With friends like these...

The campaign of Giuliani has always scared me (admittedly, that's true of every GOP candidate this time around), but I dropped my guard there for a while. My initial reaction to his candidacy was that it'd be as vacuous-- and effective-- as the recent GOP standard. Plenty of flag-waving, 9/11, bumper-sticker patriotism and ominous suggestions that critics are almost certainly America-hating subversives. And as little as possible about the issues, because the candidate is pretty damn scary.

This endorsement, which should scare the hell out of otherwise sensible Republicans buying into the same reactionary-as-moderate/moderate-as-radical scam they swallowed in 2000 and '04, probably won't.

Pat Robertson, a prominent Christian leader and social conservative, endorsed Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday.

"It is my pleasure to announce my support for America's Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, a proven leader who is not afraid of what lies ahead and who will cast a hopeful vision for all Americans," Robertson said in a statement issued by the Giuliani campaign. . . .

"Rudy Giuliani took a city that was in decline and considered ungovernable and reduced its violent crime, revitalized its core, dramatically lowered its taxes, cut through a welter of bureaucratic regulations, and did so in the spirit of bipartisanship which is so urgently needed in Washington today," Robertson said.

In other words, he tamed the whore of Babylon even as he cut taxes? Wow! And all he did wrong was out-sin Clinton, rule like a tyrant, and ignore the rule of law. That's our boy, all right.