Can Giuliani Be the Armageddon Candidate?

Glenn Greenwald today challenges the conventional wisdom that Rudy Giuliani's presidential candidacy is a sinker with conservative evangelicals. Greenwald's right about a couple of things: first, that foreign policy, particularly Middle East policy, will be more important to conservative evangelicals in '08 than gay marriage and abortion, and second, that Giuliani's messy personal life, including his divorces and adultery, won't alone doom his candidacy with these voters because . . . ah, well, you know, we all fall. (Even John Hagee, the country's leading Christian Zionist, is divorced.)

Unless Giuliani unequivocally flip-flops (like Mitt Romney has, including vociferous denunciations of the citizens he once served as governor of Massachusetts) from his stance on gay rights, his skeletons won't be his divorces and adultery, but his political views, as evidenced by this or this or this. For these voters, anyone can be a convert, but they have to prove it. Romney's getting there. Giuliani has a long way to go. His favorable remarks about the Supreme Court's most reactionary members -- and his promises to promote more of the same -- won't be enough.