Tommy Thompson's rescinded endorsement of an employer's ability to discriminate against gay employees has a new spin:

Tommy Thompson cited a dead hearing aid and an urgent need to use the bathroom in explaining on Saturday why he said at a GOP presidential debate that an employer should be allowed to fire a gay worker.

Memo to political debaters: visit the facilities before the debate starts so that you can give undivided attention to the questions you can't hear.

He's flipped and he's flopped on abortion, but now he's ready to take a stand. Rudy Giuliani will be coming out strongly for abortion rights.

Why? Because his campaign has figured out that with the changes to state primaries, he doesn't need the traditionally coveted states.

....they would focus on the so-called mega-primary of Feb. 5, in which voters in states like California, New York and New Jersey are likely to be more receptive to Mr. Giuliani’s social views than voters in Iowa and South Carolina. That approach, they said, became more appealing after the Legislature in Florida, another state they said would be receptive to Mr. Giuliani, voted last week to move the primary forward to the end of January.

....His aides said that in focusing on the Feb. 5 and Florida primaries, they were not writing off Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina, acknowledging the historic importance of those states and arguing that Mr. Giuliani could do well in South Carolina and New Hampshire. But they said the events of the past week had reinforced the notion that later states were more promising for a moderate Republican, particularly one who was a political celebrity with a big campaign bank account.

Giuliani, ever the opportunist.

uh, no:

After months of conflicting signals on abortion, Rudolph W. Giuliani is planning to offer a forthright affirmation of his support for abortion rights in public forums, television appearances and interviews in the coming days, despite the potential for bad consequences among some conservative voters already wary of his views, aides said yesterday.

Stick a fork in him. Someone needs to tell Rudy that Arnold Vinick was a TV character.

This Rudy meltdown was inevitable. I can not imagine what he was thinking when he decided to run for the GOP nomination. Anyway, here is another nail in the coffin of his campaign:

®ecords show that in the '90s he contributed money at least six times to Planned Parenthood, one of the country's leading abortion rights groups and its top provider of abortions.

What is funny to me is how he is contradicting himself with the very damage control operations he is running now:

Asked how Giuliani could reconcile personal opposition to abortion with a contribution to Planned Parenthood, a Giuliani spokeswoman said "Mayor Giuliani has been consistent in his position -- he is personally opposed to abortion, but at the same time he understands it is a personal and emotional decision that should ultimately be left up to the woman," said Maria Comella.

"Giuliani gave a noncommittal answer to the question of whether it would be a good day for the country if Roe v. Wade were overturned. "It'd be OK," Giuliani responded."

Okaaaay.

Another flip-flop for Rudy. First, when addressing an audience in Florida, he was for the congressional attempt to intervene and save Terri Schiavo's life.

In the debate this week, he switched positions, and said it's an appropriate matter for the courts.

The flip:

In April, Giuliani had explained his position this way: Noting that the controversy had been through the court system for years, he said the 2005 congressional intervention, "was appropriate to make every effort to give her a chance to stay alive. ... My general view is, you should do everything you can to keep somebody alive unless they have expressed a strong interest in not having very, very special things done, extraordinary things done."

The flop:

"The family was in dispute. That's what we have courts for. And the better place to decide that in a much more, I think in a much fairer and even in a deeper way, is in front of a court, " he said at the first GOP presidential debate at the Ronald Reagan library in California.

His campaign manager's attempt to reconcile the two:

From the debate:

Speaking of Iran, Giuliani said "they looked in Ronald Reagan's eyes and in two minutes they released the hostages." That was a reference to the U.S. hostages released from captivity on the day of Reagan's inauguration in 1981.

Oh really? Then how do you explain this, Rudy?

In 1983, Buckley succeeded Ken Haas as the Beirut Station Chief/Political Officer at the U.S. Embassy, but was kidnapped by the Islamist group Hezbollah on March 16, 1984. Hezbollah was closely allied to Iran. William Casey, who was by then the Director of Central Intelligence, asked Ted Shackley for help in securing Buckley’s release. Three weeks after Buckley’s abduction, President Ronald Reagan signed the National Security Decision Directive 138. . . . This was the beginning of the Iran-Contra deal, which culminated in the exchange of missiles for the release of hostages.

Not to mention this:

On October 23 1983, around 6:20 am, a yellow Mercedes-Benz truck drove to Beirut International Airport, where the 1st Battalion 8th Marines, under the U.S. 2nd Marine Division of the United States Marine Corps, had set up its local headquarters. . . . The suicide bomber detonated his explosives, which were equivalent to 12,000 pounds (about 5,400kg) of TNT. . . .In the attack on the American barracks, the death toll was 241 American servicemen . . . The Marines were moved offshore where they could not be targeted. On February 7, 1984, President Reagan ordered the Marines to begin withdrawal from Lebanon. This was completed on February 26; the rest of the MNF was withdrawn by April.

