BILL DONOHUE: PROTECTING RUDY BY BASHING HUCKABEE?

Mike Huckabee released a Christmas ad that pointedly invoked Christ (and seemed to have a subliminal background cross) -- and Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, who's usually a pro-religion culture warrior, attacked the candidate. Steve Benen of the Carpetbagger Report is (like many of us) perplexed by this, and he struggles to find an explanation:

For what it's worth, why did Donohue criticize Huckabee? Given that his remarks seems to contradict everything he believes in, I suspect it's because Donohue supports a rival Republican candidate, and was prepared to take on Huckabee on anything. I can't think of any other realistic explanation.

And so I direct your attention to this Sisyphus Shrugged post from April, in which Julia notes that Donohue had no immediate reaction to Rudy Giuliani's assertion that he still supports taxpayer funding of abortions for poor women, and that Donohue's been quite reluctant to speak ill of Giuliani over the years.

In fact, Donohue did get around to criticizing Giuliani for that abortion remark, in a brief statement a few days later. (Compare this with Donohue's reaction to the hiring of Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan by the John Edwards campaign, which led to a rapid-fire series of denunciations of the campaign, plus plans to run a full-page ad in The New York Times; McEwan and Marcotte resigned from the campaign before the ad was scheduled to run.) The most recent item about Giuliani on the Catholic League's Web site is, in fact, an attack on panelists of The View for critical reamrks they made about him.

Search Giuliani's name at the Catholic League site and you'll see that, yes, Giuliani was criticized (at least in the first half of the year) for his abortion stance (though if Donohue took to the airwaves to chide Rudy on abortion, as he did to criticize the Huckabee ad, I'm not aware of it). You'll also see that Giuliani was repeatedly praised in earlier years for attacking the "Sensation" art exhibit and for supporting school vouchers.

So is Rudy Bill Donohue's man? Possibly.