To Read Is To Interpret

Salon's Walter Shapiro has a SC-centric take on the union of Pat Robertson and Rudy Giuliani.

In fact, the early evening local newscasts did not even mention the Pat-and-Rudy odd-coupling, even though Giuliani had swooped into the area for a cameo appearance late afternoon at his state headquarters.

A quick canvass of South Carolina political experts produced the tentative conclusion that Robertson's blessing will register only at the margins, if at all. "The Christian right is always locally autonomous, and they don't take direction from their presumed leaders. I don't think this will signal a mass stampede by the evangelicals to Giuliani," said Danielle Vinson, a political science professor at Furman University.

Even more skeptical was David Woodard, a political scientist at Clemson University, also a Republican political consultant. "Pat Robertson roared into the state in 1988 after he finished second in the Iowa caucuses, and everybody thought that the Christian Coalition would deliver for him," Woodard recalled. "Instead George H.W. Bush thrashed him."

CBN's David Brody, off a rough 24 hours, goes one-on-one with Barack Obama.

Convincing new polling data shows that the environment is a generational test for Republicans, per the Politico's two top editors.