Is that what Rudy is promising in his potential Presidency?

I'll chime on with thoughts on the GOP Debate as they come.

First thought, the Big Loser so far is Brian Williams as Matthews, Jim Van Den Hei and John Harris are asking much better questions than Williams could muster. What an empty suit he is.

Update [2007-5-3 20:40:4 by Big Tent Democrat]: Huckabee is extremely effective at what he is trying to do. His answer to the global warming question was shrewdly nuanced, abstaining on the question of whether humans are the primary cause, and stressing whatever the answer to that question is, we must address it. Markos always said he was a guy to watch and I can see why now.

Update [2007-5-3 20:42:16 by Big Tent Democrat]: Rudy no longer supports Roe v. Wade. Or at least that's what he wants GOP primary voters to think.

Update [2007-5-3 20:47:0 by Big Tent Democrat]: Here's my question to the Republican candidates on choice, assuming Roe is overturned, would you support a complete federal ban on abortion?

Update [2007-5-3 21:2:48 by Big Tent Democrat]: Ok, I'm bored. I'm changing the channel. I'm gonna watch basketball now. Sorry.

mcjoan has a fantastic post applying wingnut logic to John McCain's cut and run in Somalia and how that "led" to 9/11:

[B]y his own logic, McCain and the party that forced the withdrawal of troops from Somalia are partly responsible for 9/11. Sounds pretty preposterous, no? Of course McCain isn't responsible. Bin Laden and al Qaeda are responsible. Terrorists like bin Laden do not need emboldening. . . . But if McCain wants to live by the McCarthyite sword, he should die by it. His attacks and smears of those of us who want to see this war brought to a responsible end as soon as humanly possible are reprehensible, as would be any effort to put the blame for 9/11 on him.

As mcjoan asks, did John McCain cause 9/11?

Rudy on universal health care:

Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani pulled out the S-word to criticize universal-health-care plans advocated by Democratic presidential candidates. The Republican hopeful said in a visit to Raleigh, N.C., that Democrats who urged "mandatory" universal health care at a debate Thursday night were "moving toward socialized medicine so fast, it'll make your head spin," according to the Associated Press.

As always, Rudy was for "socialized medicine" before he was against it:

The June issue of Vanity Fair has an article by Michael Wolff (free link) on "Crazy for Rudy." Shorter version: He may be nuts.

Wolff writes that almost anyone who’s ever worked for Rudy Giuliani expects his presidential campaign to implode at any moment, thanks to his propensity for periods of mania, outbursts, and frequent forms of behavior that generally don’t win elections.

Bernard Kerik, his frosty relationship with his children, his famous smackdown of a listener (and ferret owner) who called in during his radio show, Judith Giuliani’s stint at a medical company that experimented on live dogs (killing them in the process), the list goes on—there are plenty of past deeds that may block his path to the White House.

But what is it about Rudy that makes him so compelling? Wolff opines that the consensus among people who know him best is that, “He is nuts, actually mad.” And Wolff argues that maybe that’s just what he needs to win. After all, he writes, “You can better trust a crazy man, lacking normal artifice and equivocations, not to sh*t you.”

I'd rather see his campaign implode. I don't think you can trust a crazy man, I think you need to beware of him and watch him like a hawk, which I have no doubt, the liberal blogs will do.

I blogged about this Richardson gaffe earlier, but it seems the Governor of New Mexico has not put away his shovel and keeps digging:

Having blundered last week by saying Whizzer White would be his model chief justice, a reporter asks him how he can reconcile that with his strong pro-choice position when White wrote the dissent in Roe v. Wade. Richardson says, "White was in the 60s. Wasn't Roe v. Wade in the 80s?" Bzzzzzzzttt!!!

Bzzzzzzzzttt!!! indeed.

h/t Trapper John.

Former Senator Gary Hart lays into Rudy Giuliani in his new post at HuffPo.

He asks Rudy, "Where were you on terrorism between January 31, 2001, and September 11th?"

Hart then writes,

Before you qualify to criticize Democrats, Mr. Giuliani, you must account for your preparation of your city for these clearly predicted attacks. Tell us, please, what steps you took to make your city safer.

Until you do, then I strongly suggest you should keep your mouth shut about Democrats and terrorism. You have not qualified to criticize others, let alone be president of the United States.