Rudy: down and dirty judicial activist and authoritarian

At the core of his presidential campaign, Rudy Giuliani is offering conservative Republicans a deal: In exchange for electing him as the first Republican president in modern American history who is pro-choice and has a pro-gun control record, Giuliani will seek to nominate judges that lean toward overturning Roe v. Wade and striking down gun control laws.

It's the sort of bargain that makes your head hurt, if you think about it too hard. But in the realm of presidential politics, where message can trump biography, it's a strategy that just might work. All Giuliani has to do is keep saying the same thing everywhere he goes.

Still not convinced that the party to the right has lost its soul?  How about the speed with which they want to rush us back to the Dark Ages?  Michael Scherer, documenting the ambitions of candidate Giuliani, gives us a glimpse into our future.

What would Giuliani's ideal judges look like? They would be people like "Justice Scalia, Justice Thomas, Justice Alito and Chief Justice Roberts," the four most conservative judges on the current Supreme Court. He then got even more specific. He said he believes judges should view gun ownership as "an individual right," limit the federal power to seize private property for public purposes, oppose "racial quotas," leave the word "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and allow the mention of the "10 Commandments" in the public square.

Kind of looks like Glenn Greenwald isn't exaggerating when he says we should be afraid -- very afraid -- of Rudy Giuliani.

Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson and John McCain are all horrific in their own right. But Giuliani is in a different league in terms of messianic extremism. There really hasn't been someone like Rudy Giuliani -- someone so drenched in plainly authoritarian impulses, merged with such wild-eyed militarism -- anywhere near the White House in modern American history, if ever. It's not some coincidence or political ploy that he chose the most bloodthirsty neoconservative militants to serve him; that is who Giuliani is and has been for a long time.

Yet not only do our journalists make virtually no mention of any of this, but they actually depict it all as the opposite: that he's the non-ideologue, the moderate hero, the one struggling to be accepted among Republicans despite his moderation and even liberalism. There will come a point where this "moderate, centrist" image gets solidified in the public mind and will be very difficult to dislodge.