Thus adding yet another item to my list of reasons why I’ll never vote for Rudy Giuliani:
Rudolph W. Giuliani scored a coup today by winning the support of Pat Robertson, who, as one of the nation’s best-known televangelists, could help Mr. Giuliani reassure Republicans who are wary of his support for abortion rights and gay rights.
Mr. Robertson, the founder and chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network, said in endorsing Mr. Giuliani in Washington, that he believed “the overriding issue before the American people is the defense of our population from the blood lust of Islamic terrorists” and praised Mr. Giuliani as a “true fiscal conservative.”
While Mr. Robertson did not mention Mr. Giuliani’s support of abortion rights, he said approvingly that Mr. Giuliani “has assured the American people that his choices for judicial appointments will be men and women who share the judicial philosophy of John Roberts and Antonin Scalia,” who have argued against Roe v. Wade.
The endorsement comes just a month after a coalition of other prominent Christian conservatives threatened to back a third-party candidate if Mr. Giuliani were to become the Republican Party’s presidential nominee. The support of Mr. Robertson could not only help Mr. Giuliani present himself as a viable candidate to the Christian right, but could also help him improve his standings in Iowa: Mr. Robertson finished second in the Iowa caucuses during his own run for president in 1988.
Moonbat Marion is, of course, famous for many things:
He was criticized shortly after the Sept. 11 terror attacks for seeming to agree with remarks made by another Christian conservative, the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, who suggested on his television show that abortion, gays and lesbians had angered God. In 2005 he called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela. “If he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it,” Mr. Robertson said.
And he said that the threat to the United States from activist judges was “probably more serious than a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings.”
And yet, the political value of this endorsement should not be downplayed, as Mark Ambinder points out:
Unlike Paul Weyrich, who endorsed Mitt Romney yesterday, actual voters have heard of Pat Robertson. Actual voters in Iowa helped place second in the 1988 Iowa caucuses.
Robertson is the most significant conservative Christian to endorse, and his endorsement goes to Rudy.
The question, of course is why Robertson would endorse someone who is plainly not a social conservative, who is pro-choice, more tolerant of homosexuals that anyone of Robertson’s ilk would ever be, and further to the left on social issues than any of the other Republican candidates. Ambinder says it all boils down to the War on Terror:
Both Giuliani and Robertson share an apocalyptic worldview about the clash with [radical] Islam; for Robertson, it is religious and based in biblical prophecy. For Giuliani, it is secular — but given his 9/11 experiences, just as personal.
Evangelical Christians cite the war on terror as their chief policy concern, and it is not that surprising that Giuliani, who is more identified with an aggressive prosecution of that war than any other candidate, is doing well among evangelicals. It’s not that they ignore his views on social issues; it’s that they see the war on terror like he does: black-and-white, good-versus-evil, a struggle for the soul of civilization.
Personally, I think it has more to do with the fact that Robertson sees Giuliani as the presumptive nominee and wants to be sure that he’s backing a winner so that he can continue to pretend to have influence on national affairs.
Outside of the whatever segment evangelical movement it is that still gives this man even a shred of credibility, though, I can’t see how this is going to help Giuliani that much, for the reasons Andrew Sullivan notes:
Robertson blamed Americans for causing 9/11. He is a charlatan and a religious phony. He has enriched himself at the expense of millions of gullible Christians who did not understand that this man’s sole principle is his own power and wealth. It doesn’t surprise me that he sees eye to eye with Giuliani. They are very similar characters. But he does represent what may be becoming the consensus among Christianists: that the war on Islamic terrorism is the prime issue; and that the way to tackle it is by increasing military aggression, bombing or occupying Muslim countries, preserving Israel solely to hasten the Apocalypse, and entrenching torture as a pillar of American national security policy. The fusion of Giuliani’s authoritarianism with Robertson’s Christianism is indeed one future path for the GOP.
It’s also the path guaranteed to chase anyone with an ounce of sense out of the party.
