The radical right will never go for him.

Maybe, maybe not. But aren't you forgetting about the rest of us? You talk a good game, but Giuliani has led many, if not most, of the polls of likely Republican candidates.

Being not resident in Chicago, its local political style does't carry the same relevance to me as, say, Alberto Gonzales' apparently unfettered access to my personal correspondence and financial affairs. So I readily grant that those who actually live in that city have the better perspective on what's tolerable in a candidate to run it.

However, the fact is that neither member of the two successive generations of the Dalys who have run that city ever tried to test that tolerance on a larger political stage, and so forced those of us who live outside Chicago to deal with them as 'relevant'.

Similarly, I am content to cede to the residents of the great city of New York a perspective immeasurably greater than mine on Rudy Guiliani as a candidate for their mayor.

But as Guilani steps up to this larger stage, the measures of history on his policies become relevant to many others - including me. And even at this too early/never too early point, I foresee difficulty in his overcoming what's depicted in this excerpt of a comment by The News Blog's Steve Gilliard in August 2003:

"in the real world, the GOP still tolerates racists. ...the GOP has two problems with blacks, and they don't care about addressing either one.

First, they are still coddling the racists.

Instead of admitting that they have people who want to keep America white, an impossible goal, they talk and dance around it. The cold, hard fact is, from black America, the GOP is the party of bigots and black lackeys. Rudy Giuliani, a man many New Yorkers regard as racist to his core, who actively disenfranchised black New Yorkers, who disrespected black officials, is now feted at Reagan Foundation events. No one has forgotten his callousness towards black New York and his message that he didn't care about or need us. Yet GOP officials push this guy as some kind of hero. Giuliani is so racially driven that when Saturday Night Live had 100 firefighters, EMS and cops on their stage, not a black or latino officer was to be seen. Not one."

http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2003_08_01_stevegilliard_archive.html

I would have no hesitation whatsoever in excoriating the GOP, or any party or group, should it manifest intolerance for Guilani's support for women's right to control their own bodies, the rights of all to tolerance of their sexual destiny and the National Rifle Association's criminally negligent spin on what the Founders intended by the 2nd Amendment - even to the point of voicing my willingness to tolerate to the point of overlooking Guilani's brand of 'family values'.

He has also marched in gay pride parades, dressed up in drag and lived temporarily with a gay couple and their Shih Tzu.