Battered Blair Bows Out

"Rudy Giuliani (whom I've tentatively supported) is taking a gamble that even Pete Rose would think is too risky. He's going to start making what is being described as a 'forthright affirmation' of his support for abortion rights.

"The big deal here is not that Rudy is pro-choice (which I call 'pro-abortion'). We all knew that. It's that he's now removing the self-imposed shackles he felt he needed to wear when running in the Republican primary and is 'doubling down.'

"He's basically saying 'Look, I'm pro-choice. I'm not going to play word games any more, not going to wink-and-nod to placate a particular group. If you don't like it then don't vote for me. But you know what - I'm betting there are more people who are willing to overlook it than those who won't. And just because you're the most vocal, doesn't mean you're in the majority. I'll respect your opinion, but I won't pretend to agree with it, and in fact, I'm going to come out publicly and say so.'

"Talk about a high-risk strategy. I'm not going to waste time telling you how politically earth-shattering it would be for him to actually get the GOP nomination while espousing a pro-choice view, because you already know that.

"But I think it's a move he had to make. Anyone who watched his tortured answer to the abortion question at the debate, or listened to him on Laura Ingram's radio show (where they talked about nothing else) knows that Giuliani's attempt to deal with the question was absolutely killing him politically."

Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum is more dismissive:

"Rudy's only doing this because he knows he really doesn't have any choice. The revelations about his donations to Planned Parenthood took waffling off the table as a feasible campaign strategy. He's screwed and he knows it."

Jonathan Chait: "Giuliani's best appeal to conservatives will be to convince them that he's the most electable candidate. But you can't do that if you lose the first three primaries. By the time February 5 rolls around, he's going to be buried. Indeed, his campaign might not even exist at that point."

But Glenn Reynolds says those who feel strongly about the issue need to think twice:

"THINGS THAT DON'T BOTHER ME: Rudy Giuliani donated to Planned Parenthood? Hey, that's okay. So have I.

"I understand that the pro-life people, and the social-cons generally, are unhappy with this. But hey, a lot of gun-rights people thought that Bush was squishy on the gun issue -- and he has been. Nonetheless, he's been a lot better than Kerry or Gore would have been had they been elected; his support for the assault weapons ban, for example, was extremely limp. Likewise, the social-cons are crazy if they let this sort of thing keep them home on election day in 2008."

Rudy's even got an Oxycontin problem: