Romney and Giuliani Party On

Two Republican losers are in Denver this week, jockeying for TV face time and puckering up to their new best friend, John McCain.

In the primaries, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney ran neck and neck for the title of Most Shameless, America's Mayor with his 9/11 posturing and the former Massachusetts governor setting world records for pandering to the Radical Right by flip-flopping on gays, abortion and other social issues.

Now they are gate-crashing the Democratic convention like clowns from Comedy Central. Romney is angling for VP on the Republican ticket, accusing Democrats of playing "the politics of envy" by harping on McCain's multiple homes, while modestly pointing out he himself has only four.

Who knows what Giuliani wants in a McCain Administration? Attorney General? The six-figure lectures fees must be drying up.

In Praise of McCain's Consistency

The Republicans have caught him flip-flopping. “How can Barack Obama," asks a National Committee spokesman, "claim to have a consistent Iraq policy? It’s clear Obama is rightly trying to reverse the central premise of his campaign: his pledge to immediately withdraw troops from Iraq."

Such charges of irresolution are based on recent campaign statements and an interview with Military Times in which Obama said:

“If current trends continue and we are at a position where we continue to see reductions in violence and stabilization and...some improvements on the part of the Iraqi army and Iraqi police, then my hope would be that we could draw down in a deliberate fashion in consultation with the Iraqi government at a pace that is determined in consultation with General Petraeus and the other commanders on the ground...(T)hat is something we could begin relatively soon after inauguration. If, on the other hand, you’ve got a deteriorating situation for some reason, then that’s going to have to be taken into account.”

McCain supporters find such waffling a sign of weakness in a potential Commander-in-Chief, particularly after eight years of George W. Bush, who made firmness and determination a hallmark of his presidency. Consultation? Deliberate fashion? Deteriorating situation? Would the country be safe with such a wimp in the White House?

One thing voters can be sure of with McCain. He was whole-heartedly for invading Iraq in 2002 and has never wavered in his support of the war. He is a model of consistency.

If push comes to shove in Iran, President McCain is not likely to be "deliberating" or "consulting" before taking action. As soon as he makes good on his promise to pursue Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell, he will be ready to shoot it out with all the other varmints in the Middle East.

This Obama fellow, on the other hand, might spend all his time thinking it over.

There Goes the Log Cabin Vote

"Mike Huckabee," the AP reports, "once advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general public, opposed increased federal funding in the search for a cure and said homosexuality could 'pose a dangerous public health risk.'"

If the preacher is planning to go Reaganesque in his surge toward the GOP nomination, this news will not sit well with the 47 chapters of the Long Cabin Republicans, who got their start in California in 1977 when the Great Communicator opposed an anti-gay ballot initiative against teachers and helped defeat it.

Reagan wrote a letter outlining his views, in which he said, "Whatever else it is, homosexuality is not a contagious disease like the measles. Prevailing scientific opinion is that an individual's sexuality is determined at a very early age and that a child's teachers do not really influence this."

In contrast, answering a questionnaire when he was running for the Senate in 1992, Huckabee wrote: "It is difficult to understand the public policy towards AIDS. It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population, and in which this deadly disease for which there is no cure is being treated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents."

The former Arkansas governor won't be making any new friends in Hollywood either when they learn he opposed federal funding for AIDS research and suggest that celebrities like Elizabeth Taylor and Madonna who support it do so "out of their own personal treasuries."

But as a candidate this year, Huckabee did a little flip-flopping on his web site: "My administration will be the first to have an overarching strategy for dealing with HIV and AIDS here in the United States, with a partnership between the public and private sectors that will provide necessary financing and a realistic path toward our goals."

Huckabee and Mitt Romney might have bumped into each other racing toward new positions on gays from opposite directions. But he could make a new friend in Lou Dobbs, who wants to treat illegal immigrants as lepers, too.