POOR RUDY. It's a bit hard to maintain that you personally abhor abortion when the records show that you personally gave multiple donations to Planned Parenthood throughout the 90s. But Giuliani, I guess, will try. It reminds me of what Former Bossman Tomasky said in his profile of Giuliani in the latest issue: "Conservatives may think they're supporting the September 11 Rudy. But I covered the man for 15 years, and I can guarantee them they'll be getting the May 10 Rudy as part of the bargain." That's the trick, no? As Tapped contributor Tom Schaller has smartly argued, Rudy offers conservatives a sort of unique opportunity to decouple Iraq from terrorism. His national security credibility is so firmly planted in the rubble of 9/11 that he can plausibly focus the election on shadowy dangers abroad without accidentally focusing it on Republican incompetence and catastrophe in the Middle East. To get there, though, he's first got to convince the base that he's not also focusing the GOP away from social conservatism. His attempts to do this in the first debate were laughably unconvincing, and these revelations won't help him much. --Ezra Klein
