Roe Rudy Roe

"Values voters," we hear, are getting night sweats over the GOP candidates this year. Rudy's a pro-choice, pro-gay, cousin-marrying, serial adulterer; Mitt's a Taxachusetts flip-flopping liberal--and a freaky deaky cultist, to boot; McCain opposes torture and apparently once said something critical of George W. Christ; and Fred's a one-time abortion lobbyist and McCainiac who has to shamelessly grovel his audience for applause. Perkins and Dobson and the rest of the dunkin' GOnuts might even support a third party candidate if they could find one.

While I can't help but enjoy the bedwetting on the right, I also suspect this is much ado about nothing. Every last one of those frontrunners is a scheming panderbot of the first order. (OK, maybe not St. John, who has sold only half his soul--the half we liked.) They all know that the current dynamics of the GOP are still FOX and Rovean base politics. Even the hated Rudy will bend over backward to give them whatever they want. More so, since he knows he needs to establish his bona fides with the right. Sure, invading Iran in January 2009 will help him with that crowd. But will it be enough? No. They'll get their judges. And Dems in the Senate will cave in lest the press whine that Rudy's not getting his bipartisan honeymoon.