Over at the Goldberg Review, they’re revving up the motors to convince “conservatives” that Rudy the Reckless is The One. We should have known this, and, indeed, Paul Gottfried was clued in early. Now Newsweek has homed in on the news: Giuliani is the neocon candidate to beat. Here’s the plainly dispirited Rich Lowry, signaling that he’s on board, albeit with a distinct lack of enthusiasm:

“Pound for pound, Giuliani might be the most talented political horseflesh in the field, an excellent debater and proven leader. He”€™ll need all that talent “€” and probably more “€” to overcome positions on cultural issues that are badly out of step with the GOP and a personal life as mayor that made Bill Clinton’s look discreet.”

Yes, well so is Hillary Clinton “an excellent debater” and “proven leader,” for what that’s worth, and Giuliani’s record on “cultural” issues is a bit to her left. On the foreign affairs front, she’s nearly as hawkish as the maniacal Mayor, and yet just because she’ll never get Norman Podhoretz’s endorsement she’s going to have to go to the White House without National Review‘s imprimatur.

It’s pathetic, really, to see the arguments coming out of the mouths of “conservatives” as they try to justify—and even wax enthusiastic—about Giuliani. Here‘s the clownish Deroy Murdock shoveling his obligatory load of bs, claiming that Rudy’s record as a baby-killing, gay-loving New York liberal is entirely due to the smears of “hostile commentators and lazy journalists.” Deroy, you see, is a hard-working journalist, and it sure is a strenuous task depicting the GOP’‘s tackiest drag queen as the right’s man-on-horseback, and one imagines the sweat rolling down his face as he types: what a workout!  Bill Simon chimes in, averring that Rudy cleaned up Times Square, and he can clean up America, too—although one wonders, in idle moments, whether this is worth trading in the Constitution, our guns, and the lives of thousands of American soldiers in new wars.

It’s almost funny—if you like your humor on the dark side—to watch the spectacle of alleged “conservatives” extolling the “social conservatism” of a candidate who supports tax-funded abortion: how stupid do they think GOP voters are? More interesting, however, is the question of why they are doing it. Why this daunting display of mental and ideological gymnastics?

Because Rudy is the One, that’s why: he’s the candidate who will save the neocons from being separated from what they need in order to survive and pull off their continued hijacking of the US military to serve their own ends and those of their foreign allies—and that is power. Presidential power. Only the President can order US troops to attack Iran. Only the President can appoint them to high positions in the national security bureaucracy, where they can seize control of our foreign policy and use our matchless military as their instrument and plaything.

Forget “social conservatism.” Forget “economic conservatism.” It’s war, war, war, all the time—that’s the new “conservative” agenda.