It sure is interesting, as a backer of a Republican candidate other than Rudy or Mitt, to watch the cross-fire between RomneyIsGod.com and Giuliani Central Hub.
The Commodore’s latest riff is that Fred can be dismissed with a few keystrokes and a wave of the magic wand:
Clearly, though, the “two-man race” dynamic has taken over in the Republican campaign, and the Thompson-Huckabee camps have to be fighting that sinking feeling. (The McCain campaign sunk months ago but the Arizona senator will run on fumes to get to New Hampshire just to spite his legion of GOP critics.)
Huckawhatsis can be dismissed because he was never in the top tier to begin with. All his quixotic, Edwardsesque foray at the White House has proved is that he should have focused on unseating Mark Pryor from the Senate to begin with.
By my reckoning, though, FDT is still ahead of Romney in THE national poll. And while Romney is definitely ahead in Iowa and New Hampshire, Thompson leads in South Carolina. Rudy, of course leads everywhere else, which in my mind casts this race as one man versus a conservative contender and a conservative pretender.
Rudy backers, ironically, are eager to agree:
Romney, who for more than 35 years claimed to be avowedly pro-choice, and ran as such for the U.S. Senate and for the Bay State governorship, has been using his and his family’s money to create a “pro-life” record.
Earlier this year, his wife, Ann, was given an award by a Massachusetts pro-life organization after Romney made what a source inside the group called a “sizable” donation. Ann Romney, like her husband, has been pro-choice most of her life.
Romney also has hired political consultants with pro-life records, the best example being James Bopp, a prominent conservative lawyer, who serves as a legal counsel for National Right to Life.
Bopp has carried Romney’s pro-life message for months, and was front and center for the candidate during the Family Research Council’s Value Voters Summit.
But Bopp is now facing the same kind questions that were raised by conservatives when respected conservatives like Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo supported the nomination of former White House Counsel Harriet Miers to a seat on the Supreme Court, when most conservatives were opposing the nomination.
Bopp is now in the eye of a storm after criticizing Sen. Sam Brownback for meeting with Giuliani, a meeting, sources say, that Giuliani asked for. Romney and Brownback had a scheduled meeting for this week, but it was abruptly canceled after Bopp’s public criticism of Brownback, who ended his presidential run last week.
“Bopp is losing a great deal of credibility by attacking Brownback,” says a longtime Washington-based pro-life conservative activist. “We know that Romney is at the very least a squish on abortion. But Bopp seems to ignore years of on-the-record statements and expects us to believe him and Romney’s ‘conversion’ because he says we should believe a man who has done nothing for the [right to life] movement. Nothing.”
Given Giuliani’s socially liberal background, that sounds dangerously close to the pot calling the kettle black. But it is a roundhouse right aimed right at the Mittster’s glass chin. And like I’ve been saying, and J-Ger reinforced this morning, leads in Iowa three months before the caucus votes are cast are anything but sure things.
For all the talk about Fred being “lazy,” with Team Rudy so willing to do his heavy lifting for him, maybe he’s just shrewdly efficient instead.
At least we already know that he’s genuinely pro-life.
