A Stitch in Haste

Much can be said, and has been said, about Pat Robertson's endorsement of Rudy Giuliani and Sam Brownback's coincidentally timed endorsement of John McCain.

I'll just quote myself from last month:

There is no rational basis (to the extent that these Bible-thumping cretins can ever be "rational") not to support -- unequivocally, unreservedly and unapologetically -- either of these candidates [i.e., Brownback or Huckabee]. They are both radically pro-life and radically anti-gay. Neither is a Mormon (i.e., Satan) and neither is a thrice-married cross-dresser. Neither has any appreciable record of flip-flopping. Either would be a radical social conservative's dream candidate.

Just one problem: Neither can win. Neither ever had any hope of winning in the past, and neither has any hope of winning today.

Or how about this, from way back in February:

In actuality, radical social conservatives have at least two candidates they could rally around (Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee). What they don't have is a winning candidate they could rally around. So they're sitting around waiting for a winner to emerge, at which time they're concoct some post facto excuse for supporting him. So much for the "values" voters controlling the GOP anymore.

It is now clear that the Republican nominee will, almost certainly, be either Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney. So now the radical social conservative endorsements, which were always about "deducing the winner" rather than "creating the winner," can commence. Some will go with Giuliani early, some will go with Romney early, some will hold off and continue to engage in this farce of pretending that the radical social conservatives are still in control of the GOP.Something else I said about Giuliani:

[Consider] the silly garbage that Rudy Giuliani is telling these same theocrats about appointing "strict constructionist" judges -- a term that has no coherent meaning except as code for anti-Roe. Giuliani is engaging is naked, uncomplicated Mephistophelian haggling: Give me the White House and I'll give you the Supreme Court. No philosophical underpinnings required.

I have no doubt that this -- not the blathering War on Terror gobbledygook that Robertson insists is behind his endorsement -- is the real reason for embracing Giuliani: a sotto voce pledge to have an anti-Roe litmus test for Supreme Court nominees. That, perhaps coupled with a properly couched pledge to "seriously consider" Huckabee as a running mate, and suddenly the "thrice-married, pro-choice, pro-gay, pro-gun-control cross-dresser" is -- Robertson's words -- "an acceptable candidate."

"Kingmaker" indeed.

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Brownback, meanwhile, is quite understandably giving the theocrats who abandoned him the finger. Just as there is no rational basis for Pat Robertson or James Dobson to endorse anyone other than Brownback or Huckabee, so too is there no basis for Brownback or Huckabee not to endorse each other. But Brownback, like all his fellow moral defectives, is motivated not by principles, but by politics. He still has a career in the Senate, and he is widely thought to be planning to run for governor of Kansas is 2010. He no doubt has concluded that being owed a favor by McCain furthers those two agenda items in a way that a principled, but worthless, IOU from Huckabee cannot.