How "Serious" Is Giuliani?

Very:

A merely ignorant Giuliani would be worrying, but what we actually see here is a man deeply invested in a deeply wrongheaded worldview which, I think, is much more dangerous. To observers looking on from the outside, the Bush administration has been a case study in neoconservative folly. To neoconservatives themselves, however, the Bush administration has been a study in betrayal.

Fred Kaplan's fisking of Rudy's foeign policy statement is well worth a weekend read, if you missed it. I think Giuliani is still the likeliest Republican nominee. He can paper over the deep divisions on the right by a campaign of pure xenophobic belligerence and torture. He can deflect the Christianists with a judicial policy of only appointing Dobson-approved judges; and he can cover his tolerance of gays by whittling away civil unions and targeting illegal immigrants. But it's a very tough year for a Republican in favor of the Iraq war, and he needs Clinton to be his opponent to win. Only Clinton can polarize the center enough to contemplate a Giuliani protectorate.

(Photo: Scott Olson/Getty.)