MORE ON THE EVANGELICALS

Hmmm ... what was I just saying in my last post about America's Southern-derived permanent anti-"elitist" opposition movement, which fought for the Confederacy, defended Jim Crow, denounced evolution along the way, and morphed a couple of decades ago into the religious right?

I think a champion of the mutated movement could easily be Giuliani, with his advisers who chant "Islamofascism!" and his clear contempt for the very urbanity of the city he once ran.

When I wrote that, I hadn't read David Kirkpatrick's New York Times Magazine cover story on the changing religious right, and, well, what do you know -- here's what he says:

Among the evangelicals of suburban Wichita, I found that Giuliani was easily the most popular of the Republican candidates, even among churchgoers who knew his views on abortion and same-sex marriage. Some trusted him to fight Islamic radicalism; others praised his cleanup of New York.

This stuff isn't rocket science, folks. These people just want someone to tell them that they're good, that some other groups of people are purely evil, and that their need to feel utter contempt for other groups of people is virtuous because those other groups are unfit to live. These people have gotten that message from right-wing preachers, but they'll happily get it from Giuliani instead.

And if you want to know whether these people will be able to bring themselves to vote for a pro-choice, pro-gay rights divorced guy who wears dresses, Kirkpatrick quotes a man who attends a Wichita evangelical church on why he has good feelings about Rudy:

"There are a few issues we are on different sides of -- a lot of it is around abortion -- and he is not the most spiritual guy," said Kent Brummer, a retired Boeing engineer leaving services at Central Christian. "But to me that doesn't mean that he would not make a good president, if he represents both sides.

"What I liked about George Bush is all of his moral side and all that," Brummer added. "But somehow he didn't have the strength to govern the way we hoped he would and that he should have."

And there's the formula that could win Giuliani a big evangelical vote: George W. Bush talked about God the way we do, but as president he didn't do what we hoped he'd do. So maybe this time we have to look at people who don't talk about God the way we do, but talk about other issues the way we do.

And since they're still right-wing, and thus still looking for someone who sees the world as made up of good people and utterly evil people, that means a Republican. It doesn't matter how many times Hillary or John Edwards or Barack Obama invokes God -- that's not what these people care about. They care about whether you see everyone in the world as either saved or damned, and truly despise the damned. That might be Fred, might be Mitt, but definitely would be Rudy.