A Page Straight from the Romney Playbook

In an appalling, but not at all surprising, change of heart, Rudy Giuliani announced this week that he opposes civil unions for same-sex couples. In response to New Hampshire’s imminent civil unions law, a spokesperson for the Giuliani presidential campaign issued a statement saying that the law goes “too far.”

While considered a longtime supporter of GLBT rights, Giuliani has never expressed support for same-sex marriage. At the same time, he has explained his opposition by pointing to the existence of civil unions, which, he has argued, effectively replicate marriage for same-sex couples:

“That’s why you have civil partnerships. So now you have a civil partnership, domestic partnership, civil union, whatever you want to call it, and that takes care of the imbalance, the discrimination, which we shouldn’t have.”

So why the sudden change? There’s really no mystery here. For months, political commentators have been saying that Giuliani’s liberal positions could make him poison for more conservative Republican voters, who would reject him in favor of Romney. Because God knows, Romney’s conservatism is genuine.

If you ask me, it’s a disgrace. But is it more disgraceful than the about-face of so many Democrats whose vocal opposition to the war in Iraq belies the fact that it was their failure to oppose Bush’s October 2002 Iraq War Resolution that put us there in the first place? Bush couldn’t have done it alone. He needed Congressional approval to send our military into Iraq. Fearful of appearing un-patriotic so soon after 9/11, Democrats in Congress fell into line and authorized the disastrous war in which the United States now finds itself. Is their change of heart any less politically expedient than Giuliani’s?