-life.

If it was “authenticity,” I think this foolish self-imposed Schwartzeneggar parallel may mark the beginning of the end for Rudy’s viability, and the harbinger of the two-man showdown I’ve been anticipating.

And neither of them is named “McCain”.