But even 9/11 has its limits. Later, I do a little push-polling of my own. I ask Max Kaster, a local pastor and party chair for Calhoun County, a half-hour south of Columbia, what people down here would think of America’s Mayor if they knew he had moved in with a gay couple after separating from his second wife. “Really?” Kaster says. He fiddles with a lapel pin that combines an American flag and a cross. “I think that would roll a lot of people’s socks down.” ~New York Magazine

Via The Plank

Put this anecdote in the ever-growing file of “Damaging Information That Conservative Voters Don’t Know About Giuliani.” 

One might think that it would be his flagrant adultery and the horrible public separation and divorce that must have inflicted such embarrassment and suffering on his children that would set off conservative voters far more than the fact that Giuliani temporarily moved in with a gay couple (and, as almost every media report insists on including, their shih tzu, as if the lapdog were the really scandalous part of the story).  But then I guess I don’t understand many conservative voters as well I supposed I did.    

Besides, saying things like “character counts” is so very ’90s.  I guess it became something of a liability for the GOP, when so many of their top people didn’t have particularly admirable characters, so at some point GOP voters just learned to stop worrying and love their leaders’ vices.  Conservatives who used to despise politicians for blatant public adultery with a subordinate (something about the dignity of the office or some such crazy talk about moral integrity) have apparently discovered something more interesting in Rudy’s cult of personality.  We should understand that a cult of personality is what is being built up in front of us, and it should bother everyone quite a lot. 

Respecting actual marriage, rather than mouthing phrases about protecting the institution of marriage (not that Giuliani does this), must be part of that 9/10 mentality (except that Rudy couldn’t even manage it back then).  For my part, we could stand to have a little more of a 9/10 mentality when it comes to dishonourable old lechers.  Oh, I forgot, we can’t talk that way about “America’s Mayor.”